Course reflection and evaluation.

Course reflection and evaluation.

At the outset of this course I had little idea what I was getting into.  Up until that time my idea of a landscape was what my eye could see rather that what the painter or photographer saw when the image was formed.   Not only was I missing what he saw but also the message behind what he intended me to see when viewing the image. 

An Old Master landscape hanging in an ancestral pile now reveals itself as a declaration of power as well as wealth.  The paintings of Yosemite and the photographs of the railway opening up the American West are now seen as depicting both man's dominance over the wild country and as adverts to others to, “Come out West," and help open up the new territories.  

The essays in The Mind’s Eye by Henri Cartier Bresson, On Photography by Susan Sontag and Between the Eyes by David Levi Strauss have shown me how powerful images can be and how images can be composed and presented to get across a message.  Whilst I already realised how political images could be I feel I now have an understanding as to what makes a powerful image and how I can take and present them for myself.  

Fay Godwin’s pictures in Our Forbidden Land,  which often contain ironic messages and contrary notes, have led me to look the for the anomalous and ironic.  I used such an image in my Self Directed Project where I showed a view of monolithic and blank faced tower block and a partly demolished slum area surrounded by white hoardings on which the council had written “Welcome to Dover.”  This style is one I may take through to the final part of the course.  

What I take from the course is the wish to see more in a landscape than just its scenic beauty: to try and capture the sense of the scene and not the scene itself.