Landscape in practice | quiz

The photos show Morskie Oko, the most famous mountain lake in Poland. Although they appear accurately to depict a section of a natural landscape located in a national park, they adhere to a stylistic tradition originating in 19th-century painting. This tradition portrays nature as timeless, pristine, powerful, sublime and distant from human activities. Thus, these images reproduce the conventional representation of natural landscapes widely used in various media today, and living up to tourists’ expectations.

Additional questions:

• What are the sources of contemporary visual conventions for representing landscapes (for example, National Geographic photography)?
• In what media other than painting or photography are landscapes represented (for example, film, literature)?
• What conventions can be identified (for example, post-apocalyptic landscapes)?
• Do different media allow us to present different aspects of a landscape? (For example, films make it possible to show changes taking place over time.)

Morskie Oko is one of the most popular destinations in the Tatra Mountains and can be reached quite easily by car or bus. Although getting there also requires a long walk, this is nothing like trekking or climbing. Therefore, the photos show an idealised object of desire that meets tourists’ expectations, which are shaped by the current iconography of a natural landscapes, among other things. The photos depict the lake as a spectacular view of an area seemingly untouched by humans. In so doing, they perpetuate the notion of landscapes as picturesque scenery to be admired from afar.

Additional questions:

• What is overlooked in conventional representations of landscapes (for example, other senses and bodily experiences)?
• What can the result of identifying a landscape as a spectacular one be (for example, insensibility to landscapes deemed ‘spoilt’ by humans)?
• Does the spectacular character of a landscape have to be accompanied by other qualities? (For example, no, such a landscape does not have to be ecologically valuable.)

The concept of a landscape is often associated with places of global significance, which are therefore worthy of particular care and protection. This value may result from biological or ecological factors, or from cultural or historical conditions. Consequently, places that appear ordinary and everyday from a global perspective, as defined by the tourist industry, are not considered landscapes worthy of interest or protection. However, landscapes do not need to be spectacular to be significant. As the environments and spaces in which people go about their everyday lives, they are an important element of the inhabitants’ identity that may not be recognised or acknowledged by outsiders. However, this does not change the fact that, from the inhabitants’ perspective, everyday landscapes, incomparable to others since experienced ‘from within’, may play a much more important role than outstanding or spectacular landscapes.

Additional questions:

• What values may everyday landscapes have (for example, those associated with local traditions or personal memories)?
• What threats does limiting protection to outstanding landscapes bring (for example, lack of control over planning and management of ordinary landscapes, disregard for local traditions and destruction of the genius loci)?
• What are the pros and cons of promoting landscapes of outstanding value (for example, their protection versus their museification and commodification)?

The landscape has a spatial and a temporal dimension: that is to say, it changes over time. Indeed, landscapes can be considered as continuous processes during which various changes may occur. The dynamic nature of landscapes is reflected in their multilayeredness; subsequent historical periods leave material traces as a consequence of human activity at different times. Therefore landscapes can be said to consist of layers of meaning, and in this sense, every landscape is a record of its own history. Understanding its structure enables us to grasp the conditions in which people lived and what they did in a given place at a specific historical moment. At the same time, one can identify the historical factors responsible for the ‘shape’ of a landscape at a given moment, including the present.

Additional questions:

• What examples of processes guaranteeing the continuity of a landscape can you give (for example, adapting historic monuments to new needs)? What phenomena disrupt continuity? (e.g. cataclysms and wars)?
• What can the continuity or rupture of a landscape influence (for example, its appearance, the identity of its inhabitants)?
• What relation can there be between the history of a landscape and its genius loci? (For example, one can see many layers of a landscape forming a coherent whole.)

The rural landscape has traditionally been represented in art and literature in an idealised manner. The countryside is often depicted as a land of peace, happiness and abundance. However, this approach overlooks the fact that, like any other cultural landscape, the rural landscape is the result of human labour, which is necessarily linked to power relations expressed through economic and political relationships that imply inequality, injustice, violence and exclusion. The resulting landscape allows us to see the material traces of these relationships and reconstruct them to understand the economic and social conditions in which people lived in the past. This enables us to understand not only the relationships between people and their environment, but also the relationships between people themselves, that is, the character of the communities that inhabited a landscape. The landscape also makes it possible to study how these conditions have changed.

Additional questions:

• What can idealised images of landscapes hide (for example, the poverty of people working in them, exploitation, the privileged position of the person who entertains such an image)?
• On what basis can you identify the economic and social factors determining the shape of a landscape (for example, field size, urban structure)?