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Inter-Section II

The Idler

Walter Benjamin's notion of the flâneur is important to understanding how people idling through the streets create an idea of the city as a distant love object, an object of contemplation, and an object of desire. Associating the photographer with the voyeur, the stalker and the reconnoitrer, Susan Sontag adds a somewhat sinister depth to Benjamin’s flâneur ....

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker, reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseurs of empathy, the flâneur finds the world picturesque (Susan Sontag, cited by John Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 1990, p 138).