Landscape gardeners typically transform barren soil, wild bushes or stony outcrops into a work of art according to a set of design principles. Likewise, a photographer takes the photo that interests them because of who they are and what they like. The photographer may manipulate a scene by using filters, by cropping the borders, or by adjusting the colours thus turning it into a reflection of their own artistic personality.
As Professor Andrew Taylor from Edith Cowan University points out, “landscape” is not an objective blank canvas, but is the consequence of a process of mediation between the viewer and the viewed. “Landscape is not what is out there, unseen. That’s the natural world. “When we look we impose a point of view. We look (at the world or at landscape) from where we are. And we are where we are because of who we are.”
Which means of course that there are many ways of taking a photo; of looking and interacting with our landscape which depends upon who we are and our place in the world.
See this example for Landscape Design based on John Kinsella’s poems.
There are also many different landscape designs: each likewise reflecting the views and values of the maker.
Use Landscape Design or Taking Photos as an extended metaphor to frame your piece. Example below.
See this brilliant website for examples of landscape designs – one or two would be fascinating, as well as Malouf’s comment on the sculpturing of the landscape by the early settlers. http://www.hamiltongardens.co.nz/collections/paradise-collection/chinese-scholars-garden
Malouf says, “the European landscape is a made landscape, a work of “culture” in both senses of the word.
Every time we take a photo, as Malouf would say, we remake the land in our own image. “so that it comes in time to reflect both the industry and the imagination of its makers, and gives us back, in working land, but also in the idealised version of landscape”.
(You can turn a variety of anecdotes/examples into a photo).
Or, think about the landscape design and different gardens: the Japanese, Chinese or European gardens are all different because of the design agenda). http://www.hamiltongardens.co.nz/collections/paradise-collection/chinese-scholars-garden
A typical tourist snapshot of Uluru captures a red stone dominating the horizon. (It may be taken from any angle; westerners do not always know the forbidden spots.)
But what the photo will not reveal are the ancient stories of Uluru, the secret knowledge, carved in the hearts of its 40,000 year old Anangu custodians … who enjoy a close spiritual relationship with the landscape, upon which they depend for their survival.
** Give examples from aboriginal poetry/Uluru poem.
When we look back, as Alice Munro does in View from Castle Rock, the landscape becomes a place of myths and dreams. It is a place where we look for our origins and roots. For Munro whose “long history” goes back to a country “far away from the place where they grew up”, the stories about origin are commonplace, disturbing, disappointing and intriguing.
Will O Phaup (born 1695) from Ettrick Valley or Far Hope as it was called, which based on the Norse word referred to a bay, partly enclosed by hills; it was the hunting grounds of the King of Scotland, it was the hideout of William Wallace, the guerrilla hero of the Scots, it was the “spine of Scotland”; and Munro’s ancestors were Ettrick shepherds. As an author, Munro is intrigued by the “stories” and legends that surround William Laidlaw/O Phaup who took on the “radiance of myth”; the last connection with Scotland is depicted as a mythological figure inhabiting the “highest inhabited house in all of Scotland.” Set apart, his behaviour is surrounded by legend, particularly as he gains a reputation as one of the fastest runners; according to one story his “country breeches fall down”; he runs in his shirt and wins. Often these stories transform into superstition possibly owing to a contradiction between the social and religious landscape, and our physical and psychological connection with the landscape. For example, it was a pious religious environment in Ettrick and Will is not a god-fearing Christian. On All Hallow’s Eve, he imagines being chased by fairies, the song, Will O’Phaup “ringing just behind his ears”.
As a metaphor, a landscape may come to symbolize an individual’s hopes, dreams and fears. According to Malouf, greenness is also metaphor for growth and fruitfulness … “Even for desert people an eye of green is the promise of continuity and rebirth. Anyone who has seen an oasis in the desert will know what a miracle it seems, how immediately it lifts the spirits”.
For the Ettrick inhabitants, America represents a place of hope, a glossy postcard that promises a better life elsewhere. It is a place that starkly contrasts with the mundane, the ordinary; the real physical landscape disappoints, so too do the ancestors become disappointed with Canada… … struggle and difficulty.. As one becomes involved in setting up a new life, plans are dashed; dreams are altered and the family strikes bad luck and death.. graveyards testify to their misfortune… 87 – Isabel’s elder brother, Young James, Munro’s Scottish ancestors in Canada were preoccupied with building a new life. More immediate/ relevant/ based on building, practical.. working for a living – From a practical perspective, James has to readjust his plans; he envisaged a “real and commodious house”, but ends up with a “monastic lifestyle” and an ordinary house which is gradually built over time ; the frame and then the roof, “though he didn’t get it shingled” in winter he lived with only the board walls between himself and the weather and in summer he built the brick chimney to replace the stovepipe stiking out of the roof”; there is a sense that he is just making do and accommodating his plans to circumstances;. The author wonders “what was it squashed their spirits? So soon”.
