Landscape and Memory and Layered ICM images

In Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama (1995) looks at the impact of history on our natural world and, conversely, the influence of nature on man.  He says that it is human imagination that turns nature into landscape, but this is also influenced by memory. Schama argues that there is no pure wilderness that is unaffected by man and that nature has been changed by human endeavour, but again the lives of people have been affected by nature.

Inspired by reading Landscape and Memory I decided once more to experiment with Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) imagery whilst working on the work for my body of work centered on the Witham Valley in Lincolnshire.  I wondered if Schama is correct in his supposition that landscape and memory are inextricably connected.  In order to explore this in each of the three images below I combined three or four ICM images in layers in Photoshop.  The opacity of the bottom layer was left at 100%, but the opacity of the layers above so that the viewer can see through to the layers or landscapes from earlier times below.  The idea of using ICM in the first place was to give the impression of looking through a blurred landscape to those that have gone before, perhaps a blurring of time. The different layers represent different intervals in time. In the case of my work a time when Celtic Iron Age chieftains made offerings to the gods of high value weaponry and boats, placing them in the clear marshy pools of the river; later medieval monks built the large number of abbeys in the valley, all within site of the mother church of Lincoln Cathedral.  At this time pilgrims may have walked through the valley from abbey to abbey or to the cathedral. In yet another landscape navvies were used to drain and canalize the river, many being killed in the process and today I walk from the cathedral to my boyhood village along the Viking Way long distance footpath visiting all of the abbeys on the route.  In her 2016 book Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places Anna Pavord argues that Time is stiched into a landscape, but time is measured by different kinds of clocks: geologic, historical, seasonal and diurnal.  She also says that 'The landscape stores the memories away'.

Whilst experimenting with this work I have researched the work of Valda Bailey, David Baker, Chris Friel and Frank Grisedale.  Each name has a link to other blogs.

Pavord, Anna. (2016) Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places, London. Bloomsbury

Schama, S. (1995) Landscape and Memory London, Harper Collins