My tutor encouraged me to use his PhD thesis as a source of references for my own work on the Local Nature Reserve at Rye Harbour. Wyatt’s own study considered AONBs, although there are obvious overlaps.
Wyatt begins by looking at the designation and control of AONBs, and consequently the meaning of terms such as “natural” and “beauty”. He critically reviews several photographers who worked in this area. He then undertakes a series of practical photographic studies driven by geo-location, designed to interrogate the creation of a conservation landscape as a cultural act as well as to judge the success of photographic and geo-locative methods in this regard. He also reviewed the work of several photographers who have used geo-location as part of their process, about which I have already written here: https://photo515050level3.wordpress.com/2022/08/15/kate-mellor/
DESIGNATION
AONB status obviously influenced by the picturesque, not necessarily “natural” beauty – for example regard is given to ancient monuments. It is clear that an aesthetic experience is being considered. Wyatt examines this status:” its wording makes clear the presence of an anthropocentric drive behind the legislation” (Wyatt, 2019:32).
An AONB is designated by a commission (currently named Natural England). Wyatt makes the point that the objectives of such a commission are anthropocentric and related to human control. I might argue that it is very difficult and perhaps even damaging not to have some level of human control, particularly since any area is likely to border areas populated or controlled by humans and also because access is almost always one of the aims of the commission. Wyatt’s approach can provide me with a template for investigating control at Rye Harbour, which is a Local Nature Reserve and situated with a SSSI.
Wyatt sites another source questioning the designation of an area of beauty: Landscape is “a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing, structuring, or symbolising surroundings. This is not to say that landscapes are immaterial. They may be represented in a variety of materials and on many surfaces – in paint on canvas, in writing on paper, in earth, stone, water, and vegetation on the ground. A landscape park is more palpable but no more real, nor less imaginary, than a landscape painting or poem” (Cosgrove & Daniels, 1988:1).
In their 1994 paper Landscapes: The Social Construction of Nature and the Environment, sociologists Thomas Greider and Lorraine Garkovich offered a framework for interpreting the landscape as a cultural construct. Their central argument was that: ‘our understanding of nature and of human relationships with the environment are really cultural expressions used to define who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be at this place and in this space’. Wyatt has stressed the importance/usefulness of this quote in his work.
Edward Said came up with the term imaginative geographies – the mechanism by which people come to know the world and situate themselves in space and time. “It consists, in essence, of a chain of practices and processes by which geographical information is gathered, geographical facts are ordered and imaginative geographies are constructed. Photography is one of those practices” (Schwartz and Ryan, Picturing Place, 2003:6).
The main point, however, is that the landscape is not neutral, it is cultural. Perhaps it could also be asked, is it natural? What does this even mean today? Our understanding of nature is also cultural.
Most particularly, mapping, regarded as factual, is far from neutral.
“Maps are never value-free images; except in the narrowest Euclidean sense they are not in themselves either true or false. Both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation maps are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon particular sets of social relations” (Harley, 2001:53)
Bryn Green (Countryside Conservation, 1981) advocates combining moral, aesthetic and cultural aims, not denying but accepting a utilitarian approach to land while balancing it with more ethical concerns.
NATURE
Crucially, Wyatt moves on to examine the meaning of natural beauty and hence the terms nature and beauty. Raymond Williams (2014, 45) ‘(i) the essential quality and character of something; (ii) the inherent force which directs either the world or human beings or both; (iii) the material world itself, taken as including or not including human beings’. And Williams continues: “Nature has meant the ‘countryside’, the ‘unspoiled places’, plants and creatures other than man. The use is especially current in contrasts between town and country: nature is what man has not made, though if he made it long enough ago – a hedgerow or a desert – it will usually be included as natural” (Williams, 2014:46).
This last part if very relevant as it implies a kind of “grandfathering” in of historically man-made structures to the natural club. As Wyatt states such places “are not synonymous with wildness or wilderness” (Wyatt, 2019:54). So for example (and with some justification) rural countryside including hedged fields may be regarded as natural. Tree, in Wilding, discusses how our “view” of what is countryside has changed with land management practices. Paul Selman and Carys Swanwick (2010) concede that it is an area “relatively free from the effects of urbanisation and industrialisation” which perhaps reflects the compromise required in a heavily populated island such as the UK.
Selman and Swanwick also make a point that ‘character’, in this context, is concerned with the uniqueness and special qualities of a specific place, which Wyatt describes as a ‘sense of place’ (Wyatt, 2019:56). It is this sense which led me to work at Rye Harbour and indeed other places such as the Forest Garden at Chelwood Vachery.
And in their work of natural beauty in Wales S&S found it was almost entirely an aesthetic concern – again similar to Tree.