A reflection of self: Personal example:
One of my favourite photos is of my grandfather shortly before his death whispering to his vegetables in his beloved overgrown patch at the back of our sprawling block. I took several photos from many angles and at different times of the day so that I could study his moods. The patch was his favourite spot; the birds would chirp and he would lovingly nurture his tomatoes; they were big, ripe and sweet. At the end of summer, he would chop the dead growth and salvage some seeds, ready for the next season. I would often help him till and turn the compost box, which in time became full of the biggest worms you would ever find wriggling around your fingers. “Life grows quickest at our finger tips,” he would say. I have snaps of the giant-sized worms wrapping themselves tightly around his fingers. I hoped that I would one day share his natural secrets.
A reflection of my fears: Lawrence Discord in Childhood
John Kinsella: rape, destruction and conquest
If the landscape is often a labour of love at the hands of the photographer or the landscape designer, or the indigenous Anangu as they cultivate and carve the secret knowledge in their hearts, John Kinsella depicts the rape and destruction of the landscape of those who become imprisoned by their own guilt and anxiety.
- Nature appears as a hostile phenomenon: a product of the disrespectful interests and desires of its owners; the sun had bleached the walls; “They stripped the last trees from the banks of this creek twenty years ago”; the water ran a “stale sort of red earth”. ; a long stream of unhealthy blood
- Instruments of destruction abound; there’s the chain saws, the rabbit rippers, the chains ; the new machinery and the silver filled bins.
- The “heavily bolted door” of the old silo reminds the farmer of the loss of the old as he becomes imprisoned by the new, weapons of mass destruction.
- The farm turns into a prison as a reflection of the hostility of the landscape ; and as a consequence of the rape and exploitation, the horror, the frustration and exasperation is evident as the salt pervades personal aspects of the farmer’s life – the bath..
According to Kinsella, cutting down the eucalyptus trees in the wheatbelt area has created insurmountable problems with regards to the salinity table and erosion. An abandoned farm is testimony to man’s failed dreams. The “swords” and “ploughsheds” are now “rank jokes” that show the inability of the family to adjust to the rising salt table. “The run-off from fertile paddocks makes deltas in the salt’s centre”…
The farmers view the land as livelihood in the sense of cash transactions. As Kinsella notes in Wild Radishes, the farmer’s attitude is dominated by the “Bills to be paid, deals to be sealed”. The fact that the radishes are “ripped from the soul” captures a certain harshness in the attitude of the farmer to his conquest. He knows that the radishes “missed will destroy the yield” and affect his profit.
Similarly the farmer in Goading storms out of a darkening field “cursing the dry, cursing the bitter yield” reflects an inherent bitterness with a landscape that resists the farmer’s pastoral husbandry-“Sheep on their last legs. Dams crusted over” It is a landscape where “prayers and patience” fail in the face of harsh conditions, and for the farmer there is no escape from this reality. The fears of the farmer mount as he is at the mercy of a ravaged landscape; the poem builds a sense of doom and a pervasive feeling of fear. But rather than quit, the farmer would rather be bound to the land in resilience.
Recently I cut out a photo in the Good Weekend that features a determined Glenn Ford holding a clump of native vegetation in a threatening manner. The caption states, Glenn Ford, “the last man standing” in Plumpton. The photo reveals a man who is proud of his farming heritage and furious at the invading faceless land owners. (A stark reminder.)
Evidently, Mr Ford appears proud of his identity forged through and of the land as the “last of the people still trying to make a living off the land”. He is angry at the “faceless land owners” and ghostlike investors who regard land as an item of conquest, ripe for exploitation, devoid of the pride of identity. “They’re overseas investors who are just land-banking to cash in when the subdivision laws allow it”.
They are like the farmers in Wild Radishes (Kinsella), who are dominated by the “bills to be paid, deals to be sealed”. The fact that the radishes are “ripped from the soul” captures a certain harshness in the attitude of the farmer to his conquest.
Ford believes that even the “hobby farmers” exploit Melbourne’s green wedge policy. Many ask him where the native grasses are “not to protect them – they want to dig them up and get rid of them, so the authorities have no cause to monitor their property. They have total disrespect for the land.”
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