steven jacobs

biography

Dr. Steven Jacobs (1967) is an art historian who has worked as an academic researcher for GUST between 1996 and 2005. He contributed largely to both The Urban Condition and Post Ex Sub Dis, GUST's two collectively written volumes. Within the context of GUST, he has written a doctoral dissertation on the urban photography of the late twentieth century. In addition, he is the author of monographs on Henry Van de Velde, Raoul De Keyser, and Paul Robbrecht & Hilde Daem. Steven Jacobs has published widely on the visual arts in various exhibition catalogues and professional journals. In particular, he has written extensively on the photographic and cinematic representations of architecture, cities, and landscapes. He is currently writing a book on the architecture of Alfred Hitchcock.

Over the years, Steven Jacobs has been teaching at various art schools and universities in Belgium and Holland. He currently teaches film history and film theory at Sint-Lukas College of Art Brussels, the Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, and the University of Antwerp.

 

selected publications

  • "Sightseeing Fright: Alfred Hitchcock's Monuments and Museums." Journal of Architecture, 11:5 2006, 595-602.
  • "The Demise of Street Photography and the Rise of the Spectacular City," in Spectacular City: Photographing the Future (exhibition catalogue) (Rotterdam: Nai Publishers, 2006), 169-72.
  • "Amor Vacui: Photography and the Image of the Deserted City," History of Photography 30: 2 (Summer 2006) (Special Issue on Visualising the City), 108-118.
  • "From Flaneur to Chauffeur: Driving Through Cinematic Cities," in Imagining the City. Edited by Christian Emden, Catherine Keen, and David Midgley (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006), 213-28.
  • "Street Photography," in Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography. Edited by Lynne Warren (New York: Routledge, 2005), vol 3, 1503-1508.
  • "Andreas Gursky: Photographer of the Generic City," Exposure (Journal of the American Society of Photographic Education) 37:1 (2004), 25-33.
  • "Slapstick and Self-Reflexivity: Buster Keaton's Metropolitan Acrobatics," in Untitled (Experience of Place). Edited by Gregor Neuerer (London: Koenig Books, 2003), 111-128.
  • "Shreds of Boring Postcards: Toward a Posturban Aesthetics of the Generic and the Everyday," in Post Ex Sub Dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions. Edited by the Ghent Urban Studies Team. (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2002), 15-64.
  • "Between EUR and LA: Townscapes in the Work of Michelangelo Antonioni," in The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis. Edited by the Ghent Urban Studies Team. (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1999), 324-342.
  • The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2007)