Land Matters Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity

In this major work on landscape photography, extensively illustrated in color and black and white, Liz Wells is concerned with the ways in which photographers engage with issues about land, its representation and idealization. She demonstrates how the visual interpretation of land as landscape reflects and reinforces contemporary political, social, and environmental attitudes. She also asks what is at stake in landscape photography now through placing critical appraisal of key examples of work by photographers working in, for example, the USA, in Europe, Scandinavia and Baltic areas, within broader art historical and political concerns. This illuminating book will interest readers in photography and media, geography, art history, and travel, as well as those concerned with environmental issues.

In this major work on landscape photography, extensively illustrated in colour and black & white, Liz Wells is concerned with the ways in which photographers engage with issues about land, its representation and idealisation. She demonstrates how the visual interpretation of land as landscape reflects and reinforces contemporary political, social and environmental attitudes. She also asks what is at stake in landscape photography now through placing critical appraisal of key examples of work by photographers working in, for example, the USA, in Europe, Scandinavia and Baltic areas, within broader art historical and political concerns. This illuminating book will interest readers in photography and media, geography, art history and travel, as well as those concerned with environmental issues.

Introduction1 Landscape: Time, Space, Place, Aesthetics2 A Northern Place: Land and Settlement3 After the Frontier: Environment and the West4 Pastoral Heritage: Britain Viewed Through a Critical Lens5 Views of the North: Landscape, Photography and National Identity6 Sense of Location: Topography, Journey, MemoryBibliographyIndex

Liz Wells writes and lectures on photographic practices. She edited The Photography Reader (2003), and Photography: A Critical Introduction (2009, 4th edn.) and is also co-editor of Photographies, the Routledge journals. Liz Wells's exhibitions as curator include Uneasy Spaces (New York, 2006), Facing East: Contemporary Landscape Photography from Baltic Areas (UK tour, 2004-2007), Chrystel Lebas and Sofija Silvia: Conversations on Nature (Rijeka, Croatia, 2011) and Landscapes of Exploration, recent British art from Antarctica (forthcoming, 2012). She is Professor in Photographic Culture, Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth, UK, and convenes the research group for Land/Water and the Visual Arts.