However.

If I had to describe the general feel of things here in Berlin over the last week, I could do so with that GIF from Con Air. You know the one.

Until a few weeks ago and with very few exceptions, the situation here was still a full lockdown. You could go to the grocery store, a pharmacy, and book stores, but not much else. No gyms, no restaurants, no travel. Add to that the miserable fact that winter kept on wintering until late May. And this had been the situation since November, so for roughly six months it was a pretty boring and repetitive existence.

I’ve done my part at being a good soldier in the Battle Against the Pandemic: I’ve worn the right masks, isolated as much as possible, avoided public transportation, got tested with frequency. But even the toughest soldier breaks down when the battle goes on and on.

I don’t want to say I completely lost my cool, but I was getting edgy. I watched my native land host drive-thru vaccination centers. Anyone could get one to the point where the only problem seemed to be that there were too many doses. Meanwhile Europe floundered, seemingly brought to its knees by bureaucracy and over-planning. Not a few people hypothesized in exasperation that most of us might not feel a needle in this calendar year.

Then, things changed quickly. In May, people began getting vaccines, businesses were reopening (with tests and masks) and limited travel was possible. We started emerging from our living rooms-turned-caves and emerged into the sun and fresh air. So, yeah,  many of us now have a greater appreciation for that Nic Cage GIF.

It was around the same time that I became aware that Poland had opened up much of its forests to wild camping. This was especially welcome news as I had been jonesing to go camping (not incidentally) since the government said it was illegal to do so. Contrary to Scandanavia, where there is a natural right to camp on public land, much of continental Europe is more restrictive about where you can pitch a tent and they became much more restrictive during the pandemic.

So when Poland made its announcement, I was ready to roll in a matter of days. I booked my rental car, loaded up my backpack and camera gear, and set off.

Choosing the Equipment

Picking a camera is, without fail, the hardest part of my pre-trip checklist. I have a long and storied legacy of overpacking for almost any trip, and have schlepped around with too many cameras enough times to understand the value of a minimal kit.

Few things have ever felt heavier than did this backpack on the morning of departure.

But just because a kit is minimal doesn’t mean it’s easier to decide what to bring. In fact, it makes it much harder to pick between cameras. I imagined this time would be easier. I told myself that this year would be the year I get serious mileage with my Pentacon Six. There needs to be a return on the investment as I’ve spent the last year buying accessories and nearly the entire lineup of Carl Zeiss Jena lenses, along with professional servicing for two of them. The benefits of using such a camera are its big 6×6 negatives and all of that awesome glass.

Unfortunately for the Pentacon, a week earlier I had received a small battery cover for my Nikon F4. The poor F4 had been on the Injured Reserve for about two years after it suffered a battery leak 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean. It took two years for me to finally suck it up and pay what I thought was a crazy amount of money for the small piece of plastic which would again make the camera function. But, as soon as that little piece of plastic arrived and the F4 powered up again, there was no doubt who would be joining me. It was a reunion for the ages.

Weird human-camera emotions aside, the F4 would be especially useful on this particular trip. My destination was the Sudetes Mountains of southwestern Poland, which are peppered with waterfalls (which I wrote about photographing before) and beautiful vistas (which, unsurprisingly, I’ve also covered). I was focusing on the former, and knowing that I’d be encountering challenging metering scenarios, the matrix meter of the F4 offered time savings that the Pentacon couldn’t.

So the F4 went into my camera cube, along with the 24mm f/2.8 AF-D, 35mm f/2 AF-D and the 80-200 f/4.5 AI Nikkor lenses. I also packed my tripod and L bracket from 3 Legged Thing and a shutter release cable.

There was no doubt about the film. Considering that I wanted punchy colors and a slow speed, Kodak Ektar was a no brainer. I also wanted to see how its relatively warm tones would balance out with what I expected to be overwhelmingly cooler toned locations.

