You may have already thought that this month is going to be an exceptional month, that nothing is coming out in December. I\u2019ve been busy, with a bit of this and a bit of that, attending a funeral, doing requested and suggested changes to a manuscript, that seemingly never ending task that it tends to be, having to or getting to temp, this time going through undergrad essays, doing the photo assignments that I do to make money as I sure as hell I\u2019m not getting any grant money nor paid position to do my thesis, learning all kinds of things about videography, doing more reading on assorted topics and listening to podcasts when I don\u2019t have the opportunity to read (cooking, when on a bus, working out etc.). Oh, I managed to do a second interview this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, now that I listed all those excuses for slacking, it\u2019s time to indicate what this essay will be about. As I haven\u2019t had the time to focus on anything substantial, say a chapter or two of that book by Valentin Volo\u0161inov, or that even bigger book by Deleuze and Guattari, I think it\u2019ll be fitting to do something short. I\u2019ve mentioned it a couple of times in the past, but I haven\u2019t addressed \u2018The Biography of Landscape: Cause and Culpability\u2019, an essay by Marwyn Samuels, as included in \u2018The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays\u2019 edited by Donald Meinig, despite it being part of the first book that I read specifically on landscapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you want to know the gist of that essay, Samuels goes on and on about the absence <\/em>of humans in the landscape<\/em>. To be more specific, it is not exactly that there are no humans, that the world is empty, but that we tend to think or imagine landscape <\/em>as something that is essentially empty of people or at least the people are not of primary interest. This is what puzzles Samuels. Also, the title is a bit of a spoiler. It\u2019s just way too informative for my taste. Anyway, the title tells you, the reader, that he is interested in how some landscape <\/em>came to be, as well as who <\/em>is responsible for it. That is the gist of the essay. Well worth the read, even if you don\u2019t agree with him. I don\u2019t and I still recommend going through it. It\u2019s not unlike other the essays contained in the book, in the sense that there\u2019s a sentence in the essay that I keep returning to. Samuels states (52):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHowever rational, there is something unreasonable about a human landscape lacking in inhabitants; something strangely absurd about a geography of man devoid of men.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The old fashioned wording aside (not humans, but men), this hits home with me. It is more than just a bit absurd but landscape <\/em>is indeed rational<\/em>, yet unreasonable <\/em>at the same time. It\u2019s actually something you could call a hallmark of rationality<\/em>, having its underlying principle rooted in geometry, as explained, perhaps, best by Denis Cosgrove in his article \u2018Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea\u2019. That said, I think Samuels (52) is very perceptive as he turns our attention to the absence <\/em>of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To me, landscape <\/em>is exactly \u201ca geography of man devoid of men\u201d, in the sense that when we <\/em>look at the our surroundings, when we <\/em>engage with landscape<\/em>, or so to speak, it\u2019s always without the actual people. Yes, yes, the buildings are still there, so are the roads, the lamp posts, the street signs and the ditches by the roads, etc. All that is human is there, in the landscape<\/em>, even when we think there is nothing human <\/em>or, dare I say, cultural<\/em>, as even the bits of nature <\/em>that are out there are arranged by us <\/em>humans. Those neatly trimmed lawns, bushes and trees are not there by accident. Now you might object to that and you are right, not all those elements are there as planted by humans. Then again, in a sense, they\u2019ve been left the way they are, by humans. In a way they are there, as they are, wherever they happen to be, but only because humans let them be. So, all that is human is there, in the landscape<\/em>, everything, everything except humans themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I started doing photography, that is to say take photos with a DSLR and not just point and shoot with a compact camera, I took a lot of photos of my surroundings, wherever I happened to be. There\u2019s nothing odd or off about that, at least not at that stage. A lot of people do that. What\u2019s interesting about it is that when you are out there, out and about, you want to capture that scenery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite having no recollection when it was, which year it was, I remember the moment quite vividly, taking a nice summery photo by the river here in Turku. The sun was shining, the weather was perfect. I was walking by the river, on the western bank. It\u2019s a pedestrians and cyclists only street, cordoned off from cars. I\u2019m facing down the river. I stop. I grab my camera, go for the wide angle on the kit lens, frame the photo and press the button. I take a couple more. There is nothing remarkable about this. It\u2019s not even memorable. I only remember this because someone who walked into the frame and was captured in my shots walked up to me and loudly objected to me photographing him, telling me to delete the photos. I was going to say that I actually would prefer if he wasn\u2019t in my photos but the man went his way before I managed to say anything. This is exactly what landscape photography<\/em> is, \u201ca geography of man devoid of men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be fair, there are, at times, people in landscape photos<\/em>, just as there are in landscape paintings<\/em>. However, they are never the main thing about them. It\u2019s strange really, how the main thing in a landscape photo<\/em> or a landscape painting<\/em> is the background<\/em>. It\u2019s only in portraits that the humans are the main thing, as presented in the foreground. This also applies to everyday life, not only to photography or painting. As we look around, we don\u2019t pay attention to anything in particular, unless we encounter and engage with someone, closeup. The people themselves are missing<\/em>, curiously absent<\/em>, as if they had been removed from the scene, just so that they don\u2019t ruin it, like the man who walked into my frame from the side so that I had to take another \u2026 clean \u2026 photo. It\u2019s a strange thing, how people <\/em>come to ruin landscapes<\/em>. It\u2019s something that I feel that I need to look up to better understand how that came to be. As Samuels (52) puts it, it\u2019s \u201cstrangely absurd\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s worth noting that in this essay Samuels is not actually concerned with landscape art<\/em>. I reckon his (52) objection has more to do with something else, something that I haven\u2019t mentioned so far. This book can be considered pioneering work in landscape research. Published in the late 1970s, it certainly contains influential essays that helped to revive or, perhaps, rather reimagine landscape <\/em>research in the English speaking circles after it had become marginalized in the mid 20th century. I know I\u2019m generalizing this quite a bit here, but by that point landscape <\/em>had been attributed to culture <\/em>and\/or nature<\/em>. Later on the book he (57) addresses this explicitly, noting that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[H]uman geography everywhere [has] focussed on generic man, man-in-general, and man-in-mass[.]