Under the Influence: A Traveling Library of Books that Inspire Artists

Artist: Bahar Behbahani

b.1973, Tehran, Iran
Lives and works in New York, NY

Book Title: Space and Place
Author: Yi-Fu Tuan

Eminent geographer Yi-Fu Tuan considers the ways in which people feel and think about space, how they form attachments to home, neighborhood, and nation, and how feelings about space and place are affected by the sense of time. He suggests that place is security and space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other. Whether he is considering sacred versus “biased” space, mythical space and place, time in experiential space, or cultural attachments to space, Tuan’s analysis is thoughtful and insightful.

Until his retirement in 1998, Yi-Fu Tuan was professor of geography at the university of Wisconsin-Madison. He was recently named the Laureat d’Honneur 2000 of the International Geographical Union and is the author of many essays and books, including Cosmos and Hearth(Minnesota).

Bahar Behbahani: “The place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other.”