Space and Place - Landscapes

Places

Place is Security.  We tend to anchor our personalities in objects or place/space.  Calm center of established values.   Shelter and attachment.   Boundaries.  Centers of felt value.  We endow place with value over time.

Place is how a landscape is felt.   It has qualities of life, how it’s viewed.   Seeing as place means we see connections and attachments between people and place.  Shared values, shared understanding.

Photography – Making sense about the landscape around us.

Place implies things.  “My place” suggests ownership a place of privacy and belonging.

A new place has space and volume.  It’s new to you, but it has history.  We make the place ours by extending our identity to it.   Place making – changing a place/landscape/building.  Redecoration as an example of extending our identity.

Place – A space that people have made meaningful. 

Sense of Place:  Evoking a feeling of being there.

Place does not have natural meaning.  Meaning is derived from people.  Things and practices are links to place.  When links are broken, when people acted out of place, it is considered a transgression.

How we make sense of the world defines how we see or know the world.  Different ways of making sense leads to different understandings of how the world is seen.

Place is not something to observe and write about.  It is itself.  How we see it influences how we communicate about it.

Things that are not fact or axiomatic are social constructs.   A shared base of understanding.

Place is not static and subject to change.  Place can move, grow, and erode.  Place is dynamic and changes over time.  

To understand place, you need to understand its connections.

Placelessness:   A place that has lost it’s meaning.   That has lost it’s shared values.   Or, a place that hasn’t developed meaning or meaning of little value.

Approaches to Place:

Ø  Descriptive – Common sense approach as we think about place.

Ø  Social Constructionist Approach – Define the underlying social processes

Ø  Phenomenological Approach – Seeks to define the essence of human existence as one that is in place.

Ø  Connection to place, person, thing – Things are not viewed or thought about in a void.  All images are populated.

All three are equally important.

Interconnect ways of thinking:

Ø  A close connection between place and singular form of identity.  

Ø  A desire to show how the place is authentically rooted in history.   Embedded place in history is a form of creation of myth.

Ø  A need for a clear sense of boundaries around a place.

Edges, edges, edges.

Most places are the product of everyday practices.  Reiteration of practices of mundane activities used on a daily basis.

Place is forced on us.   Tourist spots, why the place is important.  Monuments, Social practices, advertising, etc…

Place can be a holding place for understanding.    Thing “a” does not exist here, but exists there.   Crime, abuse, etc...   Heaven falls in the category for understanding death as a place.

House

House is the 1^st universe. The corner of the world.  With minimal sense of shelter, man’s imagination fills in the gaps of “home” in reality and the virtual.   Assumptions and experience create an entire history, or story.  House tends to be viewed as inhabited.

House:  Presumption of family.   In context with surroundings.   Condition of ones identity.   Provides a sense of belonging.   A center of human relationships (which is changed – Farm as providing everything to Farm and land as a commodity).  Levels and size suggest strength.

Abandoned Place is a place of disconnect or solitude.  An isolated house seems more vulnerable.

There is a dynamic relationship between House and the Universe.

Space

Space is Freedom.  Not just physical, but how we interact with it.   Suggests the future and invites action.  Before action is imagination.  Exposed and vulnerable.  Venture and freedom.  Limitless.  Alone, thoughts roam freely over space.  With people, thoughts are pulled back due to the awareness of others.

Space is more abstract than place.  

 Inside – Defined and Enclosed.

Outside – Immense – Infinite.  We tend to see objects as complete.  Our minds fill in what isn’t in view.

Border:  There is always a border.  Door, window, or portal that is a threshold.

People tend to suppress that which they cannot express:

            You can express it (show it), Suppress it (hide it), or Transform it (Reframe it).

Symbol:  Not all words are definable, nor can we hope to define it.  When a mind explores a symbol, it is lead to an idea beyond the grasp of reason.  We use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we can’t fully comprehend.

In-Between Places:

Taking roads off the beaten path.   Highways and freeways start everywhere, but go nowhere.  They have their own culture.    To stop at places that are not point A or point B allows a pause, reflection, and the chance to photograph something most people don’t.

Tourism:

Traditional tourism means going to sites or monuments or parks.  But self-knowledge is something else.  We no longer see ourselves, but we see vanished cultures.  We see a celebrated place, celebrated garden or celebrated view.

When people start to participate emotionally in a landscape, then it’s uniqueness and beauty is revealed to you.  

By associating man and his actions in an imaginary realm or exotic or splendid setting, his importance and uniqueness are magnified.

Goal:  To actively use photography to explore and understand new landscapes.  To share my experiences so that others may also learn to explore the mundanity of our lives for deeper levels of meaning and understanding.

Discover: 

To notice or learn, especially by making an effort.   To obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time.   Gain sight or knowledge.  Get to know or become aware of, usually accidentally.

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.

The discovery of a thing is wrapped in the emotions of realization and awareness.  It’s that point when we realize a connection with another person, a place, or our self.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

Exploration:

Exploring sparks creativity and encourages serendipity.  We see things that reward not just scrutiny, but thoughts.  Put things in special context or arrange them in time, and they acquire immediate value.  The most ordinary things make sense of other things.  Exploration is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness.

Explore:

To search into or travel in for the purpose of discovery.

Consciousness naturally resists anything unconscious and unknown.  We have stripped many ideas of their emotional meaning.  Conventional reactions use a controlled response to an event.    We are so accustomed to the rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imaging anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense.

Reason, Observation, Imagination, Intuition, Emotion, Myth, Dream and Faith are all tools that help form understanding.  Mystery, secrets, desires and ego are the motivators that compel us to explore things we do not understand.    Everything is brought in to be added or discarded from our identity.

Discover: 

To notice or learn, especially by making an effort.   To obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time.   Gain sight or knowledge.  Get to know or become aware of, usually accidentally.

Experience:  Constructs reality.

-       Sense and perception – Sensation.

-       Conceptualization – Perception

-       Symbolization – Conception.

Emotion tints all experience including thought.  Though tints all human experience including emotions.  Emotion and Thought are one, not opposites.

I want to find those places where our thoughts, emotions, and imagination converge.   Those places of intense personal intimacy that fostered imagination and dream.  Place is not limited to the traditional definition of landscapes.

Everything comes alive when contradictions accumulate.

Authentic/Authenticity:  True to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.   Not false.  The perception of art as faithful to the artist’s self, rather than conforming to external values such as historical tradition, or commercial worth.  

Ordinary:  Everyday experience is essential to the formation of human meaning.  When hyper-reality or elevated places of meaning are taken too seriously, the everyday environment is overlooked and undervalued.

Humanity:

“Humanity needs a Place to Exist.”

Humanity:  State of being human.  Human Nature – Characteristics we have in common.  Human condition.  Quality or condition of being human.

Humanities:  Study of the human condition.