Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a summary overview of the historical and discursive parameters that inform landscape practices and, arguably, operate to limit experimentation. It considers photography in relation to land settlement, focusing on North American work mostly - but not entirely — from Eastern regions. The book discusses the legacy and influence of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photography on landscape and notions of wilderness in photography of the West. It discusses questions of class, region, gender and ethnicity through critical discussion both of the pastoral landscape tradition of Britain and Ireland and, more particularly, of the thematic concerns and aesthetic strategies which have variously been deployed by contemporary practitioners.