\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Related to this, he (52) notes that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe thing is, [landscape] represents a certain pattern, style or motif that emerged in the wake of other patterns, styles and motifs.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n To be more specific, he (52) continues by clarifying that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe can trace its aesthetic and institutional origins and be satisfied that it \u2018derived\u2019 under the influence of Chinoisere and Physiocratic idealism.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n What he (52) is referring here is actually Kew Gardens and Blenheim Palace. Anyway, he (52) goes on to explain that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOr, we can assign the landscape various economic, social, political and broadly cultural \u2018forces\u2019. We can assign its \u2018underlying impetus\u2019 to such \u2018processes\u2019 as the industrial revolution, the spirit of capitalism, the doctrine of progress, or to the \u2018nature\u2019 of homo economicus<\/em>, homo politicus<\/em>, homo laborens<\/em>, homo ludens<\/em>, and of course, homo sapien<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The point here is that humans have a tendency of being absent <\/em>in the landscape<\/em>. Samuels points out that landscape <\/em>is thought of as a product, a telos<\/em>, caused by various forces or processes, typically so general that, despite all the talk about homo <\/em>this and\/or that, it just comes across as having very little to do with actual people<\/em>. They appear missing<\/em>, or so to speak. You may object to this, but here, if anywhere, it would thus be fitting to characterize landscape as being \u2018no homo\u2019 because there seems to be a lot of talk of humans, yet there is a clear absence <\/em>of actual human beings<\/em>. Samuels (52) continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe can, as it were, explain<\/em> the landscape without so much as a passing reference to anyone particular who happened to live in, pass through, influence, or even make the landscape.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n As you can see, from the previous passage, the one before this one, landscape <\/em>tends to be attributed to something grand and overarching, yet unspecific, as culture<\/em>, as if actual humans weren\u2019t involved. In the words used by Samuels (52):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll such individuals become \u2018meaningless\u2019 as they are explained away in the wake of one or another all-encompassing \u2018process\u2019 that \u2018alone makes meaningful whatever it happens to carry along\u2019.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Here he (52) is actually referring to Hannah Arendt\u2019s book \u2018Between Past and Future\u2019 in which she (63-64) laments that we\u2019ve come to rely on misleading \u201cgeneralities [such] as the disenchantment of the world or the alienation of man \u2026 that often involve a romanticized notion of the past\u201d and that \u201c[t]he process \u2026 has thus acquired a monopoly of universality and significance.\u201d The problem for Arendt (64) is that in modernity<\/em>, as juxtaposed with the antiquity <\/em>(the Greeks and the Romans), causality <\/em>and context <\/em>are separated from actual events <\/em>(when something occurs) and thus process <\/em>has come to be considered as having a life of its own and event <\/em>a mere surface expression<\/em> of the process<\/em>. In other words, as she (64) puts it, the general <\/em>is taken as explaining the particular<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is exactly the problem with concepts such as culture<\/em>, nature <\/em>and ideology<\/em>. They end up being used to explain and justify why something is the way it is or someone acts the way the perosn does rather than being the things that needs explaining. The way it works is what Baruch Spinoza calls sanctuary <\/em>or asylum of ignorance<\/em> (asylum ignorantiae<\/em>) in the first book of \u2018Ethics\u2019 (see appendix, 1883 translation by R.H.M Elwes)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God \u2013 in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Spinoza speaks of taking refuge in the will of God<\/em> but culture<\/em>, nature <\/em>and ideology <\/em>work equally well in this regard. As I implied already, I\u2019m not against these words, or others for that matter, inasmuch as they are the things that need explaining, namely how they came to be the way they are at some point in time and space. I\u2019m against them when they are used to explain and justify why something else is the way it is. For example, I don\u2019t see an issue when someone says that this or that practice <\/em>is part of this and\/or that culture<\/em>, a practice <\/em>among a set of practices<\/em> if you will. It becomes an issue when this gets reversed, when a practice <\/em>is explained by the set of practices<\/em>, also known as culture<\/em>. It\u2019s the same as stating that a practice<\/em>, why someone does this and\/or that, is because \u2018God wills it\u2019, as explained by Spinoza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oddly enough, this is also my gripe with Samuels in this essay. It\u2019s very clear that it is a humanistic text, unabashedly so. There\u2019s no veneer to it, so, even though I find myself disagreeing with him, at least I can appreciate that he is very open about how he comes to conceptualize landscape<\/em>. I hope to expand on this in the next essay. That\u2019ll be within a week or so, so either late this year or early next year. I may want to rearrange some things, but we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You may have already thought that this month is going to be an exceptional month, that nothing is coming out in December. I\u2019ve been busy, with a bit of this and a bit of that, attending a funeral, doing requested and suggested changes to a manuscript, that seemingly never ending task that it tends to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3554,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1145,59,24,171],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-arendt","tag-cosgrove","tag-samuels","tag-spinoza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4657,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions\/4657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/landd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}References<\/h4>\n\n\n\n