In spite of the small AF-D lenses, this kit was heavy. I once nicknamed the F4 “Wristbreaker” with any big lens on it, and the 80-200 certainly qualified. Packed into my backpack along with all the camping gear, I’d be lugging around at least 75 pounds. I had my first flash of doubt that I was in over my head as I threw the backpack over my shoulder and headed for the U-Bahn that would take me to the rental car agency, and then the open road.

Searching for Waterfalls

One of Poland’s few ski regions in the winter, and a hiking paradise year round, the southwestern portion of Lower Silesia is fantastic for outdoors enthusiasts and photographers alike. There are tons of climbable peaks, hundreds of miles of trails and waterfalls galore.

First, a note on waterfalls. I am not a “waterfall guy.” Yes, I know that I have written about them before. Yes, in that article I used up my allotment of TLC references. Yes, nearly all the photos you see in this article are of waterfalls or water shot at slow speed.

But please don’t make me be the waterfall guy.

Look, I like them. I think it’s hard to find a better shooting experience in nature. The worse the overcast sky the better, you get the awesome soundtrack of the rushing water as you’re shooting, the fact that the water is constantly moving and therefore each image is a different waterfall. There’s just something zen about it.

Plus I think they are more difficult to shoot than we give them credit for. You want a long exposure but not “too long,” if you’re shooting without an onboard meter, you have to account for any ND filters mentally, and composition is trickier than you might expect.

On a trip to the U.S. two years ago I took my first swing at it. It was a good start, although I learned the hard way the importance of proper footwear. I was shooting a Nikon D700 then, and could adjust as needed with the luxury of immediately seeing the result. This time, in Poland, I wouldn’t have that safety net.

One of my favorite locations of the whole trip was the one I found almost from the beginning. While driving to a place called “Dead Man’s Curve” I spotted water moving quickly. It would have been easy to miss as it was shrouded by a line of pines, but I turned around, parked on a logging trail and walked in to find it.

What it ended up being was a type of man-made damming of the Kwisa River, which in turn created a small waterfall. There was no official name to the place. No signs on the road, no indication on Google Maps. But it was my favorite spot of the weekend. It was a secluded part of what’s generously called a river, just off the road, but still easy to miss from the road. The only sound being the waterfall and the moving water as it cascaded down and further to the town of Świeradów-Zdrój 15 miles away.

I came back to this spot the next day. It was more overcast, which made it even better for long exposures. I brought my Billy Can and backpacking burner and cooked up some pasta as I watched the water roll past, camera on the tripod only a few feet away. It was a perfect moment, and I even drank water right out of the stream. Anyone who knows me would call you insane if you said I did that.

After eating I spent a few hours lazily looking for compositions, but mostly taking my time and soaking up the peacefulness. Other locations from that weekend were interesting enough, but nothing matched that spot which bookended the whole trip. I never saw another person while I was there, and no one knew where I was. Corona didn’t exist here. Lockdowns didn’t exist here. Work didn’t exist here. Masks didn’t exist. All that existed was me, the camera and the scene. For a few hours it was the whole world, and as a world, it was enough.

The Big Boy: Wodospad Kamieńczyka

In all my research on the area I visited, one waterfall stood out among the rest.

At an elevation of 846 meters (2776 feet,) the Wodospad Kamieńczyka is the highest waterfall in the Polish Sudetes Mountains. Cascading in three levels for 27 meters (88 feet), it pools before falling again through an incredibly narrow gorge and eventually linking up with the nearby Kamienna River.

There’s an old Polish legend that the waterfall contains the tears of seven nymphs, who were mourning another that died in the gorge while searching for the mortal man she had fallen in love with. Against the warnings of the other nymphs, she trusted the man with a bunch of jewels which he then turned around and sold to pay for his mother’s healthcare. (Seriously.) When he didn’t return to the nymph, she went in search of him and, distracted by the waterfall, fell into the abyss.

Say what you will about Central Europe, but there’s no denying they have the best folk tales. (For the record, I didn’t see any nymphs during my visit, and all Poles are covered by health insurance.)

