GEOGRAPHY OF FORGOTTEN PLACES: IMAGES, MEMORY, AND URBAN INVISIBILITY

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between image, memory, and invisibility in marginalized urban spaces, drawing primarily on Yi-Fu Tuan's Landscapes of Fear. Based on the premise that fear shapes not only individual perceptions but also the symbolic production and exclusion of certain urban places, this paper analyses how urban forgetting is socially constructed and reinforced through visual language and the absence of narrative. The interplay between Tuan's humanistic geography and studies on collective memory and invisibility reveals that so-called "forgotten places" are not devoid of meaning but, on the contrary, are saturated with fear, silence, and deliberate erasure. It is concluded that the critical recovery of the image of these spaces constitutes a political act of resistance to imposed invisibility.