Having given this quite a lot of thought, and having done some reading already, the subject that holds the most interest for me at the moment is the idea that landscape photography does not necessarily have to focus on the physical landscape or environment, natural or built, in order to convey something about it. Rather this can be done by concentrating on the people who inhabit the particular landscape. This comes from the idea that “a place and its people are inextricably linked”, as the course material puts it, and from thinking about the work of Lixenberg and Sobol. However, rather than looking again at their work, what I am thinking of is looking at the genre of street photography, and in particular a few artists who concentrated on photographing people in New York City, specifically.
Looking at some of this work again I am struck by how much some of it speaks of the nature of the city, built by, lived in, and used by people, and how the city in turn affects and shapes the lives of those people. I am not interested here in the street photography that simply seeks out “characters”, chance events or juxtapositions, nor indeed what has been described as the “social landscape” (though that would in itself be an interesting subject, albeit not one I am sure would fit entirely comfortable within this part of the course), but that which says something about the city as a place.
Exactly what the argument will be is still developing but it is beginning to take shape as the jottings accumulate in my notebook.
As indicated in a recent post, part of the reason for choosing such a subject is to step out of my comfort zone, literally out of my natural environment in so far as I do not live in a city, and have not lived in a big one for many years (not since a brief sojourn in London 36 years ago). Another reason is a desire to question and challenge the idea of distinct genres within photography. I also want to indulge in a bit of original thought, and it is interesting that in my research so far I have found nothing that is directly on the point, though enough that is more germane when given a wider view. I nevertheless hope that I can draw from this something that will be relevant to some of the work that I would like to attempt over time in my current more rural environment.
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 