Today, the waterfall is one of the region’s busiest tourist locations. It was the only thing that cost me money to see (10 złoty, or $2.73) On my first day of exploring, I drove past in the afternoon and both parking lots were overflowing. I returned the next morning at 9:30, expecting to have the place to myself as it was a Sunday and Poland often seems more devoutly Catholic than even Vatican City.

I climbed up the mountain in search of nymphs and the falls. The path (no doubt designed by a sadist) was straight up the mountain (no switchbacks here) and was covered in rocks the size of softballs, making it both incredibly uncomfortable and dangerous to anyone without ankle support.

Finally I reached a small booth where (unbeknownst to me) you have to get a hardhat. I quickly understood why, as you walk down a narrow series of metal staircases bolted to the side of the gorge. Being above rushing water, they’re always wet, and surprisingly dangerous. The journey was immediately worth it as the waterfall was spectacular. I set up my tripod, attached the 24mm f/2.8 (which gets more legendary each year) and an ND 0.6 filter, and got to work. I found my composition, getting the maximum amount of the falls, with moss-covered rocks in the foreground and with the absolute minimum amount of sky.

It was a slightly tricky exposure as the sky was very bright and the rocks quite dark. I exposed for the rocks and hoped to reign the sky back later. If memory serves, the final image was shot at f/16 for 2 seconds.

This one shot is where the whole trip paid off. I’m my own toughest critic, but I really enjoy this image. Every decision that went into it improved the final result. Waiting to come back in the morning, choosing Ektar, exposing for the foreground. Some prefer to get more detail in the moving water, but I prefer the longer exposure to make the milkiest, smokiest effect as I can.

I look at this photo and would be satisfied if it’s the last waterfall I ever photograph.

A few misses, and one stupid mistake.

For every great image, there are many duds and a few near misses. Sometimes we risk ruining absolutely everything by making a stupidly basic mistake.

The first is a shot that just didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped. After my first attempt to visit Kamieńczyka, I continued on the road and eventually saw a tree that still held orange leaves from the previous autumn. I assume they’re from last fall. I don’t know for sure. The leaves were orange.

I set up the camera and framed the shot. I shot with the 80-200 at 200mm and opened to the widest aperture (I think, more on that next) to get as much separation between the sapling and the big pines in the background. While I like the image enough, there’s still not enough separation for my taste. It feels like an image that’s 80 percent there.

And now, the stupid, basic mistake.

On the back of my F4 is something called the MF-23 Multi Control Data Back. It’s basically a sophisticated data back that opens up the F4 to many cool tricks it otherwise can’t do. It allows for interval-timing, data encoding, exposure delay, long exposures, auto bracketing, and allows for freeze focusing. It can even be used as an alarm clock. It turns the stud F4 into a thoroughbred, and still fetches prices close to three figures today.

I use mine to encode exposure data between frames. That way I can look at the negatives later and have a record of all the settings that went into each frame. I thought that’s what I had it set to when I left Berlin. In fact, I had it set to something else. What exactly I don’t know, but upon getting my scans back I saw red numbers in the bottom right corner of all my images. I laughed out loud, knowing exactly what had happened, even if I didn’t know what the seemingly random numbers meant. I haven’t gotten my negatives back yet but I’m assuming the exposure data won’t be between the frames as I’d planned. (Hence why I won’t know for sure if that sapling was really shot wide open or not.)

This mistake meant that I had to go in and spot heal all the digital numbers out of my scans, and it essentially eliminates the value of printing from the negatives. Luckily I ordered uncompressed TIFs from my lab, and will still be able to make some big prints from the scans.

It just goes to show you that no matter how cool and helpful a piece of tech is, nothing is dingus proof.

