Active Landscape Photography

Diverse Practices, the third book in the Active Landscape Photography series, presents a set of unique photographic examples for site-specific investigations of landscape places. Contributed by authors across academia, practice, and photography, each chapter serves as a rigorous discussion about photographic methods for the landscape and their underlying concepts. Chapters also serve as unique case studies about specific projects, places, and landscape issues.

Project sites include the Miller Garden, Olana, XX Miller Prize, and the Philando Castile Peace Garden. Landscape places discussed include the archaeological landscapes of North Peru, watery littoral zones, the remote White Pass in Alaska, São Paulo, and New York City’s Chinatown. Photographic image-making approaches include the use of lidar, repeat photography, collage, mapping, remote image capture, portraiture, image mining of internet sources, visual impact assessment, cameraless photography, transect walking, and interviewing.

These diverse practices demonstrate how photography, when utilised through a set of specific critical methods, becomes a rich process for investigating the landscape. Exploring this concept in relationship to specific contemporary sites and landscape issues reveals the intricacy and subtlety that exists when photography is used actively.

Practitioners, academics, students, and researchers will be inspired by the underlying concepts of these examples and come away with a better understanding of how to create their own rigorous photographic practices.