As a photographer my method of critically engaging with the urban landscape is to walk. Through the process of walking I become alive to the world and receptive to everything around me. Solnit (2002) states that, ‘walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, body, and the world are aligned’ (Solnit, 2002 p.5) and likens them to ‘three characters finally in conversation together’ (ibid). I would add that with a camera in my hand, being visually attuned enables me to recognise and respond to specific moments that present themselves.
I usually plan where I intend to walk but frequently enjoy those moments of encounter when certain elements come together that suggest further investigation. For example, my first encounter with Woolwich occurred whilst walking the Thames Path when my eye was drawn to some contrasting scenes that visually drew my attention. In his work on the visual quality of cities, Lynch (1960) asserts that ‘legibility is crucial in the city setting’ (1960, p.3) and then provides a definition of ‘imageability: that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer’ (ibid p.9). Returning to my initial encounter with Woolwich, without doubt the strong spatial patterns of a riverside garden followed by a set of sculptures would suggest a level of imageability and explains my response.
The human experience of encountering a new place or knowing how to act or go on in a familiar place is intimately bound up with previous experiences. Places are always ‘read’ or understood in relation to others. (Tilley 1994 p.27)
Although Tilley (1994) is referring to a rural landscape, I tend to agree with him that our approach to new places is related to the experience...
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...create work that interrogates the urban landscape.
Works Cited
Solnit, R. (2002). Wanderlust : a history of walking. London: Verso.
Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Tilley, C. (1994). A phenomenology of landscape : places, paths, and monuments. Oxford, UK Providence, R.I: Berg.
Balshaw, M. & Kennedy, L. (2000). Urban space and representation. London Sterling, Va: Pluto Press.
Baudelaire, C. & Mayne, J. (1995). The painter of modern life and other essays. London: Phaidon Press.
Definition of flâneur in English. (2013) Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press. [online] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fl%C3%A2neur [Accessed 21 December 2013]
Jenks, C. (1995). ‘WATCHING YOUR STEP The History and Practice of the Flaneur in Jenks.C (ed.) Visual culture. London New York: Routledge pp.142-160
Cronon, William “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90
During this essay written by Walker Percy, it is clear that his overall opinion of experiencing new things is in the eye of the beholder and/or the hands of those around them and their social status. Percy uses many examples in his writing including that of an explorer, tourist, and local all seeing things for the first time either literally or in a new different light. In this essay, I will play on both sides of regaining experiences, seeing things on a different level then before or the first time. Regaining experiences is a valid argument brought up by Percy as it is achievable. While criticizing each side of the argument, I will also answer questions as to the validity of Percy's argument, sovereignty, what is important in Percy's literature, and my own experiences that contradict my opinion now as well as others that support it. Regaining and experiencing new things includes taking what you expect and putting that aside while you soak up the true environment you are in. To accomplish a sovereign state of mind, you must let those around you influence you only in a way that helps you grasp/control the situation even farther.
Walker Percy in his essay tells us that the experience of humans nowadays are very insignificant because of biased awareness. Percy thinks that humans lack the true experience while doing or going somewhere just because of the “beaten track”. A person can truly experience wonderful things just if they get off the beaten track. Percy writes, “It may be recovered by leaving the beaten track.” (Percy 299) Every time Percy is trying to tell this he proves it by giving various examples. His one example was how a tourist goes to see the Grand Canyon and has already a lot of preconceived expectations to that place. But when he reaches there he feels let down because all he assumed was wrong and just a fantasy. (298) Percy writes, “This dialectic of sightseeing cannot be taken into account by planners, for the object of the dialectic is nothing other than the subversion of the effort of the planners.” (Percy 300) the sightseer can only recover from all this by leaving the beaten track. (299)
This places the reader in recognisable landscape which is brought to life and to some extent made clearer to us by the use of powerful, though by no means overly literary adjectives. Machado is concerned with presenting a picture of the Spanish landscape which is both recognisable and powerful in evoking the simple joys which it represents. Furthermore, Machado relies on what Arthur Terry describes as an `interplay between reality and meditation' in his description of landscape. The existence of reality in the text is created by the use of geographical terms and the use of real names and places such as SOrai and the Duero, while the meditation is found in...
