How do we understand landscape today? How do we discuss and visualize nature? Can they be conceived and represented as something existing independently of the viewer, now that the human race has gotten into a very last corner of the world?
Landscape with(out) Locus interprets landscape as an ever-changing social, economic, and ecological construct. Addressing questions of power, identity, and natural resources, the publication follows histories of surveillance and colonialism, considering photographic (and post-photographic) images as central to the process of interacting with the world.
The book assembles a selection of texts by scholars and artists such as T.J. Demos, Tiago Torres-Campos, Tiffany Kaewen Dang, Hagit Keysar and Ariel Caine, Teresa Mendes Flores, Chris Malcolm, and Irmgard Emmelhainz. It addresses topics such as scopic regimes and shaped geographies; the myth of the intact and unspoiled; the use of landscape to advance and solidify colonial hegemonies; Jerusalem’s geofence and DIY practices of reclaiming public space; the historical and cultural backstory of the virtual globe; the surface of the earth as a recording device and the implications of this for an environmental archive. The texts are counterposed with images drawn from wide-ranging contexts, from historical and contemporary art to documentary photography, photo reportage, and AI-generated imagery. All the contributors offer deep insights into extant and nascent visual conceptualizations of landscape, suggesting that they have always been political and are now more urgent than ever. This book is a tool for generating knowledge on the complex relationship between our visual culture and the social and economic conditions that both shape and are shaped by it, underlining—amidst anthropogenic environmental crisis—the need for a more critical and more engaged attitude to visual representation and communication. -Publisher
