Imagining Landscapes

The landscapes of human habitation are not just perceived; they are also imagined. What part, then, does imagining landscapes play in their perception? The contributors to this volume, drawn from a range of disciplines, argue that landscapes are 'imagined' in a sense more fundamental than their symbolic representation in words, images and other media. Less a means of conjuring up images of what is 'out there' than a way of living creatively in the world, imagination is immanent in perception itself, revealing the generative potential of a world that is not so much ready-made as continually on the brink of formation. Describing the ways landscapes are perpetually shaped by the engagements and practices of their inhabitants, this innovative volume develops a processual approach to both perception and imagination. But it also brings out the ways in which these processes, animated by the hopes and dreams of inhabitants, increasingly come into conflict with the strategies of external actors empowered to impose their own, ready-made designs upon the world. With a focus on the temporal and kinaesthetic dynamics of imagining, Imagining Landscapes foregrounds both time and movement in understanding how past, present and future are brought together in the creative, world-shaping endeavours of both inhabitants and scholars. The book will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists and archaeologists, as well as to geographers, historians and philosophers with interests in landscape and environment, heritage and culture, creativity, perception and imagination.

Landscapes is a timely and well-written analysis of the meaning of cultural landscapes. The book delves into the layers of meaning that are invested in ordinary landscapes as well as landscapes of spectacle and power. Landscapes is a powerful and vivid application of the new cultural geography to case studies not previously visited within cultural geography texts.

The landscapes of human habitation are not just perceived; they are also imagined. What part, then, does imagining landscapes play in their perception? The contributors to this volume, drawn from a range of disciplines, argue that landscapes are 'imagined' in a sense more fundamental than their symbolic representation in words, images and other media. Less a means of conjuring up images of what is 'out there' than a way of living creatively in the world, imagination is immanent in perception itself, revealing the generative potential of a world that is not so much ready-made as continually on the brink of formation. Describing the ways landscapes are perpetually shaped by the engagements and practices of their inhabitants, this innovative volume develops a processual approach to both perception and imagination. But it also brings out the ways in which these processes, animated by the hopes and dreams of inhabitants, increasingly come into conflict with the strategies of external actors empowered to impose their own, ready-made designs upon the world. With a focus on the temporal and kinaesthetic dynamics of imagining, Imagining Landscapes foregrounds both time and movement in understanding how past, present and future are brought together in the creative, world-shaping endeavours of both inhabitants and scholars. The book will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists and archaeologists, as well as to geographers, historians and philosophers with interests in landscape and environment, heritage and culture, creativity, perception and imagination.

The landscapes of human habitation are not just perceived; they are also imagined. What part, then, does imagining landscapes play in their perception? The contributors to this volume, drawn from a range of disciplines, argue that landscapes are 'imagined' in a sense more fundamental than their symbolic representation in words, images and other media. Less a means of conjuring up images of what is 'out there' than a way of living creatively in the world, imagination is immanent in perception itself, revealing the generative potential of a world that is not so much ready-made as continually on the brink of formation. Describing the ways landscapes are perpetually shaped by the engagements and practices of their inhabitants, this innovative volume develops a processual approach to both perception and imagination. But it also brings out the ways in which these processes, animated by the hopes and dreams of inhabitants, increasingly come into conflict with the strategies of external actors empowered to impose their own, ready-made designs upon the world. With a focus on the temporal and kinaesthetic dynamics of imagining, Imagining Landscapes foregrounds both time and movement in understanding how past, present and future are brought together in the creative, world-shaping endeavours of both inhabitants and scholars. The book will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists and archaeologists, as well as to geographers, historians and philosophers with interests in landscape and environment, heritage and culture, creativity, perception and imagination.

