Photographic observation a tool for landscape policies

Transcription

European symposium report
Thursday 13th and Friday 14th November 2008, Paris
© jean Chatelut 2008
Photographic observation
a tool for landscape policies
Ministère de l’Écologie, de l’Énergie,
du Développement durable et de la Mer
www.developpement-durable.gouv
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European symposium report - Photographic observation a tool for landscape policies
Développement
durable et de2008
la Mer
2 — Paris, jeudi 13 etduvendredi
14 novembre
European symposium report
Thursday 13th and Friday 14th November 2008, Paris
Photographic observation
a tool for landscape policies
Published in 2009 by the
Land Improvement, Housing and Nature Division
Habitat, Town Planning and Landscape Department
Quality of Life Office
Landscape Advertising Unit
Cover photograph
© Jean Chatelut 2008
John Davies re-photographing vantage point No. 20 in Mouhet L’Aumône,
on the photographic itinerary through Saint-Benoit-du-Sault canton.
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Report publication coordination: Élise Soufflet-Leclerc.
The documents about the workshops are based on presentations delivered during the conference and further
material volunteered by their authors to expound on topics that were not presented during the meeting.
The photos, charts and graphics are the property of their respective authors, creators and owners.
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Preface
I would like to thank the many experts, elected officials, photographers, NGO delegates, stakeholder networks
representatives, researchers, landscape architects and other professionals who attended this symposium
in Paris on 13 and 14 November 2008.
This European symposium was a great success, due to the outstanding quality of the exchanges.
It allows us to map out a clear appraisal of the use of photography to steer public landscape policies around
Europe since over more than 30 years.
The sequence of the snapshots is slowly but surely producing films of our landscapes and their history.
They reflect changes of human activity and in our environment. We should learn collectively to re-consider them.
They are our land’s memory and reflect our attention to the world.
In our society, pictures are increasingly important. So, it is vital to provide public authorities and populations
with simple media revealing the real changes of landscape, to prompt discussions about our surroundings and,
beyond, our environment. Indeed, talking about landscapes is comparing views and representations to draw
and design together our territory. It means steering changes in our environment together.
I do wish that the services of the Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea will
continue their efforts to provide tools and methods allowing us all to move further along this exciting road.
This report is one step in that direction. It is comprehensive and it has been completed with additional
voluntary contributions. I am certain that this report will provide a benchmark to implement new landscape
photographic observatories.
The Director-General for Planning,
Housing and Nature
Jean-Marc MICHEL
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Contents
Draft preface
Conference opening 5
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Catherine Bergeal, Deputy Director for Quality of Life
WORKSHOP No. 1
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The main photograph commissions and land improvement
- Moderator
- Public Photographic Commissions 26
William Guerrieri
- The Cross-Channel Photographic Mission 20
Line Lavesque
- The Photographic Observatory as Awareness of Place 18
Bernard Latarjet
- The Conservatoire du Littoral’s Photographic Collection 14
Christian Dautel
- Landscape Photography and the DATAR Photographic Mission 12
Jean-Daniel Pariset
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Pia Viewing
- Exchanges
38
WORKSHOP No. 2
41
The Observatoire photographique national du paysage
- Moderator
- The Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage
64
Tapio Heikkilä
- Re-photographing Changing Flemish Landscapes (1904-2004) 62
Marie Guibert
- Visual Monitoring of Finnish Landscapes 54
Jean-Christophe Ballot
- The Photographic itinerary in Hérault 50
Henri Le Pesq
- A Photographic Itinerary in Armorique Regional Natural Park 44
Jean-François Seguin
- Photographic Itineraries in the Côtes d’Armor Department
42
Catherine Bergeal
72
Pieter Uyttenhove
- Exchanges
74
WORKSHOP No. 3
79
Local Photographic Observation Projects
- Moderator
- The Photographic Observatory in Montagne Sainte-Victoire
80
Philippe Maigne
- Photo Facts from the Outskirts of Paris 80
Pierre Grandadam
Alain Blondel & Laurent Sully-Jaulmes
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- Photographic Research Tracking Changes in the City of Schlieren 88
Meret Wandeler & Ulrich Görlich
- Halland
94
C.G Rosenberg & Gerry Johansson
- Ekodok -90
102
Annette Rosengren
- The Landscape Observatory in Semois-Semoy as a Cross-Border Project 106
Mireille Deconinck & Jérôme Lobet
- The photographic observatory in the Massif Central 114
Pierre Enjelvin & Christian Guy
- Exchanges
123
WORKSHOP No. 4
125
Landscape photographs, tools for learning and discussion
- Moderator 126
Pere Sala
- The Mon Paysage (My Landscape) Operation
132
Françoise Dubost
- Disposable Cameras for a Development Project 138
Yves Michelin
- The Circular-Area Method 142
Terry O’Regan
Conclusions
156
ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS 158
- Photography and how it Prompts Discussion about Motorway Landscapes 159
Vincent Piveteau
Jikta Tomsova
- Landscape Transformations in Majorca (1904-2008) - The Landscape Photographic Observatory in Savoie
166
Jean-Pierre Petit
- The Observatoire Photographique du Paysage Experience in Haute Vallée de Chevreuse 168
Laurence Renard
- The Landscape Photographic Observatory in Vanoise
162
Jaume Gual Carbonell
176
Patrick Folliet
- Observatoire Photographique du Paysage Viewing
in the Système d’Information Documentaire de l’Environnement
(Environmental Documentary Information System)
182
BRIEF BIOS & CONTACTS 184
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS 192
Bruno Rambourg
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Conference opening
address by Deputy Director for Quality of Life Catherine Bergeal
on behalf of the Habitat, Town Planning and Landscape Director
Good morning to all of you, and thank you all for coming.