Final Reflections

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about slimming down my camera collection. As part of that, I highlighted the manual focus zoom lenses that would be getting put on the chopping block. This includes the lens I used most on this trip, the AI 80-200 f/4.5. I had originally bought that lens to be used on the F4. But when the F4 sat in the closet, this zoom languished in purgatory. (I honestly can’t stand using these old lenses on modern digital cameras, with the lens profiles, etc.) I decided to give it a go on this trip before listing it for sale and I’m really glad that I did.

Without exaggerating, this lens blew me away. Color rendition was truly outstanding. Sharpness was unbelievable at every aperture except f/4.5. I used this lens for one weekend and it singlehandedly has mellowed my view on the quality of manual zooms. I still think I’d prefer to have one of the f/2.8 modern versions, but I have nothing negative to say about this one. If you can get this lens (which costs less than $50), do it yesterday. It’s that good.

I’ve also learned not to skimp on the accessories. Too many times I had to readjust my tripod, and my filters are nothing to brag about. It feels like it’s time to make a better investment there. It might feel trivial, but those little annoyances add up and life can only get better when they’re removed altogether.

After returning to Berlin, I felt like I had just gotten a shot of motivation mainlined into my arm. While my desire to get out and shoot was at record lows over the last year, this little trip to Poland helped me break out of my funk. It was also great to get out of the doldrums of pandemic city life. The wilderness was slightly overwhelming to this soft city boy, but it finally felt like a page was turning and there would be many more opportunities to travel and photograph new places in the near future.

I only got a few images that I really like. Maybe two or three. It’s not the best ratio for two rolls of film, but the ones I like, I really like. They’ve helped me re-engage and get my focus back. And if one image can do that, it’s worth the others being rubbish.

(Also, remember to always check that your date imprinting is turned off.)

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There it was: an email from my college’s administration. It said that there would be a 15-day break. The cause? “To re-evaluate certain circumstances.”

I remember packing diligently, not too much and not too little. A few favorite clothes, books alongside a few select memories, all enclosed into the trusty old cupboard. It would be opened very soon, we said to each other as we parted ways. That day still has not arrived. 

As the following hours weaved into days, and then months, I started to lose my profound hope for things to improve. Lost in the initial days of excitement for an unplanned holiday. Adrift amongst the cheers over canceled examinations. Led astray over the slowly transforming ritual of the days. And, finally, disoriented over the things we thought we had under control. 

It’s in one of these oblivious days of this past year that I found myself seeking a pocket of hope – some type of sanctuary – if only in my albums and my photographs of yesteryears. And, within this desperate attempt to preserve my sanity, I found myself coming back to a set of recent pictures I have from not too long ago.

They are pictures of a place you would only locate on a map with difficulty. A place disconnected from the rest of the country and lost in lieu of much grander travel destinations. This is a story about those pictures and Dapoli. A fishing village tucked away. A place where the hills meet the water. 

First, back to the packing. My family clearly doesn’t understand the concept of traveling light. It’s not an exaggeration to say that efficient travelers would take off for the hills at the sight of us. By now we have a standard checklist: 6 bags of clothes? Check. Sacks for a stadiums worth of people? Check. Random nicknacks? Double check. All of this for just a two-day trip? Hell yes! 

There are those that say the journey (and not the destination) is what counts. And I do genuinely try my best to make the most out of road trips. But it’s not that simple. I don’t think the people who write these maxims suffer from motion sickness or claustrophobia.

On top of that, I don’t think they had a younger brother to play cat and mouse with. There’s no instance on record in which the two of us agree on anything unilaterally. If I want the windows open, he wants the shut. If I want to go slow and steady, he’s gearing up “Need for Speed.” So it goes, and in this spirit our journey was underway.

The drive to the coast itself is long and arduous, rolling through multiple Ghats with stretches of road washed away by the treacherous Indian monsoon. Prolonged and curved pathways, slithering alongside the side of the hill and humming away with the constant droning of a diesel engine. It all makes me uncomfortable from time to time. 

Having said all of this, maybe you can appreciate why I pounce at every opportunity to take a break and stretch my legs. 

