Andrea Liggins

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Artist Statement

The two selections of six photographs have been selected from two separate series from a six-year PhD research project, which investigated photographic perspectives of landscape.

Since the 18th century images of landscape through paint and later through photography have often conformed to notions of the ‘prospect’ or the ‘picturesque’. In photographic practice there have been certain traditions in both the aesthetics of the image and in the methodology of its creation. A large format camera was invariably used to relay the maximum detail of the surveyor, necessitating patience, discipline and strong shoulder muscles. The legend of the landscape photographer striding out into the hills to contemplate the emptiness of wilderness is still an ingrained part of our collective belief. The view from the hill, frequently adopted, however reduces the environment to form and pattern, and often misses the essential detail, the disappearance of our hedgerow wildlife for example and even the hedgerows themselves. The fixed scopic regime of the surveyor places landscape in the position of other, at a distance, and creates a set of value systems based entirely upon a scene’s picturable qualities, the worthiness of the view. This may account for the fact that most of our National Parks were regions labeled picturesque or sublime in the eighteenth century.

These landscape photographs do not seek the purity of the wilderness or the authority of the view, but concentrate on the familiar, the home ground and the private; intimate personal landscapes, places to look out from and not at. The places of the imagery are unfixed, mutable, sites that remain unable to be catagorised. The use of lightweight cameras with plastic lenses and mobile phone cameras with very low resolution strips away the formality of the image, and defies the production of maximum detail. Instead of the structure of the picturesque, promoted in the eighteenth century by the Reverend William Gilpin as the ideal, the madness of the baroque aesthetic is the quest, with its explosive energy and disrupted composition. This form of photographing the land will perhaps lead to a more democratic representation, giving the peat bog and the hedgerow the same status as the majestic view from the summit of Snowdon.

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