Etienne Crépon, who was supposed to open this conference, was unavoidably detained at the very last minute,
and has asked me to apologise and to open this conference on his behalf.
So I am delighted to start these two days devoted to photographic observation and its contribution to landscape
policy in Europe.
Public policy only makes sense if it is rooted in a sound perception of reality as well as the ability to assess the
effects it causes. Public policy without assessment is no longer an option.
European Landscape Convention article 6C entails a mandate to identify our landscapes, analyse their features
and the pressures shaping them, and monitor their changes. The Atlas des Paysages (Landscape Atlas) and
Observatoire Photographique du Paysage (Landscape Photographic Observatory) are this ministry’s two
answers.
The Observatoire Photographique du Paysage, which was established in 1989, aims to build a collection
of photographic series (exactly the same views from the same vantage points at different points in time) to
“analyse the mechanisms transforming space and the roles that the forces driving that transformation play,
with a view to steering the process in the right direction.”
The fact that this observatory has active for so long mirrors our central government’s consistent determination
to back worthwhile projects for as long as necessary.
From a national perspective, this conference will be an opportunity both to check that the Observatory is
on track and to strengthen its exposure by publishing its method for mapping out photographic itineraries.
This book naturally encapsulates the experience that the Ministry’s various departments have gathered, but it
also reflects the experience that our partner organisations have pooled, and I would like to take this opportunity
to commend their perseverance.
From a European perspective, this conference is an opportunity to exchange experiences, as France pledged
to do when it ratified the European Landscape Convention. Without this aspect, it seems unrealistic to try to
assess the full operation.
New orders have been enriching this Observatory’s collection every year for the past nearly two decades.
The sheer breadth of the series, i.e. the number of photographs of the same place from the same vantage
point, casts light on why this operation makes sense as it shows the effect that time has had on landscapes.
This collection, in other words, is improving with age – and moving closer to its target every year.
In fact, this observatory is working concurrently on two projects:
- A land-improvement project, where the partner organisations running it ask photographers to capture specific
areas with a view to identifying the challenges that public policy is raising and where it is raising them;
- A photographic project, where photographers themselves capture their views and angles on a given area and
submit them to the observatory.
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Conference opening
But this conference is not just to present the Observatoire Photographique du Paysage.
First of all, four half-day workshops will present projects in eight countries.
Second, even though the projects and methods vary from one country to another, they all use photographs
to survey landscapes. So the agenda also includes:
- Europe’s main photograph commissions (orders);
- Examples of photographic observatories and iterative documentaries;
- Specific-focus documentaries and local photographic observatories;
- Examples of debates centring on landscapes and how to depict them.
Outside this room, on the mezzanine and in the bar, you will find an exhibition about photographic
observatories. And, last but not least, you will find the photograph collection on two computers connected
to the Ministry’s Documentary Information System – which is a sneak preview because this site is not yet
available to the public. (As an aside, I would like to thank the communication department for preparing it to
such a tight schedule).
So I hope you all enjoy productive exchanges and would especially like to thank our European colleagues,
and the people who work on the main photograph commissions, our fellow travellers on our photographic
itineraries, the photographers.
I would also like to thank you all for coming. We are more than 160 elected officials, photography-world
experts and professionals, representatives from government agencies, regional natural parks, national natural
parks and Grands Sites de France, consultants specialising in architecture, town planning and the environment,
and partner organisations working on land improvement.
