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But very quickly the statutory expression of New York became the vertical one. In his recent book Celluloid Skyline James Sanders describes permanent movie sets of plaster and lath NY skyscrapers stored in an LA backlot. Hollywood saw to it that "every scene in a penthouse, in a rooftop nightclub, every window (looked) on to a glittering view of towers". The artificiality of these backdrops was often quite apparent. Indeed in his film Rope Hitchcock opts for an ostentatiously stylised façade of towers glittering with lit windows.

In fact in the case of New York there have been in the twentieth century different prevailing views. The classic forties and fifties view of New York, used almost to the point of unuseability, was a view incorporating the Statue of Liberty, the tip of Manhattan, an immigrant perception of the city, the tantalysing view, one might imagine, from Ellis Island. To the 'huddled masses' the city is dwarfing, challenging, fearsome, not quite yet attainable. In the seventies and eighties there was the helicopter shot: the Master of the Universe view, saxophonic, triumphalist, very eighties; but it did do what all topogaphers want to do: give us the whole city. But can we take it all in? Is there not as much topographic truth in new selective views, the filming in NYPD Blue, in which the camera skids along the sidewalk to pan neurotically up the side of a tenament to an intense percussive soundtrack, (very edgy, very nineties)? Or in the unexpectedly lyrical, visually luscious topography of the Bronx in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing?

A nineteenth century English Miss would make her sketch of Naples to the north of the Castel St Elmo, looking down on the Castel Ovo projecting into the sea; Vesuvius would brood (a hint of vapour above its crater) in the distance. In Rome she would set up her easel in the Borghese Gardens looking west. Today we do the same with our cameras. Most of us go to the prescribed spot for the standard view; everyone has access to the one, the perfect view. I have seen tourists in Italy and Egypt queue up to take their snap from the tacitly accepted optimum point; an easy thing to make fun of but actually it is both a personalisation and democratisation of topography, the aesthetics that once used to be the pursuit of a few. Not that I am free of snobbery, when for example I see a tourist take a snap of Auntie in front of Nelson's column. But, inconsistently, I find myself in Tienanmen Square watching a Chinese tripper take the same snap of grandad, old enough to be still sporting a Mao suit, erect in front of the Mao Mausoleum, and for some reason think that is a rather hip photographic event. You could imagine the Photographers Gallery in London having a whole exhibition of Tienanmen Square snaps and a book of them on sale (£45).

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