NZ Visual Diary - entry 406

mannequins, real and imagined, on display

One of the more quirky, and yet useful, bodies of social science research focuses on the dynamics of pedestrian sidewalk traffic. For urban studies researchers, the scholarship on pedestrian (sidewalk) movement may be as important as that which focuses on street traffic. I cite here one of many citations on this scholarly enterprise.

My own truly arcane interest is in the curious synchronicity of walking patterns amongst pedestrians in close proximity.

Street pedestrians not only weave, bob and feint to avoid collisions with fellow travellers, they also over time fall into synchronised walking patterns — strangers and mates alike — all of this at a subconscious level. The synchronicity is as much about imitation and conformity — the evolutionary tick of social patterning within groups — as it is about the necessities of flow management.

As I stood, some distance away from the front entrance of a clothing store, waiting patiently for an interesting moment in the movement of people on their way home at the end of a work day, I noticed this pair of street travellers.

And, in the moment in which I captured this image, the pair of synchronised walkers, frozen in the frame of a photograph, look as posed and modelled — from foot, leg & arm positions to fixed facial expressions — as the pair of mannequins within the store.