Neither Here Nor There: An Investigation Into The Role Of The Photographer’s Subjective View in Landscape Photography.

This thesis will examine the role of a landscape photographer’s subjective view in the construction of a photographic image by considering the significance of their photographic intent, visual relationship to the physical world and personal relationship to place. I will deconstruct my series Neither Here Nor There, examining the significance of investing my own history of experience and memory into the photograph in order to explore my relationship to the landscapes I have lived in. The paper will examine the roles of the photographer and the viewer when reading a photograph, using Susan Sontag’s ideas of authority within the photograph from On Photography, Roland Barthes’ concept of the ‘punctum’ from Camera Lucida, and Robert Adams’ essay Truth and Landscape, to investigate how a photographer forms intent within his photographs. Drawing on Kaja Silverman’s World Spectators, the paper will go on to explore an individual’s visual relationship with the physical world whilst maintaining the core idea of exploring the photographer’s intentionality within a photograph by using the practice of Thomas Joshua Cooper as an example of a photographer who claims authority over his images. The thesis then analyses how concepts of place influence this conversation by using Yi Fu Tuan’s Space and Place to investigate an individual’s relationship with the physical world. Taking Italo Calvino’s Mr Palomar and Rinko Kawauchi’s photographic series The Eyes, The Ears as examples, the paper looks at the representation of an individual’s relationship to the physical world through their internal solipsistic view. The essay concludes with an explanation of how my photographic series Neither Here Nor There, tackles the issue of the representation of the photographer’s intent and subjectivevision, by offering an autobiographical reaction to my own sense of place.