Here’s a topic which has preoccupied our household for many years. And which I think about every time I visit Instagram. An essential topic then, addressed superbly by Caleb.
We had one difficulty – ‘garden’ or ‘landscape’? I’ve kept Caleb’s preference apart from in the title, and hope all our thinkingardeners will find that easy to connect with.
PS Sorry about the problem with Comments which I believe is now sorted. And one more thing – I do put these pieces around on social media a lot, which is time consuming. If you were to subscribe (see sidebar) I might eventually not need to be so annoyingly intrusive everywhere.. Xx
Landscape Representation
By Caleb Melchior
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for the online landscape architecture publication Land8 about my experience as a first-time Chelsea Flower attendee, following up on my visit to the 2019 Show. In that piece, I noted that the physical experience of the show broke my expectations – which were founded primarily on photographs of earlier shows:
“Reflecting on the show, the thing that I keep coming back to is the difference between my expectations and the actual experience of being there. Seeing photography of previous shows, my brain had interpolated an immersive spatial experience – an experience that the show didn’t deliver. This gap between expectations and experience reminded me of past visits to other high-profile landscape architecture projects that didn’t live up to the images.
Representation is always a challenge for landscape architecture and landscape architects. Visiting Chelsea – such a glorious temporary spectacle – made me wonder if sometimes the most meaningful landscapes are those we build only in our minds.”
Sprouting from those reflections, this piece attempts to untangle some of the gaps between representation and experience. In particular, it looks at photography – arguably the most common way of representing landscapes – and explores the limits of the medium in portraying landscape experiences. The intent of this piece is for design practitioners and landscape enthusiasts to clear away their assumptions and better understand the relationship between photography and landscape.
Landscape narratives are as old as speech. Australian First People’s songlines are epic poems that directly tied to specific routes through the landscape. With urbanisation, the flaneur and the psychogeographer write individual experiences of the city, such as Virginia Woolf’s essay on walking the city – “Street Haunting”.
Visual representation goes deep, too. Consider the rock walls painted with herds of bison and lions in cave drawings at Chauvet in France. Or the Marshall Islanders of the Pacific using stick charts as abstract representations of the islands and water currents around them.
There’s a vast body of scholarship around landscape representation – most of which is familiar to only a tiny fragment of the design and landscape architecture profession. If you’re new to landscape representation theory, a good start is the Borges short story “On Exactitude in Science”. If this 30 second story captures your interest, move on to James Corner’s essay on mapping in landscape architecture. However, landscape representation theory has focused on narratives, drawing, and mapping, while ignoring photography – which is arguably the way that many makers and consumers of gardens gain the most exposure to landscapes other than our own.
When I graduated in 2014, smartphones hadn’t yet achieved total ubiquity in Kansas. Camera phone photography hadn’t yet created today’s daily inundation of images. Discussion of photography in my landscape architecture and garden design theory was minimal. We had brief discussions of the work of Anne Winston Spirn (The Eye is a Door), who has written extensively about photography as a mode of landscape investigation and representation. But, overall, I was left with the assumption that photographs were a fairly straightforward method of landscape representation.
Experience has proved that assumption false. As I’ve become more adept as a practitioner and observer of landscape, I’ve realized that the gaps between photographs of landscape and the in-person experience of those places create significant challenges – especially for anyone who’s interested in designing landscapes effectively.
Sometimes photographs are just beautiful images – they reflect the skill of the photographer more than the actual qualities of the space. Landscapes that look great in photographs may not actually be all that satisfying to experience in person.
Pedestrian experience at the Clinton Presidential Library Park in Little Rock, Arkansas, differs dramatically from the experience shown in marketing photographs.
This discrepancy between image and experience began emerging for me the first time that my classmates and I took a trip up to Seattle. We’d heard so much about Gasworks Park – heard all the logic behind the development of its design and seen cool grungy photographs. But when we arrived – after three transfers between different city bus lines and a couple of miles on foot (this was before Uber and smartphone saturation) – we were deeply disappointed to find a banal suburban park with a giant inaccessible relic of ruined architecture at its centre.