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WORKSHOP No. 1
The main photograph commissions
and land improvement
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Moderator
Architecture and Heritage Media Resource Centre Director
Jean-Daniel Pariset chaired the first workshop
The Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (Architecture and Heritage Media Resource Centre) ran the
central government’s first-ever photograph commission, the now memorable 1851 Mission Héliographique by
the Commission des Monuments Historiques, under the short-lived Second Republic. The story is well known:
the Commission ordered negatives and prints, Philippe Néagu spoke about them, and Anne de Mondenard
scrupulously indexed, employed and assessed them. Unfortunately for photographers, that order was the first
and last. Rumour has it that the reason was the cost: 3% of the Commission’s already tight budget.
France’s central government only ordered photographs again in the 1980s. But today’s photographers still use
the Mission Héliographique to submit proposals to revisit the original monuments and surrounding landscape.
Every year, photographers submit proposals to revisit the same spots with glass plates, daguerreotypes and
prints, or to capture changes in the buildings or even in photographers’ takes over time, to document changes
in the environment surrounding these buildings.
The Mission Héliographique, in other words, was one of the founding forces and we will be hearing a lot about
it this morning. But what about today? At the Direction de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (Architecture and
Heritage Department), we see photography and heritage as two parallel paths. We have also always seen
photography as a means of documenting (or at least that was the case until the 1980s). Architects can order
photos of their own building sites. Sometimes they take them themselves, and sometimes they ask artists,
well-known reporters, or leading photographic or architecture agencies to take them.
At the end of the 19th century, as an aside, photographers such as Mieusement and Durand, for instance, took
over negative collections and administrated them as concessions.
The Heritage Department never really delved too much in policy. The one exception was a man you have no
doubt heard about: Paul Léon. He was a Collège de France professor, an Institute member and, in that capacity,
the 1937 exhibition’s Commissaire Général. He had already served as deputy head of the agency in charge of
historical monuments and, moving back in time, had been in charge of the first orders that the French Government
placed in the 20th century (in 1914-1915). He also started what we call the CPAD, the Armed Forces’ cinema
and photography institute, which reported from the war fronts (or rather from behind the front in France and in
the East, and from the front in Dardanelles). He also ordered photographs from artists such as Thérèse Bonney
for an exhibition on decorative arts in 1925 and Baranger’s campaign for the 1937 exhibition.
The French Government placed no orders from Paul Léon’s last until the end of the Fourth Republic. The Fifth
Republic was all about building, and that day’s photographs were therefore predictably all about buildings and
architecture.
As you know, André Chastel asked André Malraux to catalogue France’s artistic wealth, which in turn kick-started
a fresh flurry of photography. The photographers, here, were civil servants (and often very good) but the
photographs served a documentary rather than creative purpose. The point, again, was to capture monuments
in their settings in order to study them.
Ten photographers were handed commissions when the Direction du Patrimoine (heritage department) was
founded in 1978. Their work is now in Lyons, as part of France’s decentralisation drive and because that city
went on to become the main hotspot for photograph commissions focusing on cultural heritage. It was not
until 1984 (Mérimée’s year) that the Heritage Department ran its first proper commission, Objectif: Monuments,
asking six photographers to revisit historical monuments and their backdrops. Ms Colin-Goguel, an advisor to
then French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, pointed out that “it is not a case of documenting the 12,000 or 20,000
monuments but rather only the main protected ones, purely for documentary purposes, even entrusting certain
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Workshop No. 1 - Moderator
themes to artists may be a viable option.” That was all the detail that the cabinet released as to its agenda.
My predecessor at the head of the Médiathèque, Françoise Bercé, bought a few photographs but the Department
finally dropped those plans as it deemed the associated contracts unreasonable (the public, for example, was
not allowed to see the prints that the department bought). Today, the decentralisation drive has transferred
funding and projects to local authorities and architecture schools. The “Monumental” exhibition at the Ecole
de Paris/Val de Seine is one example. The Heritage Department chose another path: monuments and sites,
and what goes on around them, it argued, belong in the Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des
Sites (national historical monument and site trust), now the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, which can
commission artists to take documentary or creative photographs.
The Heritage Department, on its part, focused more of its efforts on building private photographic collections
from a variety of sources. After the 1978 episode in Lyons, the Heritage Department and the Mission du
Patrimoine Photographique (photographic heritage team) joined forces and decided on a new option to build
up their collections: the now well-known donations. The 14 or 15 photographic collection donations that the
Médiathèque inherited add up to an interesting corpus of works by such noteworthy photographers as Boudinet,
René Jacques and André Kertész.
Public policy, private initiative or an association’s centre of interest can drive photography. But every photo
in these collections provides an angle on a monument regardless of who took it and why. The documentary
work that the Mission Héliographique commissioned spawned documentary photographs. Photos, however,
gradually evolved into works of art. And that is why your debate here today is so fascinating: it is about how
and where commissions from artists or commissions for documentary photos converge.
