Joseph Légaré - Les chutes Chaudières, Québec, c.1840. At Library and Archives Canada
I’m currently working on some new work which has brought me to research theory and visual aspects that I never thought I would venture in to. It’s not very spectacular as a subject, it’s actually quite banal. You ready for it? …Landscape.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy landscape photography or for that matter other visual representation of it, it’s just that, as I’ve come to realize, I didn’t fully understand the genre. And what I mean by that is I didn’t recognize the importance of the history attributed to the subject matter and the elements or preconceptions that come with representing landscape.
I started my work and my research simultaneously and since embarking on this new perspective of work, different projects that I’ve been working on have come full circle to coincide with landscape and photographic archives. I love it when that happens! The research I’m mainly focusing on is Canadian landscape and furthermore how people use the land through leisure activity. Three books that have been a base for my research are Picturing the Land: Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500-1950 by Marylin J. McKay, Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity and Contemporary Art by John O’Brian and Peter White and Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway by Roger Boulet. I have quickly come to understand that today’s politics, our current way of life and attitude towards the land is deeply rooted in how land was depicted and used in early colonization.
© McCord Museum. Photographer Alexander Henderson. Regulating dam, Blanche River near Derry, QC-ON(?), about 1866
My research on the representation of Canadian landscape is quite interesting because it allows me to understand how land is so carefully shaped and promoted, especially at a time when land is being exploited more and more. Documentation of the land, it’s appearance or how artists deal with portraying it, is essential. Through the work of artists we are able to explore different views and understand our land from a different stand point. - All this to say is that I’m happily revisiting Canadian history and artists.
As much as I’m interested in the historical representation of landscape, I’m very much intrigued by contemporary artists that work with landscape by constructing or altering it. Below are a few artists that deal with landscape in this way. In order: Beate Gutschow creates her landscapes from a bank of images, Andy Goldsworthy temporarily alters the landscape with his sculptures, Laura Plageman, who I recently discovered, works with printed photographs to alter her landscapes and Joan Fontcuberta creates new worlds from computer generated images.
© Beate Gutschow, LS #18, 2003
© Andy Goldsworthy
© Laura Plageman, Response to Print of Kudzu, Texas, 2010
© Joan Fontcuberta, Orogenesis Derain, 2004
