Perspectives on Place: Theory and Practice in Landscape Photography

Alexander, Jesse ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1830-7030 (2015) Perspectives on Place: Theory and Practice in Landscape Photography. Fairchild Books/Bloomsbury, London. ISBN 9781472533890

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Abstract / Summary

Textbook, primarily focussed towards undergraduate level practical and contextual research into landscape photography and representation.

Item Type:	Book
Additional Information:	In 2015 I published Perspectives on Place: Theory and Practice in Landscape Photography (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). The book was commissioned following a call for proposals for a broad primer on landscape photographic practice, aimed towards Foundation- and undergraduate level students as well as amateurs seeking to develop more critical practices. Around this time (c. 2013) I had written a course on landscape practice for the Open College of the Arts that provided the entirety of the academic content of a 60-credit module at HE5. The final manuscript wasn’t in fact limited in terms of its level of criticality, and Perspectives is a core resource on many undergraduate programmes, and I have received messages of thanks from postgraduate and even doctoral-level students. Perspectives is rooted in the philosophy and design of a course around practical landscape photographic representation. One of the book’s distinctive features is that, as a theoretical textbook, it addresses practical methods and photographic technicalities: these are always discussed directly in relation to practice and specific images, bodies of work, and the subjectivity of the artists and photographers making them. (Whilst this feature has not been universally well received, it is an approach to criticism and pedagogy that I am committed to as an educator and writer on photography.) Core themes in the book are aligned with my own documentary practice and promote certain approaches in practices around the representation on place, including: the importance of developing a practice that is informed by a critical understanding of the uniqueness of the subject being represented; its relationship to broader, global themes; and created in awareness of the history of visual representation of place. Perspectives also challenges normalised values in landscape photography, such as the celebration of pictorialism and the exotic, promoting the importance of context and localist practices. Whilst Perspectives was written with an understanding of the negative impact of images that have not been made with similar approaches in mind, since its publication my photography and writing has become increasingly preoccupied with a deeper examination of the pastoral. This has been examined in documentary projects, and I intend to examine the photographic representation of the rural in the British Isles in a textbook and/or the curation of a substantial exhibition. http://www.jessealexander.co.uk
ISBN:	9781472533890
Subjects:	History, Geography & Environment Creative Art & Design > Fine Art Creative Art & Design > Photography
Depositing User:	Jesse Alexander
Date Deposited:	06 Mar 2017 16:05
Last Modified:	15 Nov 2024 15:23
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/2254

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