The photograph collection is available at: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/memsmn_fr?ACTION=RET
OUR&USRNAME=nobody&USRPWD=4%24%2534P
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Public Photographic Commissions
Angers Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Art School)
Director Christian Dautel
I worked on two research programmes involving public agendas and landscapes as a member of the Environment
Ministry’s Scientific Board. Georges Bertrand was in charge of the first one, “PPP” (for Politique Publique et
Paysage or Landscape Public Policy) and Yves Luginbühl ran the second one, “PPDD” (Politique Publique et
Développement Durable or Public Policy and Sustainable Development).
That experience showed that it is extremely difficult to find and analyse exactly what the photographic observatory’s
output and photography in general could contribute to the scientific study of landscapes. It is no doubt difficult
to grasp the sensitive dimension of the artistic experience of observing landscapes.
Photography has earned a predominant place in contemporary art over the past couple of decades, and developed
way beyond a mere technique used in studios. It has grown into an autonomous medium – as a variety of
international art exhibitions have shown. Theoreticians such as Régis Durand, Jean-François Chevrier and
François Hers (Photography and Landscape report) have placed photography in a central role in today’s debate
about art. And urban and natural landscapes (or “landscape objects”) have become one of the themes that
artists hold dearest. Those photographs say something about the contemporary world but their representation
and production also tend to deconstruct images. “Landscape” photography, it follows, reveals something about
artistic practice and its connection with reality.
So the question is how to reconcile this artistic endeavour with a scientific approach that can harness our
knowledge of landscapes and the complex interactions between them.
Is this relationship between art and landscapes an exemplary interdisciplinary initiative?
Is it helping us to study and analyse our landscapes and shaping our policy?
Public commissions
Photographic observatories have a number of people working for central and local government, CAUE and
national parks sitting on steering committees that choose photographers, vantage points, itineraries, perimeters,
territories, themes and places, and decide how to use the resulting output.
These observatories ask artists to work for them by placing orders, which are often at odds with artistic approaches
(but also contribute to nurturing vocations, as was the case with Suzanne Lafont, Jean-Louis Garnell and Sophie
Ristelhueber after the DATAR commission, which involved approaching creators – or “authors” – from the start).
These commissions therefore broach specific landscapes and implicitly cross the border into political and social
realms, and the conflicts there. That is invariably awkward for artists, as it raises the question about the public’s
reaction to his or her work and how it will be used. But there is no question, when you analyse the body of
images that the Observatoire has compiled for us, that phenomenological input and observation have found a
place alongside scientific efforts to analyse landscapes and how they are changing.
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Temporalité
The photographic observatory’s prime goal is to watch (recurrently so) the landscape to capture changes that
the eye alone cannot perceive. The changes in the landscapes involve a temporal dimension, that of natural
cycles. At the end of the day, the observatory is aiming to capture our areas and the temporal variables at play
within them (the biological, natural and human cycles). The observatory is there to track that.
Photographs are also benchmarks. They capture that temporal element in the change, in the cycles. They help
us to understand unfurling developments, processes and shifts. Photography therefore provides a set of clues,
of footprints, which are likely to create a connection with reality and provide a wealth of documentation.
A road north of Sizurn – 2000/2004
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Jean-Christophe Ballot
A forum for exchanges
It is not a question of mechanically cataloguing changes (a machine could do that if we programmed it to do
so; or satellite photos could do it). There is a sensitive dimension that creates an area between the subject who
observes an object and the object that is observed. The photographic medium builds a bridge between the
operator and the object. It opens up a new realm, a space for dialogue. It can be a dialogue between an artist
and his or her art (an internal dialogue), or a dialogue between an artist’s work and the people who ordered
it, the people who look at it or the people living in the area (external dialogue). So there are two types of
relationships, two types of dialogues. And art is exactly in-between.
Works of art also elicit dialogue between people observing them, and they nurture a bond between people
observing them and the world.
What can we learn from these exchanges? We can learn that familiar sights can turn strange, different.
That what we see can transform us into strangers to ourselves. It faces us with the unknown, transforms our
consciousness, creates the experience of distance and danger. It creates a sort of de-identification.
This observatory’s main breakthrough is that it has created that experience of distance.