We had made one such stationary interlude to gather our senses when we saw the majesty of nature spread before us. In the valley ahead lay low-hanging clouds hugging the hills creating soft shadows  that were playing hide and seek with sudden breaks of light.

With my camera at hand, I went to work. Trying to do some kind of justice to the beauty that lay before us. Pulling up my Nikon FM2N, I let my instincts take over. The usual process began with mounting the 50mm and choosing a smaller aperture. The next step being metering for the shadows, followed by focusing and then composing the image. Closing the act with the final press of the button and hearing that metal shutter gently close. 

Looking back, maybe the photos would have done better with a wide-angle lens but, I’m happy with the results nonetheless. The added warmth of the Kodak film does actually help in balancing the images a bit. All in all it turned into a very successful pit stop. 

We arrived at our place of stay, disheveled and exhausted. With our stomachs desperately aching for attention, we headed to lunch and then crashed into our beds. 

After crashing and getting some rest, we finally made our way to the beach for the evening.

Being a hobbyist landscape photographer, I do love to head out a bit early and scout the location. When it comes to photographing coastlines, I look for shapes, sizes and structures – things that could help me compose a good photo. From leading lines to small puddles, there are many options for creating an interesting foreground. Unfortunately, the landscape that eventually greeted me at the seashore was a little boring. 

There weren’t any foreground assistants like rocks or stray driftwood to be found. Instead it was just a long stretch of sand, extending beyond the horizon. So after much deliberation, I packed away my DSLR and switched over to capturing moments on film. I loaded a roll of Fuji C200 and started taking pictures of my family, making them wait more than they would if I had a digital camera as I manually metered, focused and snapped the shutter.

But in the end I was incredibly glad for the experience. The scans I got back from the lab continue to bring me a huge amount of happiness. From the calmness of the environment to the pastel-like shades of the evening everything is just as I remember it to be. As the evening wore onto the night, the stars came out and the feeling was just magical. This was the time when my father’s Nikon D5100 made an arrival and we used it to capture a few star trails. 

The next day we went in search of a location that would allow us a view of the shore with more grandeur than the one we had the previous evening. After driving around in circles, we finally came across one such location. It was a long-abandoned construction platform by the side of the road. Jutting out of the hillside just enough, it was the perfect place to sit and soak up the expanse of views ahead. The village was set in the distance with tiny houses dotting the coast. Thickets of grass swayed along the hillside with the gentle breeze and, the air carried hints of fish and salt. It was the perfect place to reflect and disconnect, and we returned many times to this unique location for that very reason.

When people discuss India, many of the things that come up are its chaos, color, and entropy. And while that is true for the most part, exceptions can be found in the country’s nooks and crannies. There are places where one can be lost in the quiet and listen only to their thoughts. This is one of those places – one standing in contrast to the rest of India, to its people, its wind, and its character.

Travel a few hundred kilometers in either direction and you would find the crowds you see in much of the country. But they are not here. There’s no one encroaching on anything here. That’s what makes it so charming and unique.

The two days we spent in Dapoli went by in a blur. They were spent taking walks on the beach and enjoying the mouthwatering local cuisine of the Konkan region. We didn’t get to do everything we wanted, or visit everywhere we had planned, but we assured ourselves that a return trip wouldn’t be far in the future. 

None of us had any idea that this trip would be one of the last we would take for a long time.

From the footprints in the sand, the salty breeze, and the pockets full of tiny shells, everything from that weekend remains a transient reminder of the happier moments in life. It is also a reminder of the good times, an inspiration for enduring these uncertain ones. As the country continues to struggle, its these memories that help ground me and keep me optimistic for the future.

The images I took in those days come to life in the current landscape of grief and struggle. They are binding me to the future. One in which we can return to this place and enjoy moments of happy calmness. A future in which the struggles of today are a memory, and more images are created to treasure and inspire.