An individual’s ‘Sense of Place’ is predominantly their place of belonging and acceptance in the world, may it be through a strong physical, emotional or spiritual connection. In Tim Winton’s novel ‘The Riders”, the concept of Sense of Place is explored through the desperate journey of its protagonist, Fred Scully. Scully’s elaborate search for identity throughout the novel is guided and influenced by the compulsive love he feels for his wife Jennifer and their family morals, the intensity of hope and the destruction it can cause and the nostalgic nature of Winton’s writing. Two quotes which reflect the ideals of a person’s Sense of Place are “Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.’(Aldous Huxley) and “It is not down in any map. True places never are.” (Herman Melville). Huxley and Melville’s statements closely resemble Fred Scully’s journey and rectify some of his motivations throughout the text.
John Mahtesian's photography offers a visual poetry of the human condition. It is a direct expression of his warmth, depth of spirit, and humanity. A true gentleman, extremely humble and unfailingly polite, he achieves an invisibility that is the success of his art. His patience and commitment to his vision allow him to capture moments others could not. If his subjects are aware of his presence, his gentle nature so enchants them that they are unguarded and their essence is revealed. So compelling are his images that we are truly convinced his insights are our own. They make us rejoice in the world around us, and in the nature of human existence.
Born in Home, Pennsylvania in 1927, Abbey worked as a forest ranger and fire look-out for the National Forest Service after graduating from the University of New Mexico. An author of numerous essays and novels, he died in 1989 leaving behind a legacy of popular environmental literature. His credibility as a forest ranger, fire look- out, and graduate of the University of New Mexico lend credibility to his knowledge of America’s wilderness and deserts. Readers develop the sense that Abbey has invested both time and emotion in the vast deserts of America.
A sense of place is the ideology that people possess when they feel that they belong to a given surrounding. Therefore, through their existence and a sense of belonging on a given environment, people do tend to have a special connection with their immediate surroundings, and therefore, they will do everything to protect their habitat. This, in a sense, is instrumental in affecting the positionality of people with such belonging to one given
Location, location, location -- it’s the old realtor 's mantra for what the most important feature is when looking at a potential house. If the house is in a bad neighborhood, it may not be suitable for the buyers. In searching for a house, many people will look at how safe the surrounding area is. If it’s not safe, they will tend stray away. Jane Jacobs understood the importance of this and knew how cities could maintain this safety, but warned of what would become of them if they did not diverge from the current city styles. More modern planners, such as Joel Kotkin argue that Jacobs’s lesson is no longer applicable to modern cities because they have different functions than those of the past. This argument is valid in the sense that city
image in the mind of the reader, the image of a typical town on a normal summer
J B Harley, 1989, Deconstructing The Map, Ann Arbor, Michigan: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library.
2014). Places organize our experience of the world and manage our relationship with other people.
... middle of paper ... ... Now when people go on walks, they can bring their camera and take pictures of the beauty around them. The deer with her fawns eating the meadow grass, a bench in a park, or a picture of the orange, luminous sunset.
On the other hand, nature elements are proven to restore attentional fatigue and contribute both psychological and physiological benefits (Hartig et al., 2003; Ulrich & Simons, 1986; Ulrich et al., 1991). R. Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) proposed a restorative environment requires four features: being away, extent, fascination and compatibility to promote recovery from attentional fatigue. In natural environment, urban dwellers can obtain a sense of freedom from daily routine and projects that require massive mental efforts (being away). Nature usually has abundant and coherent landscape structures. It encompasses trails for exploration (extent), and many attractive elements, such as: animals, trees or plants, water features (fascination), and it
Journeys into the wilderness test far more than the physical boundaries of the human traveler. Twentieth century wilderness authors move beyond the traditional travel-tour approach where nature is an external diversion from everyday life. Instead, nature becomes a catalyst for knowing our internal wilderness and our universal connections to all living things. In Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, Mary Austin’s Land of Little Rain, and Gary Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild, “nature” mirrors each narrator: what the narrators ultimately discover in the wilderness reflects what needs they bring to it. Their points of view, expectations, and awareness all determine their experiences of the wild and “self.” Ultimately, however, each work reveals that the experience of nature need not be restricted only to “self-discovery,” but may well expand to an understanding of the spiritual “family self.”