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Saint-Rémy-sur-Durolle - 1997
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Anne-Marie Filaire
Road from Champvieille to Sembadel-Gare – 2002
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Anne-Marie Filaire
A matter of viewpoints
This photographic observatory has also acknowledged that that artists’ contributions invariably favour the vantage point that the committee has fine-tuned, as well as other purely aesthetic considerations. The vantage
point is naturally already there in a given area. It puts the area into perspective. Knowledge necessarily stems
from that viewpoint. And viewpoints necessarily stem from representation systems. Comparing viewpoints
can allow us to track changes (via the sensitive approach and the representation modes used). Viewpoints are
always steeped in a cultural element. Asking a photographer to watch a landscape change means asking him
or her to find a viewpoint using his or her determining cultural angle, add a subjective element and tender a
new realm, art, as well as the cultural, social and political dimensions. With other scientific research, therefore,
artists contribute to our understanding of the landscape.
D 32 entre Gignac et Montagnac - 1993
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Raymond Depardon
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D 32 trunk road between Gignac and Montagnac – 1999
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Frédéric Hébraud
Workshop No. 1 - Public Photographic commissions
Out of the viewpoint
Landscapes exist regardless of their vantage point and representation.
They have their own dynamics, and remain regardless of human endeavour. (This notion, as an aside, is at the
heart of contemporary art’s aesthetics). The relationship between a contemporary artist and the environment
does not necessarily involve a viewpoint (the retina) but invariably involves the body: the body as prosthesis,
the body as mediation, with the notion of incorporation.
The relationship between an artist and a landscape is bound to the context, to the present moment. There is a notion
of reciprocal “contamination”. That, again, is straying a little from the subject but it is not out of the question
to think about other types of relationships with our landscapes and space (performances, choreographies,
public debates, etc.).
Documentary form
Lastly, the documentary form that this observatory uses also encapsulates something about contemporar
photographic production in the sense that it considers that documents have their own intrinsic aesthetic
value, and that their meaning stems from the way in which they are staged and arranged. Documents can
be sorted into sequences and read at several different levels (photos, reported speech, stories, comments),
building meaning into a context, and restoring the landscape’s complex and systemic dimension. Photography for
documentary purposes develops relationships that complement the scientific sphere, an essential contribution,
a partnership, by intertwining sensitive and aesthetic approaches, and scientific approaches (physical and
human sciences).
Photography is one way of capturing a complex reality, and immeasurable heterogeneity. That can be done by
assembling and comparing, through dialogue that does not aim to secure consensus but to experiment. This
leads us to the question of interdisciplinary – which is no doubt at the crux of studies about landscapes and
that still has to be built
St Guiraud (34) – 1993
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Raymond Depardon
St Guiraud (34) – 1999
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Frédéric Hébraud
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Landscape Photography
and the DATAR Photographic Mission
Bernard Latarjet
After that thorough presentation of the issues and relationship between photographs and landscapes, Bernard
Latarjet presented the early-1980s Photographic Mission of the «DATAR» (Délégation à l’Aménagement du
Territoire et à l’Action Régionale, the agency in charge of land improvement and regional action), focusing on
the technical and factual aspects of the project.
The mission’s backdrop and initiatives (a refresher)
The early 1980s saw a fairly unique phase in the history of France’s landscape: rural depopulation drew to
an end, post-war farming embraced modernity, and swelling cities spurred new town planning schemes,
villes nouvelles (new cities) and OREAM (Les Organisations d’Etudes d’Aménagement des Aires Métropolitaines to organise city improvement action plans). That was roughly when France’s basic countrywide infrastructure
was completed.
The early 1980s brought a number of sweeping metamorphoses involving the use of space and mirroring
economic developments. The first factories were revamped, offices appeared in and around cities, and the first
tourist infrastructure was built. The technocrats we were at the time only had very abstract data to capture this
quantum leap that the landscape was undergoing. We had statistics and maps that had no direct connection
with physical reality in the areas we were supposed to survey.
So we needed to renew and improve our information system.
I thought of ordering photographs when I saw the large-scale orders that the French Government
had placed in the past. Right from the start, we figured that landscapes are not objective realities but subjective
representations tinted by culture, and that it therefore made sense to bring in artists.
The commission entailed probing artists’ personal experiences with landscapes. We would discuss, accept
or reject submissions. We wanted to assess artists’ submissions without feeding them an overly precise
catalogue of topics or itineraries (i.e. we wanted to provide form, not content). We had to call in artists to
capture something that by then already defied definition. We did not short-list artists based on their reputation
or what they had done before: we chose them based on the wealth we saw in their proposal. Five of the artists
we chose indeed had little experience with photography.
Most of them, however, ended up in a very stimulating but very tight corner. They had a great deal of freedom
because it was actually their own project, but they had a great deal of responsibility because what we were
expecting from them and from their project was absolutely radical.
The assignments were longer or shorter depending on the projects and the photographers. Some of them were
working on several projects at the same time. But we met them all on a regular basis to discuss developments
and proof prints.
