ABSTRACT
This chapter takes contemporary British photography relating to land and landscape as a case study through which to consider ways in which ideological discourses relating to class, region, gender and ethnicity may be articulated. A number of contemporary photographers have explored questions of ethnicity and cultural identity in relation to landscape. Ingrid Pollard interrogated history and identity through asking what happens when Black people occupy a space, such as the Lake District, so clearly central to an English sense of its pastoral heritage. The chapter focuses upon the politics of representation, ideological discourses, and aesthetic modes. Britain offers a particularly interesting case as all land has been mapped and subjected to human intervention, producing something akin to Alice's chessboard of cities, agricultural land, housing, woods, mountain ranges, coastal areas, and so on. Broadly, the notion of ‘countryside’ in England designates sea and coastline, moorlands and meadows, fields and farms, rivers, villages and gardens, rural buildings, canals, and so on.
