Perception in Motion: A Stroll through Paris in the Spirit of Lucius Burckhardt
Rethinking Space through Perception
Lucius Burckhardt, sociologist and economist, introduced strollology as a means to critically explore how landscapes and urban spaces are perceived1. For Burckhardt, perceiving is not merely seeing—it is discovering new perspectives, noticing the unfamiliar, and reflecting on one’s own cognitive filters.
In this view, space is not objective; it is a construct of perception, inherently ambiguous and shaped by individual experience.
The Dynamic Nature of Perception
French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that perception is not passive reception, but a living and dynamic process2. Influenced by the Greek term aisthesis, from which the word aesthetics derives, perception is understood as an active, embodied interaction with the world3. The subject becomes a participant in the experience—not just an observer, but a co-creator of meaning.
Movement as a Medium of Understanding
From a constructivist perspective, walking through a landscape—or a city—becomes a process of learning. Individuals actively integrate new impressions into existing cognitive structures4. This movement through space is both experiential and epistemological: it fosters awareness of the city as both a material and social creation.
Paris as a Living Text
Urban environments like Paris serve as rich, layered texts. They demand to be read, felt, and interpreted. The city is not static; it responds to those who move through it.
The images presented here capture moments of resonance between perception and place—snapshots of an ongoing dialogue between observer and environment.
The photographs, taken during a journey to Paris in 2025, document such moments of conscious spatial appropriation. They reveal not only places, but traces of a specific mode of perception—a subjective, process-oriented way of seeing, as described by the theory of strollology.