It was the first time in France that an organisation outside cultural circles embarked on such a large-scale
programme placing that many orders with artists. This mission actually disturbed conventional orders in artistic
circles.
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DATAR’s photographic mission did not revolutionise anything. But it was an opportunity for the people at the
helm of land-improvement programmes to take a new, cold, hard look at their models, frames of reference,
practices and, especially, methods.
We had meetings to discuss proofs and final prints with DATAR executives and, especially, with land-improvement
professionals (architects, town planners, geographers and elected officials). We also organised conferences
and seminars to discuss these issues and help the technocratic system embrace the wind of change that was
blowing through the culture of landscape – and had disappeared in France – in contrast with practices we could
see in Italy, other Mediterranean countries and the UK.
It is difficult to quantify the DATAR photographic mission’s achievements. But we can see them in the wide
variety of commissions that they have spurred in France and abroad.
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The Conservatoire du Littoral’s
Photographic Collection
Line Lavesque / A Travers le Paysage
Conservatoire du Littoral director Emmanuel Lopez asked Line Lavesque, who heads the A Travers le Paysage
association, to present the photograph collection that she has been administrating since 1994.
The Conservatoire du Littoral is a public agency that was established in 1975 to avoid urban sprawl damaging
France’s richest and most appealing seaside and riverside areas. It acquired one plot a day on average until
it came to own roughly 1000 km of coastline, more than 11% of France’s riversides, and 125,000 hectares in
some 600 sites that will now be protected ad-infinitum – and which the public can enjoy. Its goal for 2050 is
to ensure future generations will enjoy the natural land and sea heritage of the “unspoilt third” of mainland
and overseas French waterfronts.
The Conservatoire team’s efforts to pick top-priority areas and fine-tune land-improvement objectives promptly
led them to the question about how landscapes are perceived and understood at any given point in time and
over time, as nature in general and coasts in particular invariably undergo vast an imperceptible change.
The Conservatoire’s team had already called in scientists and experts, who were working on documentary and
illustrative photographs. So why did it call in artists, too? Why did it extend and deepen this interaction? And
why did artists, corporate sponsors and local organisations back the Conservatoire through this long-winded
adventure?
The story started with the DATAR’s photographic mission, a large-scale public commission that Bernard Latarjet
directed in the 1980s to survey France’s landscapes. DATAR selected about 30 beginner and experienced
artists, who travelled across France – and incidentally revived an artistic genre that was hovering near oblivion
at the time: landscape photography.
Four of those photographers – Alain Ceccaroli, Werner Hannapel, Suzanne Lafont and Vincent Monthiers
– worked on the coastlines in 1986. The Conservatoire backed their work in exchange for copies of the original
proofs, which it could display in private at first and in public later on. These collections were poles apart from
the thousands of decorative or perfunctory photographs that wardens and Conservatoire delegates had taken
and the Conservatoire had amassed since its inception.
Two delegates, who were also keen photographers, saw the point of hiring the authors’ services for the
Conservatoire and managed to persuade its executives at the time to take the experiment one step further
by calling in other artists to works on the sites that it had bought. Marval, a publisher, suggested printing
a collection of essays and the Gaz de France Foundation offered to sponsor the project. At that point, it was
not yet a collection but rather an effort to pick up where the photographic mission had left off and to publish
its results.
Until 1991, it was mainly artists’ or the publisher’s proposals that steered the photographic mission. But that
changed when the Conservatoire bought Pointe du Raz, a splendid site, to restore it. It was the first such
operation in France. Gaz de France made a substantial contribution and asked Raymond Depardon to capture
the spot before it was restored. That, strictly speaking, was the first real commission.
Raymond Depardon’s images show it: understanding and sensing the landscape necessarily entails taking
an interest in people’s relationship with it. Depardon is a man who enjoys debate, and got the Conservatoire
team thinking about stretching the variety of viewpoints and themes even further.
The Conservatoire then realised that these different angles had started unearthing on the sheer variety that
France’s waterfront concealed. In 1994, it approached A Travers le Paysage, an association, which suggested
it compile a collection that if could share with the public. The Conservatoire had never bought originals or the
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rights to use them, and did not have the funds to do so at that point. The Gaz de France Foundation bought
6 original images by each of the 12 first artists, as well as the equipment to exhibit them. These 72 originals,
which Line Lavesque, the authors and Conservatoire directors chose, became the cornerstone of a collection
that has never stopped growing since.
The collection was inaugurated in 1994. Line Lavesque, the curator, staged previews at the Maison de
l’Amérique Latine in Paris then at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles. Then she left
for Caen, where the curator at the Musée des Beaux Arts showcased the collection in halls that it had recently
refurbished. The building’s proportions made for a splendid exhibition – and it was unsurprisingly a hit inside
and outside. The images, however, were not self-evident illustrations. There was nothing catchy about them.
