Exercise 4.3: A subjective voice.

A subjective voice.

My view of landscape is a simple one and consists of what I see in front of me when when I look beyond the confines of a building.  I could be the view from the the Turner gallery in Margate looking out to sea with the iconic yellow and black marker buoy framed by the vertical window frame.  It could Uluru at dawn or a Sri Lankan beach at dusk.  More likely it is the mundane changing seasons affecting the local fields,woods and sea around Deal where I live.  

A familiar landscape is never the same, as time, weather and lighting make both temporary and permanent  changes.  The Twelve Apostles, a set of sea stacks off Victoria in Australia, are now down to eight.  The storms of 1986/7 reduced a beech lined walk in High Elms Bromley to 15 trees with dozens of others felled by the wind. The local fields are turning yellow with rape seed with the red of the poppies soon to follow. 

When I visit or, even better, revisit a location I try and pick out what has changed.  The closed factory, or public house and the changing fortunes of houses and streets. 

I have visited Sri Lanka twice, once before the tsunami and during the island’s war, and again in 2012 with the war over and much of the tsunami damage still visible.  On the first visit the impression was of a rather tired and time locked  place.  The tsunami left scars on both the landscape and the people but the end of the war made for the largest change.  Sri Lanka was open for business again and had built itself new roads and an infrastructure and was no longer stuck in the 1970s, where the effects of the war had held it.  The driving was as bad but the roads were better.  The country’s change of fortunes had wrought many changes that were mainly for the good and has brought in changing attitudes to how they use their land and how they want the tourist to see it.  Same place but very different landscapes.