Alise Tifentale, “Is This the Right Time for Landscape Photography?” in Zane Zajančkauska, ed., Riga Photography Biennial 2020 (Riga: Riga Photography Biennial, 2020), 27-31. ISBN 978-9934-8832-1-7
Excerpt:
Resources about the history and theory of landscape photography are abundant, and there is no point in reiterating any of them here. For example, one of the most recent additions to the literature is the thematic issue "Photography and Landscape" of the journal Photographies (2019, 12(2)). lt lays out and summarizes current European theoretical approaches and most relevant keywords in discussing landscape in photography since the 1980s.
The focus of the journal's special edition is Eurocentric (i.e. referring mostly to processes and individuals from Germany, France, and ltaly, touching upon also the UK and Spain) with constant references to the United States, but the themes the articles touch upon cover most of what is currently debated in the field of photography theory and history, including but not limited to subjects such as "visualizing the newly emergent post-industrial landscapes,” "artistic strategies of uncovering the traces of historic events", "visualizing the insidious effect of globalization," "spatial turn", "geo-photography,” and "post-human condition".
Meanwhile, the purpose of my article is to depart from these well-known and safe directions and instead seek alternative ways of approaching the question I posed in the title, I shall do that by looking at the metaphorical data landscape, or the role and meaning of "landscape" in popular photography.
Author’s note. The essay was written in January and February 2020, just before the COVID-19 outbreak, and published in August 2020, just after the most severe restrictions had been lifted and a biennale could take place in Riga, Latvia. Although written just a few months earlier, the essay today seems to belong to some distant time and place, to a world that, likely, will remain only in our memories.
Learn more about the Riga Photography Biennial on its website, www.rpbiennial.com.
Learn more about my contributions to earlier editions of Riga Photography Biennial:
2016: "Taking the Selfie Seriously: A Study of the Most Misunderstood Genre of Photography," a talk I presented at the symposium "Image and Photography in the Post-Digital Era" as part of the Riga Photography Biennial 2016 programming. Read more about the talk here.
2016: "The Networked Camera at Work: Why Every Self-Portrait Is Not a Selfie, but Every Selfie is a Photograph," an article published in Santa Mičule, ed., Riga Photography Biennial 2016 (Riga: Riga Photography Biennial, 2016), 74-83. Read the article here.
2018: "The Family of Man (1955) and the Family of Photographers: Insiders and Outsiders of the Most Famous Photography Exhibition," a talk I presented at the international symposium "Now Memories" as part of the Riga Photography Biennial 2018 programming. Read more about the topic of my talk here.