It seems apt to make the point that the “landscape view” is also species specific. The most recent On Landscape carried an article on infrared subtitled “taking advantage of the unnatural (https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2023/02/minimalism-in-infrared/) . But cold-blooded species can see infra-red. My paper for documentary investigated the reality of colour and incorporated a section of how dogs do not see red. Yet red for humans is an important warning colour, possibly because it occurs rarely in the natural world – many societies use red in danger signs, for example. All this is further argument towards nature being a cultural concept.
The Natural Environments and Rural Communities Act 2006 section 99 included the following:
The fact that an area in England or Wales consists of or includes –
(a) land used for agriculture or woodlands,
(b) land used as a park, or
(c) any other area whose flora, fauna or physiographical features are partly the product of human intervention in the landscape,
… does not prevent it from being treated, for the purposes of any enactment (whenever passed), as being an area of natural beauty (or of outstanding natural beauty)
BEAUTY
The discussion moves on to the second term – beauty, and in particular how this relates to art and framing – “the ideology of landscape” (Burgin, 1982, 45-7). Wyatt examines Burke – who separates out the beautiful (that which inspired love) from the sublime (that which inspired fear and awe) and Gilpin’s theory of the picturesque in Observations on the River Wye (1782) which suggested judging the landscape as if it were a picture – an approach that appears to have a powerful influence even today give the aesthetic or scenic concerns described by much more recent authors.
ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS
In between which, we have the establishment of the field of environmental aesthetics. Hepburn begins by separating art and nature (the former separate and bounded, the latter frameless), and Carlson proposed a natural environmental model which claimed that the natural aesthetic was grounded in scientific knowledge – natural history. “The natural environment itself only appears to have formal qualities when, in one way or another, a person imposes a frame upon it and thus formally composes the resultant view. And in such a case it is the framed view that has the qualities” (Carlson, 2002:36)
Carlson proposes a more scientific model that rejects formal qualities. There are many problems with such a model, but it does make a very practical and anthropocentric point regarding naming. For example, Rye Harbour is located within a SSSI – Site of Special Scientific Interest. Note the word scientific. In observing the place in any more than overall visual impression, it is difficult to avoid naming details in the landscape. In designating, managing and to quite a large extend appreciating the place, it is almost certainly impossible. The designation needs to take into account why the area is designated – i.e. what plants or animals are being protected. The management obviously needs to be planned accordingly. Rye Harbour is a mecca for bird watchers, a hobby which thrives on names and details. Of course this will have an overall effect on the scaping of the land, generally to create or preserve habitat, but the details are an undeniable part of that. If we accept nature as a cultural concept, then the way language works as a communal cultural tool would imply that science has to be part of the answer. Yet at the same time it is certainly not the whole answer. Perhaps we come full circle and ask how the culture defines science. Photography has been a victim of this conundrum for nearly 200 years.
Other theories give weight to non-scientific cognitive information. Berleant, in contrast, advocates an “aesthetics of engagement” – immersion in nature. I believe it is possible to view the environmental issues we face in 2023 as the other side of this coin: non-immersion or nature as other. This is not to reject science in any way, which is still vital to our understanding. More to suggest that by unlearning our place within the natural order we have drifted into unsustainability.
Wyatt briefly mentions other models – arousal model, mystery model, and imaginary model (Wyatt, 2019:61).
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Wyatt looks at the work of Godwin, Arnatt and Klett.
Godwin
In Godwin, he examines the photographer as campaigner, something I have addressed before. While Godwin remained a photographer her campaigning as head of the RA went well beyond her work. I have argued that few photographers campaign successfully using just their images, unless you look at people such as Salgado or Nick Brandt who use their extensive print sales to create foundations. This can almost be proved by the fact that the act of taking a photograph of course does very little. The photograph needs to gain context and audience for a message to be conveyed. Hence it is these latter processes, supported by the photograph, that do the campaigning work. In many cases the photograph may be, at best, illustrative. Indeed Godwin’s images were used in books by countryside campaigners such as Pye-Smith and Hall, and in turn Godwin quoted from campaigning authors in the essays that contextualised her own monographs.
This seems confirmed by Wyatt’s analysis of Godwin photographs that appear in different monographs. As the campaign messaging hardened, the context and meaning of the image was altered to suit. Wyatt concludes that Godwin’s reliance on a Picturesque and Romantic method of pictorial construction allowed her photographs to lose their political meaning when removed from their wider context. Perhaps it is fairer to suggest that her images carried the potential of a variety of meanings, one or more of which she (or other authors) fixed with context at various points in her career as required. I have observed before the importance of the aesthetic in the lasting value of an image since it tends to shed context through time and this is a much more consistent quality (even though views on aesthetics also change).