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“I don’t do landscapes” and Other Misguided Notions

My main limitation, I believe, was a narrow understanding of what landscape photography is or what it can be. I mostly thought of it as… well, Mark Knopfler said it better than I can: “The drawing room tea-set / Wants horses, sunsets / Sweet nothings – the seaside with yachts.”

I don’t claim any kind of moral high ground; I’ve taken my fair share of “sweet nothings” – pleasant but unoriginal photos of horses, sunsets and the rest. Sometimes the sky turns a certain shade of pink, a flock of birds takes flight and you gotta do what you gotta do. But I’m not just talking about landscape photography by dilettantes such as myself.

In 2012, I went to see an Ansel Adams exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. I was blown away by his compositions, dramatic timing and mastery over light and shade. But the exhibition did not move me, or make me think, as much as some others have – World Press Photo exhibitions, for example. Now clearly, this is just about my own preferences, and not a general slant against photographs that celebrate picturesque or sublime vistas. But it took me a while to discover the other forms of landscape photography are out there. Wanting to broaden my vistas (literally) was one reason for purchasing Perspectives on Place.

Perspectives on Place Overview

Perspectives on Place is written by JAP Alexander, a freelance photographer and writer. It features images by a number of photographers who have engaged with the landscape in diverse ways – from stalwarts of the past like Ansel Adams and Fay Godwin, to contemporary and postmodern work by artists such as Noémie Goudal and Tonk. Even Spirit, the NASA Mars rover, gets an entry.

The cover image – Hong Kong, Back Door 02 by Michael Wolf – sets the tone for what is to come. I’ve seen many photos of the Hong Kong skyline taken from the surrounding hills; in fact, I took one such photo myself when I was there in 2011. In Wolf’s place, many of us would have instinctively framed to exclude the plastic chair, but its inclusion makes it so much more surprising and thought-provoking. Who was sitting there, and why? What went through their mind? How much of the landscape – and philosophically speaking, how much of life – do we miss, when we fixate on the grand vista in the distance and ignore the seemingly mundane details closer at hand?

The binding, paper quality, print and layout are all excellent. I photographed some of the pages for this review, but they don’t really do it justice.

The images featured in the book include remote landscapes like glaciers (Jose Navarro) and national parks (Ansel Adams), but also shopping malls (Dan Holdsworth), unassuming Welsh villages (Keith Arnatt) and even computer-generated terrain (Joan Fontcuberta). Indeed, one of the key messages of the book – as Paul Hill says in the foreword – is that “you don’t have to go to remote or exotic places … to make landscape photographs. The land is … everywhere – in your backyard and garden, in retail parks and industrial estates, as well as in picturesque dingles and glens” (p6).

The book is designed as a “primer” (p13) – not just for “makers of landscape pictures” but for anyone who is interested in contemporary landscape photography. It has five chapters addressing broad conceptual themes such as Defining Nature (chapter 2) and Landscape and Power (chapter 4). At the end of each chapter, there are end notes indicating sources and further readings, ideas for projects and questions for research and discussion. As a casual reader I didn’t do the assignments myself, but I can see how they would add value, especially if the book is used as part of a (formal or informal) photography curriculum.

Technical Aspects

The book covers both technical topics – such as composition, lenses, filters, color temperature and the Zone System – as well as theoretical and philosophical aspects. The former, I found, is a bit general, and not detailed enough to be truly useful. But I can overlook that because there are many other “how-to books” for landscape photography on the market, which cover such topics more thoroughly.

In any case, I think such books can only take us so far. As someone with no formal education in photography, I found that after the first couple of years, once I’d got my head around basic technique  of exposure triangle, focal lengths, and so on, my learning curve hit a plateau. It took me a while to figure out what I needed to make further progress: engaging with the work of other photographers, learning more about history and critical theory, and reflecting on the “why” rather than the “how.” For me, Perspectives on Place delivers most solidly in these areas.