The pattern of disappointment continued when I moved to Little Rock and visited the Clinton Presidential Library Park – only to discover that the widely publicised imagery of the park (beautiful crisp geometric landforms lit perfectly at dawn) had no relation to the actual experience. Most recently, my experience of the 2019 Chelsea Flower Show emphasised that experiencing a landscape through photography can be dramatically different to in-person experience.
Thinking about these disappointments, I’ve identified three aspects that separate photography as a medium and landscape as an experience. They involve the image’s relationship to time, space, and subject.
The first two aspects, the image’s relationship to time and space, are inherit in photography as a medium. They relate to how the subject is portrayed. The third aspect, the subject, relates to what is pictured.
Time is the first aspect in which photography differs from landscape experience. It’s perhaps the most intuitively understood difference between photograph and experience. Most contemporary humans are familiar with the basics of how photographs exist in the world – they’re a physical reproduction based on the light that hit the camera within a specific range of time. Humans tend to perceive this as a record of a single moment. By contrast, in a landscape experience, there’s no differentiation of any one specific moment. Experience of a landscape – of a space – occurs across time. Our brains interpolate between many mental images. Actual experience of a landscape is physically richer than even the most comprehensive series of images can portray.
Another component of the temporal gap between photography and landscape experience is that landscapes are dynamic spaces. They change from moment to moment: sun shifts across the sky, weather comes and goes, people move through a space, plants grow. While landscape changes, photographs stay the same. This ability to capture a record of a specific moment offers the possibility for photos to express beauty – they can capture an impression of one moment and make it something the viewer can revisit. However, it’s important to recognize that this difference means that a photograph offers something different to actual experience of a landscape. Representation is always selective, but the detailed realistic quality of photographs can give a false impression of being a definitive record of what a landscape is like.
The photograph’s relationship to space is the second aspect in which photography differs from landscape experience. Photographs are physically bound and framed. Sontag writes, “In a world ruled by photographic images, all borders (“framing”) seem arbitrary. Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous, from anything else: all that is necessary is to frame the subject differently.” (On Photography, 1977) Photographs are distinct and fragmentary. By contrast, the experience of a landscape is immersive, continuous, and connected. Human movement through space, across time, means that any experience of landscape is framed by memory of what came before and anticipation of what’s next. Landscape is always experienced in context, not separate.
At the physical level, any photograph represents a specific vantage point. The prevalence of drone footage in landscape architecture representation means that some of the most widely distributed imagery of a project can be from a vantage point that most visitors will never experience. The most popular imagery of the Clinton Presidential Library Park in Little Rock is a great example. To get the same view as these photographs, a viewer would have to be able to hover 30 feet above the ground – in the first image, 30 feet over an 8-lane highway.
I also witnessed misleading vantage points in coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, where close imagery of the show gardens provided an impression of a far more immersive experience than the show delivers.
?The history of labour is often ignored or erased, particularly in American landscapes with a history of enslavement. These outbuildings are remaining testimony to forced labour at Cane River Plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Subject is the third aspect of the gap between photography and landscape experience. Unlike the previous two barriers, which are qualities of the medium itself, this gap relates more to the culture of production around landscape photography. What is the intent of these images? Who pays for them?
A vast majority of published and distributed landscape photography is produced either as marketing (for designer or gardening service websites), aspirational lifestyle content (magazines such as Gardens Illustrated, Architectural Digest, The English Garden), or some combination thereof (Instagram accounts like @thejungalow, design awards submissions).
If the purpose of the photographs is to sell services, it makes sense that the resulting images emphasise qualities associated with growth and care. If the purpose of the photographs is to reflect status, the resulting photographs will emphasise investment of money and time – desirable real estate, high-labour horticultural techniques, costly art and furnishings, rare plants.
What’s not shown in the most widely published and distributed landscape photographs is perhaps more revealing than what is shown. In Queer Phenomenology (Duke University Press, 2006), Sara Ahmed writes that perception of an object involves, not only that object, but all the work required to produce that object and keep it in a state of function. We’ve all seen photographs of spectacular gardens at their peak moments of glory. However, we rarely see photos of the labour that keeps such gardens looking glorious (a great counterexample to this is Charles Hawes’ recent piece for ThinkinGardens showing the staff at Les Jardins d’Etretat).