There were no sunsets nestled in pine trees, no blue skies, no shimmering beaches. They were not the coffeetable-book photographs that local elected officials and civil servants were expecting.
Other photographers went to work on the sites and contributed new images to the Conservatoire, a few donations
came in, and thus the collection continued to grow.
The quality of the work instantly attracted considerable interest. A string of high-profile exhibitions followed,
and journalists and delegates started using the images to illustrate their essays about issues touching on the
waterfront – or indeed the Conservatoire’s collection itself. The gap between these images and the thousands
of virtually unusable snapshots that the Conservatoire had amassed since its inception became clear. The point
of seeing sites through artists’ eyes became self-evident as it opened the door on a deeper understanding of
the landscapes and their territory.
It is unrealistic to talk about the landscape without talking about the men and women who work the land
there. The idea of producing a handful of wardens’ portraits in 1995 sparked so much interest that Aldo Soares,
a talented photographer who had portrayed writers, artists and scientists, was asked to photograph the
150 “waterfront wardens”. Aldo Soares accordingly travelled the waterfront in his camper with his Polaroid
chamber and lights. He produced about 100 portraits of men and women who work on the ground, protecting
wildlife and keeping the trails in condition for the Conservatoire. An exhibition behind the Parc André Citroën
greenhouse’s glass walls showcased these handsome portraits in turn for passers-by. A pocket-sized catalogue
was published, everybody loved it, and Thalassa (a TV programme) ran a story about it. The tribute was a hit:
the wardens who make things happen became stars.
In 1999, the Conservatoire du Littoral took an interest in the Observatoire Photographique du Paysage’s plans
to track changes in the landscape with a series of images of the same spot over time, and asked John Davies,
an Eminent English landscape photographer with experience in similar programmes, to do the same in Paulilles,
an industrial plot in Catalonia that belonged to the Nobel brothers and would be returned to nature.
In 2002 it asked Raymond Depardon to go back to Pointe du Raz – again, fully sponsored by Gaz de France.
Before the restoration work, the landscape was desolate, sprinkled with haphazard constructions and cars,
and trodden by countless visitors. After the work, it was in hand. Once again, the operation was categorical.
Raymond Depardon’s photographs raised new questions about the methods used to recover this site,
the typically local moors reappeared, the blemishes vanished and the public was neatly channelled. The site
had been embellished. Had it also been given a facelift? A little, no doubt. This new experience prompted
Conservatoire executives to take this adventure a step further, and to call in new artists to contribute new
angles on other sites.
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The Conservatoire du Littoral’s photographic collection continued to grow over the years. Its dialogue with
photographers stretched to take in new talent. Showcasing landscape portraits that raise more questions than
they answer is tantamount to contributing to the public debate about what we want to do with our waterfronts.
This collection counts nearly 1000 original photographs thanks to support from authors, local partner organisations
and sponsors. It is already large enough to reflect the full breadth of landscape photography and the sensitivities
it encompasses. Images spanning more than 15 years, the contrasts they show and debate they have sparked,
some 150 exhibitions and 40 catalogues already add up to a contribution to contemporary landscape history.
It is also one of the options to publicise the Conservatoire du Littoral’s work.
A presentation of a series of photographers who have worked on different facets of waterfront areas
(farmlands, dunes, marshes, floors, rocks, archipelagos, beaches, etc.)