Even in the technical sections, it offers at least three things which most “how-to books” don’t. First, it avoids the trap of being too prescriptive – a refreshing change from books which try to brainwash beginners into following certain “rules.” For instance, after briefly introducing the rule of thirds, Alexander warns us that ‘adhering to such a formulaic approach for one’s own picture making is not conducive to a progressive approach’ (p27).

Second, the technical sections are illustrated not with generic images as in many other books, but with work by outstanding past and contemporary practitioners. Cartier-Bresson’s The Hauts-de-Seine ‘department’ illustrates the section on composition, and Fay Godwin’s Fence, Parkend Woods features in the section on formats and aspect ratios (unusually for a landscape photographer, Godwin used a 6×6 camera for much of her work).

Third, discussions of technique are interwoven with critical theory and aesthetics. Alexander says in the introduction that technique and theory are not really separable, and that this book “is designed to deliberately blur those false boundaries” (p13). The section on view-camera movements and tilt-shift lenses, for example, analyses Richard Page’s use of a skewed focal plane to suggest misinformation and uncertainty.

Landscape Theory and Philosophy

The theoretical discussions, illustrated with some excellent photographs and insightful captions, are truly eye-opening. Take for example Robert Adams’ assertion that landscape pictures can offer us “three varieties – geography, autobiography, and metaphor”. The quote, as it stands, is rather abstract, but Alexander brings it to life through an illuminating discussion and a series of examples, one of which is Dewald Botha’s Ring Road project. At a basic level, Botha’s photographs are a geographical record of a transport system in the city of Suzhou. But the ring road can also be seen a metaphor for an enclosure or defensive wall. Finally, for Botha, the metaphor also carries autobiographical connotations – linguistic and cultural barriers that can isolate the outsider.

The book also covers movements and trends in landscape photography including pictorialism, Group f/64 and the New Topographics school, as well as aesthetic issues such as “picturesque” and “sublime” depictions of landscape in painting and photography.

Among others, I enjoyed the discussion on WJT Mitchell’s theory that landscape is more usefully understood not as a noun but as a verb (as in, “to landscape”) – for example through cultivation, industrial development and other human interventions. More subtly, as Alexander says, framing and composing a photograph is also an act of “landscaping” – creating, reinforcing and sometimes subverting expectations of how the land should look.

Chapter 4 (Landscape and Power) is particularly concerned with such big questions. Some sections focus more on aesthetics, such as the “industrial sublime,” deadpan aesthetics, urban exploration and the allure of decay. Others address political issues like land ownership and access, environment and conservation, gender, national identity and minority perspectives.

Final thoughts

I won’t attempt to summarize or even list all the themes covered in this extraordinarily wide-ranging and thought-provoking book. Suffice to say, Perspectives on Place is ambitious in its scope, but strikes a really good balance between breadth and depth. Likewise, the theoretical discussions are comprehensive, but I did not find them difficult or dry. The photographs are well-chosen, and the captions really added to my understanding and appreciation. If I have a criticism, it is that the roster of photographers – mostly male, nearly all from Western Europe and North America – is unfortunately not as diverse as the range of landscapes and approaches represented in the book.

If you’re interested in the theoretical aspects of landscape photography, I believe Landscape: Theory (1980) edited by Carol Di Grappa is another excellent book. Unfortunately, I haven’t read it myself; it’s out of print and quite expensive (anyone want to lend me a copy?) Bloomsbury, publishers of Perspectives on Place, also have a sister volume on portraits: Train Your Gaze: A Practical and Theoretical Introduction to Portrait Photography by Roswell Angier. I’m currently reading this book, but so far (only a couple of chapters in), I find it less engaging than Perspectives on Place.

This is my first book review for Casual Photophile; my contributions so far have mostly consisted of gear reviews. And when reviewing gear, one of the best things I can say about it is that it makes me want to go out and take pictures. Perspectives on Place is the equivalent in book form. Turns out, I am into landscapes after all.

Buy the book here

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