We don’t see photos of infrastructure. We don’t see where the resources necessary to financially support the garden are derived. We don’t see photos of installation or maintenance. The most sophisticated publications have become more willing to show processes of transformation, growth, and decay, but they’re framed in highly artistic ways which emphasise design intent and clarity of form.
Faced with these gaps between landscape photography and landscape experience, what is a designer or garden enthusiast to do?
Critical thinking around the presentation of landscape and garden photography seems to be an appropriate first response. While it’s impossible to precisely replicate the full immersive quality of a landscape experience in photographs, presenting a thoughtful series of images can begin to bridge some of the gaps between photograph and experience. Addressing the passage of time, a series of photographs can begin to demonstrate how a landscape changes throughout the day and over the course of the seasons, in different weather and light conditions. (See Anne’s Veddw sequence)
Imagery of a landscape as it matures over the course of years can also be revealing. Careful attention to vantage point – making sure that photographs portray multiple perspectives and levels of detail within the landscape – can more fully represent the spatial qualities of a landscape. A thoughtful approach to subject – showing the infrastructure and labour of a garden, as well its processes of transformation and change – can begin to highlight the elements of landscape that are often ignored. (Veddw’s blog does that too…)
Beyond these strategies that individuals can use to bridge the gap between photograph and landscape experience, it might also be valuable to recognize the collective vision of the social photo. Social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson describes a social photo: “what fundamentally makes a photo a social photo is the degree to which its existence as a standalone media object is subordinate to its existence as a unit of communication.” (The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media, 2019) Jurgenson argues that seeing amateur photographs en masse as a method of communication (rather than as singular art objects) can reveal truths about what we (individually and collectively) value and believe.
Sontag wrote, “To photograph is to confer importance.” (America Seen through Photographs Darkly, 1977) By looking at the streams of photographs that individuals take in landscapes, we can begin to understand the qualities and elements of landscape that the public notice – what makes a landscape experience valuable and enjoyable. Geo-tagged social media photographs are likely more indicative of what the general public are noticing about a place than a photo series by a specialised landscape photographer.
I still remember Jonathan Buckley’s photograph of the Exotic Garden at Great Dixter on my first cover of Gardens Illustrated nearly 15 years ago. Giant craggy Tetrapanax leaves, straggling variegated Arundo, wobbly overbalancing dahlias, emerged out of a translucent haze. I don’t have words for the atmosphere and emotion that photograph evoked in me. Some photographs have that power to move us.
But, they’re always a representation. No matter how technically skilled or evocatively composed, a photograph is its own thing. It can’t match an actual experience of landscape. Sontag writes, “Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.” (Sontag, On Photography, 1977) Perhaps it’s time for designers and landscape enthusiasts to quit pretending that we know landscapes through photography. Instead, they’re portals to fantasy, speculation, and dreams.
Caleb’s website
See also these pieces by my resident photographer, Charles Hawes:
A Garden Photographer’s Response to Rory Stuart – in response to
Some Problems with Garden Photographs by Rory Stuart
All from long ago!
Excellent article, I really enjoyed reading this and it ties with my own experience of visiting places (not just gardens) I’d only seen photographed.
A very interesting article. The comment Caleb makes about photographs that ‘….they reflect the skill of the photographer more than the actual qualities of the space.’ strikes me as both true and perhaps slightly missing something about the curious way a lens can enhance our vision. The skill of a photographer is that they are able to see something in the quality of light or in a composition of a subject that identifies and focuses upon the ‘qualities of the space’. In other words they have an eye for seeing forms and compositions which may even concur with the vision of the creator of the landscape or garden.
The problem is to do with the single eye of the lens. Monocular vision can never reproduce our own binocular vision of our world. We literally see differently with our eyes than we do through the single lens of a camera. So as already alluded to by Caleb, it is impossible to reproduce our natural vision via photography. However, I don’t believe this is necessarily a problem – we simply need to embrace this fact and begin to look at gardens and landscapes with the singular vision of the photographers/artists eye.
A case in point is The Veddw – It is a garden of many viewpoints, intersections, angles, conjunctions and compositions. You can experience the space and spaces at both the macro and the micro level. Training our eyes to find compositions I believe, aids our ability to appreciate and even design a space, so in that sense photography can be a useful tool.
