Snowfall transforms the city in sensory and practical terms. Sometimes it is even possible to ski in the city. Such an event may promote an intense and altered experience of space, body and the self. All of a sudden, the urban walker is transformed into a skier, as well as the dark cityscape of horizontal surfaces and rectangular forms take on a white appearance and a whole new geometry. Moreover, an altered acoustic but also new forms of social reciprocity come about and soon affect the skier's perception of places and people.
In addition to six digital photographs of nightly urban snowscapes by the author, and to a series of personal notes on a skiing experiment in central Copenhagen, this essay addresses the issue of urban snowscape by way of Walter Benjamin’s writings exploring snow in Moscow and Berlin of the early 20th century. Six short chapters – ”State of Exception”, ”The Physics of Snow”, ”New Spaces and Forms”, ”Humans in the Night”, ”A Project of Photography” and ”At Home Again” – add up to a mimetically based reflection on the somaesthetic potentials of urban snow and skiing in contemporary urbanity.