ABSTRACT
Diverse practices for photography are utilized across the landscape architecture and environmental design disciplines to investigate landscape places for research, planning, design and preservation. This introduction to Active Landscape Photography: Diverse Practices articulates the importance of understanding how photography can be used in methodological and specific ways as the primary means to build knowledge about landscape places. The relationship between photography and landscape representation is complex and multifaceted.
The author presents themes that run across the chapters contributed by practitioners, academics, researchers and artists within landscape-interested disciplines. The chapters are divided into three areas of investigation: Systems, Histories, Narratives and Moments. The photographic practices in these chapters often involve more complex techniques, equipment, software, workflows and methods for making.
Introduced is the relationship between Practice, Methods and Process, later articulated in detail in the following chapter, “Practice, Methods and Process: Photographic Representation is a Verb.” Also discussed is how diversity is represented across the breadth of chapters, such as approaches to different landscape issues, types landscapes valued and the expertise and background of each of the authors.
Directions for how the practices may be applied by the reader are articulated. The reader is encouraged to gain inspiration from the presented practices and treat them as a foundation for creating their own. These chapters also serve as case studies. The reader can learn about particular projects and landscapes through the discussion of the applied photographic practices.
Closing discussions look at how the Webb Space Telescope images relate to the concept of practice, methods and process. Also, the evolving use of the term “landscape architecture and environmental design” is unpacked. In ending, the author calls for a wider acceptance of more diverse ways of addressing the pressing issues of climate change.
