It is not often that I find the mere introduction to a section of the course material as significant or useful but on this occasion the opening paragraphs do just that. They chime with my thinking about Assignment 4 and coincidentally validate the approach I am planning. One sentence in particular strikes a chord: “A place and its people are inextricably linked.” This is exactly the point that I want to explore in the assignment and address the apparent paradox that photographs of people, rather than a physical location, can actually represent the landscape.
Although it does not fit with my current intentions, Dana Lixenberg’s book (2008), referred to in the same paragraph, and on which I have written previously (https://markrobinsonocalandscape.photo.blog/2020/02/19/landscape-as-a-call-to-action-2-dana-lixenberg-the-last-days-of-shishmaref-book/) is one that I have been looking at again and has informed some of my thinking in this regard. The further reference to Jacob Are Sobol’s book is similarly interesting in so far as it deals with similar subject matter. What I find particularly striking about his work though is the way it is much more personal, not least in the sense that he became a protagonist in his own story, an insider’s view. Lixenberg on the other hand, although clearly closely engaged with the community she was documenting, was nevertheless an outsider.
One thing that is particularly important to me, and my ideas about landscape, is that both these bodies of work illustrate that the relationship between people and landscape is two-way. This is particularly evident here in the case of these two groups of Inuit people (although they are thousands of miles apart, and speak different languages, their cultures are quite similar) although I guess the same might also be said of virtually everyone. Their landscapes are influenced and affected by the people themselves: they have built upon and changed the physical landscape in many ways, both in microcosm, in their immediate vicinity, but also in macrocosm in so fas as, even if only in a small way, their use of the trappings of modern life makes some contribution to global warming, which is in turn degrading their environment. But also their way of life and culture, the way they live on, in and on the land and its resources, is affected and shaped by the environment, as it has been for millennia.
Incidentally, the link to Sobol’s work cited in the course material appears no longer to exist and I found samples of his photographs on a newer site, to which there is a link below.
I would dearly love to have a physical copy of his book “Sabine”. It is set in a country that fascinates me, and which I have visited, albeit only briefly. It also has a visual aesthetic that I particularly like (though have so far not tried seriously to emulate) that I am more used to seeing in the work of Japanese photographers (such as, to name a few who appear in my library, the Provoke group, Daido Moriyama, Hajime Kimura, Masahisa Fukase – think Ravens in particular, Yasuhiro Ogawa, and Valentino Barachini – not Japanese I know, Italian, but has spent time and worked in Japan and has applied a similar aesthetic). I am not sure though that I can justify the cost: something in excess of €500!
Lixenberg, D, (2008). The Last Days of Shishmaref. Edam/Rotterdam: Paradox/episode
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 