New article hot off the press: 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.
This is an essay on contemporary landscape photography commissioned by the Riga Photography Biennial to accompany its 2020 edition, dedicated to the explorations of the concept of landscape. Learn more about the Riga Photography Biennial on its website, www.rpbiennial.com.
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 this article and my long-term collaboration with Riga Photography Biennial here.
Riga, September 15, 2020. Photo: Hon Sun Lam.
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.
Download the full article pdf.
And greetings from a VR exhibit during COVID-19 pandemic! Riga Photography Biennial main exhibition at the Riga Art Space, Riga, Latvia, September 15, 2020.
