Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity by Liz Wells: Chapter 1 Landscape Time, Space, Place Aesthetics

Wells sets out a wide ranging discussion on the nature of landscape and how it has been conceived and portrayed in history of art. Her slant is ideological and human focussed, either by virtue of emphasising the human impact on land or by reviewing the forces behind landscape art - "the making of the landscape and its representation."

Her first sentence introduces powerfully: "History turns space into place.". There are few regions in the world that remain untouched by human presence, she says. That is not strictly true - a flight over the Sahara desert or the Karakoram mountains or Siberian tundra will adduce a landscape evidently little different to that which would have been seen from above 2,000 years ago, before man started to have significant impact on the landscape; indeed any changes from, say, 1,000,000 years ago would be due to natural forces rather then human.

The Emergence of Landscape

Landscape as the everyday experience in relation to social and topographic vs. set of representational practices  (Dorrian and Rose, Landscape and Practices 2003)

Landscape emerging as an entity, as an acknowledged distinct existence, came about only with emergence of capitalism and urbanisation, and thus a distancing from land. Land became a 'factor of production'. 

Landscape includes seascape.

Landscape as a Genre in Art

Emerged towards end of 15th century. Berger (1972) noted the importance of oil painting - a painting of a thing is not unlike "buying it and putting it in your house. If you buy a painting you buy also the look of the thing it represents."  Oil is now superseded by photography.

Levi Strauss pointed out that painting was an instrument of possession as well as knowledge.

As a subject in its own right, Landscape did not feature until 17th and 18th century. The significance of country houses and 'views' therefrom came about, concomitant with the notion of landscaped gardens. Large houses were built not on more functional lowland (affording shelter and running water) but on the higher land implying control over the surrounding land. 

"Increasingly, the emphasis was less upon land as a working environment...and more on landscape as a prospect for contemplation."

Painting and Photography

Early photography was picture taking rather than picture making (Harker, 1979).

Constable and Turner represented  distinct strands of practice: Constable looked at the actual landscape, Turner reflected man's emotions. In France, Realism with its focus on labour and wealth, the depiction of people in the landscape was a reaction to increased urbanisation. 

Photography was a function of wider travel, and democratised art - undermining the uniqueness of traditional artistic practice. (Benjamin). It a use too as a tool for painters, eliminating the need for sketches. 

The work of photographers such as O'Sullivan (and Atget) were appropriated as 'art' only later when curators were seeking to promote the new practice as art - it is not how the photographers would have viewed themselves.

Aesthetics

Long section outlining the development of Albertian and other geometric approaches (Panofsky's form) and the camera's inheritance of thay approach.  

The Cartesian model places the viewer outside  - depicting the environment rather than forming a part of it. 

Lynn Silverman took pairs of  pictures firstly of  the horizon line - no scale or distance, the second of the ground below the photographer's feet - by coupling hem together there is an implied spatial link from the impersonal, the timeless to the personal, the realisation there has been an evetnt (Morris).

This chimes with an image I took using a wide angle lens on  Rhossili Bay:

 
Here the use of the wide angle supplies the two effects in one image: the sense of emptiness and vastness and distance towards the iconic Worm's Head, but incorporating the personal, the closer to home evidenced by my footprints.  

The rectangular frame of a camera in landscape photography 'begs interrogation':

 "In effect, a rectilinear scene  is abstracted and presented as if it represents the the actual experience of looking at - or being within - an environment."

Burgin argues that the framing structures representation and emphasises subject matter. (Burgin, 1982). 

"Photographs cannot replicate the multi-sensual actuality of the out of doors, but they do offer some form of imaginary substitute. albeit one within which memories of actual physical experience and mediated experience are complexly and inextricably entwined." (loc 1006)

Pleasures of the Imagination

Adams (1996): why is form beautiful - "because it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and the therefore our suffering is without meaning". Distinguishes between beautiful pictures that use conventions of composition and convention, and significant ones whose focus is on content. 

The sublime is associated with awe, danger and pain - mountains and sea are associated with sublime, hills, rivers and canals with picturesque, albeit the mood of the viewer is the over-riding influence. (loc 1092). Sublime is related to existential insecurities. 

Photography, Site, Space and Place

"Photographs slice space into place; land is framed as landscape.Representation envelops reality; it becomes an act of colonisation." (loc 1213)

References:

Adams, Robert (1996) Beauty in Photography. New York. Aperture.

Burgin, Victor (1982) (ed.) Thinking Photography. London MacMillan.

Dorrian, Mark and Rose, Gillian, eds (2003) Landscape and Politics. London and New York. Black Dog Publishing.

Harker, Margaret (1979)  The Linked Ring: The Seccession Movement in Photography in Britain 1892-2010. London. Heinemann