The Navigators: Flaneurs

In Man of the Crowd, a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator is sitting in a London coffee shop observing people. After a short while of witnessing a various sort of moderately intriguing people, the narrator spots, through the window pane, an old man who instantly draws his attention. Leaving the coffee shop, he pursues this man, not to confront but to observe. The man speeds up and slows down, aimlessly crosses streets, and settles in a bazaar until close. Once the night is over, the narrator stops, allowing the old man to continue on his way, in the same place the pursuit began.

Walter Benjamin refers to the old man as Charles Baudelaire's interpretation of the flaneur. This is one who dwells in the majority's exterior allowing the city as a whole to be his interior. The old man does not want to be alone so he becomes a part of the crowd, a deceptive illusion of social interaction. The man becomes a part of, while simultaneously separated from, other people. 

The ideas of Baudelaire as stated by Benjamin regarding the flaneur, can be ascribed to the photographs of Manuel Vasquez:

Manuel Vazquez, Trace 20, 2008.

Manuel Vazquez, Trace 23, 2008.

Manuel Vazquez, Trace 3, 2008

These photo montages display a crowd of flaneurs. While compiled together within the frame, the darkness surrounding them isolates each person from the next. Like the Man of the Crowd, they are separated from, while also a part of, the crowd. By leaving the smallest amount of environmental context, before none at all, the walkers appear to be in a shared urban setting. Each person goes a different direction and, because of the emptiness of the black, appear to be completely aimless. Aside from the cultural context presented through the style or trend of the walkers' clothes, these people are all anonymous. We are not told who they are, where they are, or where they are going. These ideas can be related to Benjamin, as he refers to people in a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, "the anonymous consumer who enters a cafe and will shortly leave it again, attracted by the magnet of the mass which constantly has him in its range." and continues, "an enormous crowd in which no one is either quite transparent or quite opaque to all others."

Anke Gleber furthers the idea of the flaneur. By observing how others have theorized the perception of the modern city, the flaneur is found in the center of two extremes. Here is a diagram:

While the flaneur seems to gravitate more towards the viewpoints of Georg Simmel, because of the flaneur's indifference, he is still separated.The flaneur is a result of the modern city producing a vast amount of visual stimuli. The flaneur takes part in what the perception of modern city has to offer, while simultaneously rejects the physical and utilitarian advancements offered by the modern city. The flaneur sees the train and accepts the visual stimulus that the train has to offer, yet does not take part in the physical nature of it; the train has the ability to transit at a faster pace.

While the modern city is based on visual stimuli, (trains, streetlights, traffic signals, advertisements) what would the perception of the city be if it became more of an audio stimuli? The roar of the train that is unmistakeable, the obtrusive honking of multiple horns, the consistency of sirens flowing in and out of buildings are all audio stimuli. The sound of the city, while still increasing stimuli, seems to do so, but  much less desirably than the image of the city.