This book is one of the essential readings of the course, and suggested by tutor.. I am interested because reviews suggest it offers rather more than just a than historical trot through landscape photography, but takes a deeper, more philosophical look at how we view landscapes, and considers our aesthetic and functional relationships to it. As a human geographer in earlier life, these are concepts that have a familiar ring; it is notable that Wells mentions Doreen Massey in the Introduction; I met and listened to Massey several times as a Geography student in the 1970s.
Space and Place
- Defines Landscape as "vistas encompassing the both nature and the changes that humans have effected on the natural world."
- Quotes Mitchell: 'to landscape' - imposes order;
- "The act of naming is an act of taming" - naming turns space into place
Space and Representation
- Landscape as cultural concept reflects both perception and practical interventions (but I would argue far more than these);
- Robert Adams three verities: geography, autobiography, and metaphor;
- seeing plus is creative expressions rather than seeing alone (factual recording) (Weston 1932)
- interest is in intervention and context;
- reflective: "landscape photographs rarely 'shout', rather they are quietly assertive';
- post modern landscape photography as grounded aesthetics - perceptions in socio context; (trouble is that his conflicts with the landscape as a beauty - as an image you would hang on the wall - these are still important and make up most of the fee earning genre of photography);
- Like Massey, Wells is interested in the inter-relational aspects of landscape, as always 'provisional, under construction, in prcess of change' (this applies more ot some landscape than other and arguably overemphasise the human impact);
- Focus is on photography within visual culture (interesting following my interest in UVC) rather then as a genre.
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