Proximity and Distance in Northern Landscape Photography - Contemporary Criticism, Curation, and Practice

Abstract

Matrix of Movement: Post Industrial Wetlands of the North West

Tracy Hill considers in her chapter ‘Matrix of Movement’ how wetlands have long been represented as places of darkness, disease and death within Western culture. Despite increasing recognition for the need to readjust our perceptions and to acknowledge their environmental importance as living landscapes there is, as yet, little imagery to promote this new way of seeing.

By challenging historic perceptions of wetlands through her artworks, Hill explores specifically how dislocation can be reconnected with our human multisensory response to place through emotion and memory. By adopting digital mapping technology as a basis for her imagery Hill offers a view beyond human visual capability which, when combined with the traditions of a hand created mark, results in a re-imagined vision linking technical and aesthetic, bringing a unique vision of journeys taken on foot through a post-industrial Northern landscape.

Research projects ‘Matrix of Movement’ and ‘Haecceity’ propose new cross-disciplinary ideas, bringing together the worlds of fine Art, environmental sciences, conservation as well as Industrial and commercial surveying offering new ways of seeing unique northern wetlands.