Reading Landscape: Contemporary Landscape Photography
Reading Landscape presents a selection of contemporary photographers who work in the realm of the uninhabited: Sue Barr, Hélène Binet, Bleda y Rosa, Stephen Gill, Uta Kögelsberger, Anna Leader, Edgar dos Santos, Corinne Silva and Eva Stenram. These photographers read rather than record landscape and their authorial presence is often felt in the images – a set of photographic lights, a flare thrown into the night sky, dust gathered in the studio.
Some of the photographs articulate the unease that might be felt when confronted with rural landscape, removing the comfort of the density of the built environment. Other photographs show landscapes that we may take for granted, whose history belies a less sanguine past. Originating in the early 17th century, the word landscape was initially a painters’ term describing natural scenery; only 300 years later did it come to refer to the land itself. Reading Landscape explores this gap between the real and the revealed: the space between, where dreams and fears reside.