Photography and Ecology: Re-framing Fields of Vision
Friday, 4 October 2019, at 18:30
Concordia University, EV-1.605
Re-visiting Scirpus [Bolboschoenus] maritimus. Plate n°1075, Arrochar, August 2012 (low tide) 56°12.342’N 4°45.038’W.
From Chrystel Lebas, Field Studies, Walking through Landscapes and Archives, 2016.
Liz Wells
Professor in Photographic Culture
Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Plymouth, UK
Since its inception, photography has been used to explore the geographic and the botanical. This talk centres on ways in which photographers have used the camera to explore place and environment, particularly in relation to rural lands and landscapes. Early photographs were generally accepted as ‘straight’ empirical evidence. More recently, photography has become associated with interrogative questioning of ecosystems and environmental change. We shall note historical developments, including changing notions of beauty in landscape. Then, through critical evaluation of selected recent examples from Britain and elsewhere, we shall consider conceptual framing, ways of seeing and modes of photographic representation.
Liz Wells is a Professor in Photographic Culture in the School of Art, Design and Architecture in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Humanities, University of Plymouth. Her edited collections – The Photography Reader and Photography: A Critical Introduction – are the backbones of photographic studies in countless university programs. Wells’s intertwining interests in expressions of identity; land, landscape, and environment have resulted in numerous books, articles, catalogue essays, and exhibitions, including the ground-breaking Shifting Horizons: Women’s Landscape Photography Now (co-edited, 2000), and the more recent, Landmatters: Landscape Photography, Culture, and Identity (2011), Landscapes of Exploration, British Art from Antarctica (2012), and Photography and Cyprus (co-edited, 2014). In 2017, Liz Wells was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, for major contributions to the field.
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