SM 406
Landscapes
Australian Landscape
Whilst in Australia in October 2004 I took a series of photographs on the subject of my relationship with the land. I have lived and worked in Australia for 20 years, approximately 10 of those on a sheep property in outback New South Wales. This experience of immersion in landscape has informed my views on phenomenology and the body. It seems clear to me that a relationship to an environment is more than the cognitive and emotional interaction of a bordered self with an exterior. Immersion in an environment seems to dissolve the boundaries surrounding one’s individuality. The physical senses of the body expand their experience outwards, blurring the distinctions between inside and out. One’s embodiment is of the landscape. The sense of space, the seasons, the habitual behaviour of animals, small details of plants, insects and weather, become weighted with meaning that determine one’s behaviour. The patterns of bodily activity across the land and through the seasons become the patterns of one’s own body and mind. When such an environment is lost, it is like the loss of part of one’s self. Like ‘losing your right arm’ as the saying goes. Suddenly you become alien. Uprooted like a plant ripped out of the soil and thrown down on tarmac.