Fieldwork and Other Landscape Stories

Fieldwork and Other Landscape Stories is a project of photography and sound, exploring language, our perception of nature and the landscape. The work examines what we can and cannot see.

Fieldwork and Other Landscape Stories is a project of photography and sound, exploring language, our perception of nature and the landscape. The work examines what we can and cannot see. It invites questions about how we use our senses, how we imagine and how memory and language plays a large role in perceiving our surroundings.

The exhibition examines seeing the landscape in two parts;

One part consist of large scale photographs (Seescapes) that examine the hidden, what we see and what we want to see, through landscape photography and descriptions by blind, visually impaired and sighted people. Their words have been transcribed in Braille on a translucent layer in front of the image, but as cut-out holes as opposed to the usual raised dots, providing fragmented views into the photographed nature. The actual words are unrecognizable for many viewers who cannot read Braille. Accompanying audio descriptions are soundscapes and interpretations of the photographed nature, providing an alternative image of the space that we cannot merely see with our eyes.

A series of 12 woodland photographs form the second part of the project.

An artist book of texts - landscape stories - is accompanying the photographs and can be connected to be stories about the places you see in the photographs. However, it is not obvious which of the 12 short texts belong to which of the 12 photograph, instead encouraging the viewer to make connections between the different landscapes and stories, asking questions around how we perceive our surroundings and how this is affected by what we know.

The Surrey Hills is one of 38 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in England and Wales, which together with Kent AONB stretches all the way to Dover, through the area known as the North Downs. The Surrey Hills were given the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty status in 1958, and policies govern why and how this status and land is maintained. Beauty being such a subjective perception, it is interesting to explore how a policy is in place to designate a protected status to the most naturally beautiful countryside and how this is defined and agreed. How much ‘beauty’ is needed to get this status?

What we consider a ‘stunning’ or ‘beautiful’ landscape has been defined differently through the various time periods. From the demonic wilderness as described in the Middle Ages to the Romanticism’s ‘picturesque’ and ‘sublime’ view, human landscape perception and how we see nature has changed quite drastically. Even the word ‘landscape’ has gone through various re- definitions throughout the different time periods. ‘Landscape’ is often defined as ‘all the visible features of an area of land’. Is sight the most important sense here? How does someone who is blind see the same landscape?

I have been collecting writings and descriptions of different experiences and perceptions of the landscape from various sources ranging from policy documents, postcard texts, interviews and to stories told by people I met as chance encounters whilst out photographing the woodlands within the Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the North Downs.

Fieldwork and Other Landscape Stories is the culmination of my exploration into the question of what is lost or gained by description and how words or obstructions alter our perception of the landscape in front of us. The more we describe, the more we either give or detract, or alter the perception. I am fascinated by how our brain tries to make sense of what we perceive and makes connections even where there might not be any. The exhibition is curated in a way to engage the viewer, allows them to draw invisible lines between the photographs, sound, text and implied meaning. As a photographer and artist, I am always interested in the limitation of photography and what we can and cannot see.