Magnum Landscape

by Ian Jeffrey

In the tradition of great Magnum books this publication brings together work by the finest photographers of our time. For fifty years Magnum photographers, through commissions and their personal work, have produced images that comment on the state of the world. In photographing the landscape they are not just spectators but participants, aware that the land itself has been shaped by man, and that the very notion of a landscape depends on a human viewpoint. As each photographer records, interprets and finds a unique personal style, the variations on a theme are endless - landscapes of war, of agriculture, of industry, of cities and motorways, of desolation, celebration and tranquillity. The photographs gathered in this book invite us to rediscover landscape, and urge us to think more profoundly about the planet earth.

Genres: Photography, Art and Photography, Art

184 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 2001

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am beginning to feel there is something wrong with the concept of landscape. In the concluding essay of this book Henri Peretz writes:

Certain cultures are ignorant of the very word 'landscape', while others, like the European culture, use the term constantly and ambiguously.

What does the word ignorant really mean here? Does it mean that some languages have no equivalent word? And if 'the European culture', apparently monolithic, uses it ambiguously, how has Peretz determined its absence elsewhere? Whose studies has he read?

The landscape is at on[c]e an object and a representation. It is an actual place that we may traverse or alter, as well as the personal viewpoint of an artist or artisan. Landscape is no longer characterised by wild or unspoiled nature, for man has stamped his mark upon it...

Many of these images come from the USA or the global South, from countries where the 'European', global North-dwelling viewer sees through her heritage as a colonizer. One of the section introductions states that standing behind viewers of landscape provides 'complicity with the natives and irony towards the invaders', but I feel that in many cases this insider status has been appropriated rather than invited.

What happens to our idea of foreigners' ignorance when totalising constructions of 'landscape' as created by photographer-artisans are narrated, as by Ian Jeffrey in the opening essay, where he speaks of Magnum's work as 'adventure photography' and frames its practitioners observing survivors of post-war devastation and unease in the context of a planet that has now been seen from the outside?

There is something privileged and entitled about our idea of landscape, this place that is in front of us and outside of us, a place we 'stamp' with our 'mark' of ownership, a place we exploit, a place whose native residents appear to us as parcel with it and ours to use or remove at our aesthetic or practical convenience. A place becomes 'landscape' by being constructed by and commodified for the White gaze

Having said all this, my criticism of this book is more of the framing, not the images. My favourite resource during my photography A level, it is a collection of extraordinarily beautiful and interesting images, made by talented artists, who I am not inclined to hold individually responsible for all the crimes of imperialism. Some of them are activists who make their work to bear witness to atrocities so that those who can prevent them have no excuse to sit idly consuming the lovely view.


Rene Burri, Sao Paulo

I have read Susan Sontag's 'On Photography' twice (perhaps I need to read it again). I would welcome recommendations for essays on the ideology of landscape that addresses the concerns I mention here...

[Ясен В. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of images revolving around the idea of the landscape not just as a picturesque image of nature.

[Thomas Bertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of pictures

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection of B&W landscapes.