In a previous post I extolled the virtues of the highly personal, in situ engagement with a location as critical to a genuine experience of place. In light of that, what follows may very well read as a contradiction. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a new perspective that reflects a fundamental shift in my thinking. Considering the challenges involved with capturing the ethereal nature of place, that would not be completely unexpected.
For the same reason though, contradiction seems an overly simplistic assessment. It feels more like evolution. And as things evolve and while in the process of settling, they may appear for a time to contradict themselves. Suggesting then that locations must be directly experienced to generate the most visceral sense of place is not necessarily at odds with the notion that sense of place arising from the visual portrayal of a location in a photograph is likewise sincere and powerful.
The latter idea certainly bears further investigation. A significant driver behind this blog afterall is a consideration of the potential role of photography within the broader idea of place.
For me photographs have long been an important and particularly potent conjurer of place. They are in fact often a singularly critical catalyst supporting the emergence of a sense of place for locations from which I am physically removed. These might be places never visited, or more often, places to which I had traveled some time in the past. The images in these cases often supersede my own memories as a source of a strong place sense.
Therein lies a peculiar power of photography – the ability to stimulate a displaced sense of place.
More than that, photographs can add a whole new dimension to the experience of place, expanding its potential and opening it to novel applications where it might not otherwise have even been considered.
And it’s surprising to me how strong, on occasion, that photography-induced sense of place can be. I suppose it’s not fair to directly compare it to an in situ experience, as it is something altogether different, but it can be compelling nonetheless. My reaction to a photograph in this regard can be quite intuitional and highly emotional, striking something deep within that links me to the portrayed location.
This is all triggered of course by vision, and as such I think anyone would struggle to properly convey the result in words. With photography it is the images themselves that determine levels of response and I think it best therefore for the purposes of any place discussion focused on imagery to keep words to a minimum.
What follows then in this blog and others to come, is a selection of my photographs that for me properly evoke the sense of place I experienced while in various locations. As such they provide me a new level of meaning beyond that which I experienced while there, and perhaps just as importantly help shore up my memory against the erosional effects of time, allowing me to retain and keep that place sense long after I’ve left the location behind.
What’s even more amazing to me is that in some cases the photographs create in me a whole new sense of place. This emerges I believe from a consideration of the location through a specific perspective – maybe with a particular focus on lighting or shadow or pattern, or the removal of ambient sounds and tactile experience and all of the other things that influence in situ sense of place.
So far from undermining the emotional engagement with locations experienced while situated within them, the captured image can in fact add new emotional contexts, all generated from vision alone. The record of the eye, presented through the avenue of a camera lens and in its isolation, opens new doors into the space.
Displaced place via photography and in situ place are hardly mutually exclusive. They are in fact complementary. Taken together they have the potential to instill an even deeper, richer sense of place, striking at many more emotional chords than is possible with either individually.
Here then a few images of mine, taken on New Zealand’s Otago Peninsula, to illustrate the point.
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