Wyatt also examines Godwin’s guide books – I feel it is important to add here that these were paid assignments – they are often illustrated with excellent landscape images, but Godwin also adds little detail touches that help tell the story of the journey for the prospective viewer.
Wyatt also comments on the quality of the prints in some of the books – without doubt the exhibition prints are superior to a profound degree, to the extent that they made me re-evaluate her work. Wyatt makes the good point that these prints, when separated from the contemporary commentary of her books or campaign work, serve in some way to aestheticise the countryside in a way she vocally criticised. This perhaps can be balanced against her needs to generate an income from the work as best she could.
It is also possible to see in the work and the writing the struggle between land-ownership and land-less, and perhaps to see this as an extension of the nature as other issue. It the land is legally described as not our land (i.e. belonging to the few) that will exacerbate the otherness of it and any sense of stewardship. Against this, potentially, is that a nationwide collective responsibility is difficult to define or encourage, and that accountability (e.g. by individual ownership along with liability) may produce better results in any case.
Finally Wyatt concludes, importantly, that “Following Godwin, I become an artist-surveyor, creating landscapes that reflect the cultural formation of the conservation landscape” (Wyatt, 2019:69). I notice that a key Godwin aesthetic device (the leading line from the bottom right of the picture) is also present in Wyatt’s favourite image from his work (Fig. 1 Wyatt, 2019:27).
Arnatt
Keith Arnatt’s work A.O.N.B. 1982-5 on the Wye Valley is more conceptual in a way than Godwin’s, but in another way very straightforward – in that he is photographing it as is, warts and all. I found it challenging because I have argued for the concept of living in nature rather than regarding it as other, and Arnatt sets out to photograph this by deliberately including elements of modern life within scenes that reference a more traditional landscape view. Furthermore the black and white images also have a “seemingly documentary” (Wyatt, 84) feel to them, so that several codes clash within the frame. To emphasise his point Arnatt’s human traces are purposefully non-beautiful. Thus documentary truth is challenged by the inclusion of what is normally left out. The designation as a place as beautiful is challenged by proof that it is not. “His photographs are about how the history of a place is entwined with the history of representation of place” (Wyatt, 2019:85). They are as much about photographic looking as about what the photographer was looking at. Perhaps a key question is that, if the overall result of combining codes in a non-traditional way is non-beautiful, how does the “value” of the work change through time. There is some argument that aesthetically beautiful works may be more likely to retain economic value once context passes away with time – all things being equal an aesthetic element is unlikely to hinder them, unless it creates cliché. Some very important moments of history may retain or grow this aspect of their value as documents. Most will provide some minor documentary evidence that hopefully is filed away but used only occasionally. There is also their importance in art appreciation beyond the mere aesthetic, which may grow through time as the context develops.
Klett
Wyatt has already pointed me in the direction of Yosemite in Time, but it is interesting to review his own thoughts. The first thing I noticed was ho Rosalind Krauss differentiates between the views constructed by the original artists, particularly O’Sulllivan, and the landscapes as photographed by Klett and his team: ‘the one composes an image of geographic order, the other represents the space of an autonomous Art and its idealised, specialised History, which is constituted by aesthetic discourse’109 (Krass, 1982: 315).
Wyatt also makes an important point that derives from re-photography – in some cases signs of human activity have reduced or even disappeared, leaving us to wonder about the original image: “what links this photograph to this place” (Wyatt, 2019:97).
A third key aspect of the work that Wyatt discusses is how it links different photographers from different times by making panoramas joining up their work, filling in the gaps with current imagery. This gives a sense of the evolving view of place, and sometimes how certain spots drew in the same photographers, possibly to repeat a view they had seen. What I find intriguing is that this could be conscious or sub-conscious, the latter based more on a cultural view of what natural beauty is. The final even more intriguing option is that certain views appeal to us for more internal reasons – nature rather than nurture?
WYATT’S IMAGES
Use of step ladder for vantage point, not experiential view.
Beauty is subjective as well as formal – 1/3 sky, leading line from right (after Godwin). But vista is also blocked, frustrated…? (Fig. 1 Wyatt, 2019:27). Interestingly, the effect of this visual frustration was discussed in my self-directed project for landscape. The subjective is (at least in part) cultural. Wyatt discusses his pictorial strategy which has been carefully thought out. “This study is an interrogation of the visual consequences of the resulting cultural shaping of the land” (Wyatt, 2019:32)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Wyatt, D. (2019) Landscape of Legislation: A Photographic Investigation of the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Plymouth: University of Plymouth
Level 3.1 Learning Log 