Terrains Vagues: Un Flâneur Anglais

Jim Brodgen’s photography exhibition and his talk at Nouvelle librairie internationale V.O. will focus on his exploration of Lille as l’étranger: 'Terrains Vagues: Un Flâneur Anglais'.

Jim’s photographic practice and academic writing presents a critical provocation and aesthetic defence of the so-called ‘non-place’ (terrain vague/non-lieu), as an act of cultural reclamation.

Through the restorative properties of photography, Jim aims to re-conceptualize the cultural significance of non-place. The sites featured in this exhibition investigate different locations in which access and ownership is ambiguous or contested; potential places of cultural forgetting.

He argues that the overlooked non-place has the potential to expose a version of England and France that raises questions about regeneration, re-wilding, identity, loss, memory, forgetting, landscape valorization, and, perhaps more importantly, how we might arrive at a more meaningful place.

Dr Jim Brogden is an academic and photographer in Leeds (twinned with Lille). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.