I agree! I got an important lesson in a talk by Rick Darke many years ago: a gorgeous closeup of an unfurling skunk cabbage and then the bigger view, showing a rather ugly scene. (Or maybe the closeup/far view was of a different subject, but the lesson remained.) The framing of vistas and the honing in on vignettes is what trained my eye as a designer, and photographs help refine this skill. It works in reverse, too: a photograph brings awareness of what doesn’t work in a way that your brain somehow can’t in real life, at least until you train it.
Thank you, Paul, for the insight – and thank you, Naomi! It’s definitely true that exposure to photography can train the eye to see details and patterns that you’d otherwise miss. I guess the thing that I find troubling is the conflation of good garden design with design that photographs well. I think that there are different qualitites to a landscape that is wonderful and satisfying to experience from those that a photograph can reveal. I guess I’m mostly worried about people designing based on the qualities they see in photographs, without real exposure to landscape day-in, day-out.
I agree with Pat – an excellent piece.
As with her, I too have felt deep disappointment when the experience of visiting a garden did not even approach the high expectations that I had come to it with on the back of seeing photographs of the garden. Outstanding in my mind is a visit to Pettifers last year – a garden in Oxfordshire much praised by one of the UKs finest garden photographers, Clive Nichols, and flattered by him beyond recognition by his awesome skill.
Yes, for those who did not know that those garden “vignettes” at Chelsea were tiny plots surrounded by shops and walkways, excluding all but the privileged celebrity, TV presenter (or garden photographer), the reality must come as a huge shock.
So why do we (garden photographers who seek to sell their images) paint such a false picture? Well as Caleb suggests, to sell an image you need to know your market. And the market requires images which are not “warts and all”. Magazine editors will not thank you if your Chelsea images take in camera gantries, jostling crowds, or even muddy footprints. In fact thanks doesn’t come into it – they will simply buy the images that show the idealised version.
And if you want to sell a set of images to one of our lifestyle magazines, you need to know that the competition for those pages is massive, and to get those shots that will “wow” the commissioning editor you need to get up at the crack of dawn for that fabulous contra jour image of the light coming up over the horizon or seeping through that carefully framed tree. And then you need to go back and do it again at the end of the day. That’s how commercial garden photographers make their (usually pretty modest) living.
Caleb’s analysis of the discrepancy between photography and the experience of Landscapes (gardens) is spot on. But in his conclusions I think he is trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Or at least he is trying to mix oil and water. Yes, of course the accumulated images of a place on social media provide a much more rounded portrayal of that landscape. As do the wide ranging reviews of what a restaurant or hotel or pretty well everything is like give us a breadth of experience and opinion. But (corrupt and false comment aside) those contributors are not trying to sell their opinion or review.
But I think that he is wandering into the realms of what photography as art could achieve if a better sense of landscape portrayal is the goal. Yes, images through time, perspectives that bring in the wider context, images captured in different lights and weathers, maybe even integrate a soundscape and movement through video. Yes the art photographer could and probably has achieved this. But to turn that around: who is going to buy that work? Even artists have to live.
Thank you, Charles, for your thoughtful response. I’m definitely approaching this idea of landscape representation from a designer’s perspective, thinking more about modes of representation (such as photography and drawing) as design tools than saleable objects.
It would be highly interesting to look at different venues for garden/landscape photography – home & garden magazines, social media, art print sales – and analyze the qualities typical of images that sell best. It seems like the audiences buying these different types of photographs might have different appeal factors.
What an excellent piece! I think all of us have had experiences similar to those Caleb Melchior describes, where an image of a garden sets up an expectation that isn’t met. Sometimes this is because the photographer is skillful, sometimes because the image is dishonest in one way or another. No image can beat the multi-dimensional experience of being in a landscape, walking through it, seeing it change moment to moment, and experiencing it with all the senses, not only with our eyes. Definitely a piece to read and re-read.
I love the use of that term “dishonest” – it’s something Preston Montague and I have definitely discussed before. It’s fastinating to think about what makes an image “true” to the experience of a place.