This book explores how lessons from past urban planning experiences can inform current debates on urban agriculture. Productive landscapes today have been posited as instruments for the positive transformation related to territorial fragility and abandonment, promoting social cohesion, food security and wider environmental and economic benefits. The book will re-map the way in which seeming landscape limitations and challenges can be turned into potential, innovation and a new lease of urban-rural life. It does so by drawing on significant past urban agricultural experiences in planning as vectors for new critical reflections relevant to re-igniting ideas for future envisioning of urban scenarios in which productive landscapes play fundamental transformative roles. The focus is on planning ideas and the roles of key individual planners, all of which have designed agricultural strategies for the city at some point in their careers. It intends to help us today reimagine urban-rural relationships, and the transformation of under or mis-used urban open spaces, peri-urban areas, fringe conditions and in-between spaces.

This gorgeously illustrated volume offers new perspectives on Helen Frankenthaler’s art, taking a detailed look at her large-scale paintings that allude to landscapes, both real and imagined. Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. A member of the second generation of postwar American abstract painters, she is widely credited with expanding the possibilities of abstraction through her invention of the soak-stain technique, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in highly personal ways. This volume explores references to landscape in Frankenthaler’s paintings over a period spanning more than two decades, beginning in 1952, just prior to her breakthrough to stain painting. Focusing on fourteen works, it examines an extraordinary variety of gesture, from linear drawing to areas of lush, stained color and flatter, more opaque applications of paint. An essay by art historian Robert Slifkin considers the complex evocations of space in Frankenthaler’s works of this period. Richly illustrated with full-color plates, details, and documentary photographs, Imagining Landscapes offers a close and detailed look at the artist’s approach to painting over this twenty-five-year period.

Many students come to African history with a host of stereotypes that are not always easy to dislodge. One of the most common is that of Africa as safari grounds—as the land of expansive, unpopulated game reserves untouched by civilization and preserved in their original pristine state by the tireless efforts of contemporary conservationists. With prose that is elegant in its simplicity and analysis that is forceful and compelling, Jan Bender Shetler brings the landscape memory of the Serengeti to life. She demonstrates how the social identities of western Serengeti peoples are embedded in specific spaces and in their collective memories of those spaces. Using a new methodology to analyze precolonial oral traditions, Shetler identifies core spatial images and reevaluates them in their historical context through the use of archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic, ecological, and archival evidence. Imagining Serengeti is a lively environmental history that will ensure that we never look at images of the African landscape in quite the same way.

"Because Eden’s genius resides in imagination, it is a mobile spirit; always found in place but never confined by place. The spirit of Eden migrates within us, animated through our imaginative responses to actual places in the material world, in our roles as gardeners and poets, painters and photographers." --from the introduction What did Eden look like? In Imagining Eden the photographer Lyle Gomes observes landscapes that represent the idea of locus amoenus--the pleasant place. The tradition of locus amoenus goes back to the idyllic descriptions of fictional locations, often called Arcadia, in the writings of Sappho, Apollonius, and Virgil, in the imagined period of the Golden Age. We also recognize this concept in Eden, of course, where it suggests a loss that still haunts our imaginations. It is an idea distinctly different from that of wilderness, for we feel protected in these places--even provided for, though there is no sign of toil. The chance that this Eden might somehow be regained gives the concept its consolatory power. For fifteen years, Gomes has traveled across America and Europe to find examples of this enduring ideal of place in parks, English gardens, even golf courses. Gomes’s search took him to Mount Auburn cemetery, Central Park, Monticello, the San Francisco Presidio, villa gardens near Italy’s Lake Como, Melbourne Hall in Derbyshire, and private gardens such as Biltmore and Dumbarton Oaks. Imagining Eden includes an eloquent introductory essay in which the landscape historian Denis Cosgrove explores how the concept of the locus amoenus relates to Gomes’s work, and the photographs are accompanied by an evocative selection of quotes by the various settings’ designers and by inspired observers. The book concludes with an extensive interview in which Gomes discusses how he balances craft and inspiration, the role of research in preparing a shoot, his preference for black-and-white over color ("I was completely, and immediately, enamored with the silver image"), and a sense of discovery as a chief motivation in all his work.