Photography and Landscape.: Knowledge, Practice, Project. – photopaysage

We will build our corpus of study as a series of basis from which we will be able to elaborate our questions and build a theory. The corpus will be structured around three main ensembles: the first will gather the photographic production of landscape architects or of photographers who have collaborated on projects with landscape architects. The second ensemble will be built from the photographic production of artists that have a privileged relation to landscape. A third ensemble will be constituted around the photographic archives of John Brinckerhoff Jackson.

The results of this research will be communicated and highlighted in different and complementary ways ((website, publications, lectures) and targeted at different audiences including the scientific community, the professional body, and residents of landscape.

One of the main objective of our research program is to contribute to the renewal of the culture of landscape architects, architects and planners. It opens up social and economic perpectives.

Scientific production planned :

A website showing the results of the research program
Two publications based on the production of international workshops
An e-book developping the results of the research program
Papers in peer-reviewed journals
Conference presentations

Representations of landscape are constantly put in debate through professional and artistic practices. Photography isn't only recording; it orders a new gaze, new customs, and new ways of practicing territorial planning. It's a fact, photography is involved with the transformation of the territory. If the relation between landscape, territory and photography has already been the subject of much academic work, in depth studies of photography from the conjunct perspective of the genesis of its practices and the landscape project are less common. This research proposal rallies the points of view of different fields, and the skills specific to each of the two domains, around one common subject: knowledge-making in relation to artistic and professional practice.

From the perspective of the history of photography, landscape is inscribed in its origin. They shape each other: if photographed landscapes can be considered as artistic representations, through photography, landscape becomes a ground for observation and knowledge. It is not surprising therefore today that planning practices increasingly seek photographic practices. Indeed, in the context of contemporary metropolitan transformation, photographers and landscape architects are often partners.

Our proposal will consist in exploring the knowledge that photography has built up on landscape via art photographers, landscape architects, and geographers practicing or reading landscapes. We will examine the articulation between photographic practices, and other forms of action on landscape; we will question the aesthetic, political, and scientific contexts to which they are bound. The confrontation to artistic, professional, and social practices will enable us to grasp how the meaning of landscape is constructed. We make the hypothesis that the integration of a photographic approach to landscape transforms its project practices. Such a hypothesis contributes to unfold problems laid out by visual culture studies, and seeks to investigate the theoretical and social stakes related to the inventiveness of visual production. We thus consider the exploration of project tools as a way of bringing landscape into the debate.

Bringing landscape into the debate has driven us to put forward four objectives related to investigations and/or innovating methods:
- to confront photographic practices to landscape projects and actors in order to bring out the meaning of these practices;
- to uncover the cultural construction of landscape through the photographic act;
- to bring together a photographic and strategic body of works;
- to reinvest systems of representation and bring them into the debate of territorial mutations.
We will build our corpus of study as a series of basis from which we will be able to elaborate our questions and build a theory. The corpus will be structured around three main ensembles: the first will gather the photographic production of landscape architects or of photographers who have collaborated on projects with landscape architects. The second ensemble will be built from the photographic production of artists that have a privileged relation to landscape. A third ensemble will be constituted around the photographic archives of John Brinckerhoff Jackson.

The results of this research will be communicated and highlighted in different and complementary ways, and targeted at different audiences including the scientific community, the professional body, and residents of landscape.