Anse de Paulilles, Pyrénées Orientales - 1999
Conservatoire du littoral © John Davies
Anse de Paulilles, Pyrénées Orientales - 2001
Conservatoire du littoral © John Davies
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Delta de la Leyre, Gironde - 2006
Conservatoire du littoral © Sabine Delcour
Lac léman, Haute-Savoie - 2005
Conservatoire du littoral © Bernard Plossu
Baie d’Authie, Pas-de-Calais - 2007
Conservatoire du littoral © Harry Gruyaert - MagnumPhotos
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Estuaire de la Gironde, Gironde - 2006
Conservatoire du littoral © Thierry Girard
Pointe de Suzac, Charente-Maritime - 2006
Conservatoire du littoral © Marc Deneyer
Port Cros, Var - 2005
Conservatoire du littoral © Eric Dessert
Sites du Débarquement, Calvados - 2008
Conservatoire du littoral © Alain Ceccaroli
Sillon de Talbert, Côtes d’Armor - 2008
Conservatoire du littoral © Massimo Vitali
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Chausey, Manche - 2007
Conservatoire du littoral © Michael Kenna
Camargue, Bouches-du-Rhône 2004-2005
Conservatoire du littoral © Josef Koudelka - MagnumPhotos
Jane Evelyn Atwood - Portraits d’enfants sur le marais du Vigueirat, John Batho - Rochers de Ploumanac’h, Jean-Christophe Ballot - Abbaye de Beauport,
Frédéric Bellay - Île Tatihou, Alain Ceccaroli - Agriate et sites du Débarquement, Thibaut Cuisset - Bouches de Bonifacio, John Davies - Anse de Paulilles
1999-2001-2009, Sabine Delcour - Delta de la Leyre, Marc Deneyer - Rivages charentais, Raymond Depardon - Pointe du Raz 1991-2002, Eric Dessert Port-Cros, Marcello Fortini - Cap Corse, Thierry Girard - Marais de Brouage et estuaire de la Gironde, Harry Gruyaert - Estuaires de la Canche, de l’Authie
et de la Somme, Michael Kenna - Archipel de Chausey, Bogdan Konopka - Île Dumet, Josef Koudelka - Camargue, Suzanne Lafont - Domaine de Certes,
Olivier Mériel - Baie du Mont-Saint-Michel et littoral normand, Vincent Monthiers - Cap Ferret et Dunes du nord, Anna Papoulias - Marais du Vigueirat,
Bernard Plossu - Archipel de Riou et lacs alpins, François Sagnes - Jardin du Rayol, Frédéric Schwalek - Parc du Marquenterre, Michel Séméniako - Domaine d’Abbadia, Magdi Sénadji - Cabanon Le Corbusier, Aldo Soares - Gardes du Conservatoire, Françoise Stijepovic - Marais du Vigueirat, Joachim Vallet
- Orpellières, Olivier Verley - Site des Caps, Massimo Vitali - Sillon de Talbert
25
Photographic Observatory
as Awareness of Place.
by Linea di confine per la fotografia contemporanea
director, William Guerrieri (Italy)
I’d like to thank Monsieur Jean-Francois Seguin for inviting me to this seminar, attended by such prestigious
European institutions and professionals whose projects have had a crucial influence on the investigation
campaigns conducted in Europe in the nineties.
I believe there are two reasons why I was invited to speak at this seminar. Firstly because our research
experience has produced some interesting results for understanding the transformation of the contemporary
landscape in the Emilia Romagna region, which I will have to briefly illustrate. Secondly, because Linea di
Confine has been working in this field for the past eighteen years and, as such, is the longest running project
on the contemporary European scene.
The reasons why this project is so long-lived are due to its inherent characteristics. From an institutional point
of view, it is simply the association of a group of small municipal institutions that has its own offices thanks to
the action of a small municipality in the Province of Reggio Emilia which has been investing in cultural projects
since the early nineties.
In addition, the scientific management has been conducted over the years by the same group of professionals,
including an officer helped by a photographer and the photographic historian Paolo Costantini, until to 1997,
working on a very small budget. They have sought out partners willing to participate in small-scale research
projects on their own territories and their own social and cultural realities with modest funds. While conducting
the investigations for this project, Linea di Confine has involved authors who in some cases are well-known
internationally.
The key factors that have ensured the longevity of our activity have been the locally-based organization
of the project, the search for partners which whom to share research projects, the perseverance with which
the members of this group have conducted the studies over time, with the idea that this activity could have
a beneficial effect on Italian photographic culture, so needful of openings toward and exchanges with authors
on the international scene.
Linea di Confine has been commissioned by local bodies (such as municipal or provincial authorities) from
the very outset. Its structure was therefore designed to maintain strong links with the local territory,
but without giving up its role of providing a powerful cultural stimulus. The function of providing a cultural
role may in fact be critical in this kind of context, which is less exposed to cultural exchange. This has meant,
for example, conducting studies in tightly circumscribed local settings coinciding with the areas of small
municipalities, or alternatively, producing monographs dealing with each individual local situation. In addition,
by organising photography workshops as a sort of professional training course open to young photographers
and local authors, we have secured a stronger bond with the local community, mediated also by the presence
of these young authors at the workshops.
Since the author plays an important role in our projects, we frequently talk of research projects rather than
commissions. This is because among the three players involved in public commissioning – the commissioning
body, the author and the project management organization – there is an open space for debate, research
and assessment that is open to solutions, even unpredictable ones. In practice, what is initially required by
a commissioning body may develop or evolve as a result of suggestions offered by the Linea di Confine
management or through the project proposed by the author. In this sense, our management plays a role of
cultural mediation: it is a role that is often provided for in public art projects where a mediator may be appointed
specifically to deal with the problem of a weak commissioning body.
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This model of investigation has been the object of particular attention by the Fotomuseum of Winterthur, which
has dedicated a selection of works from our collections to a travelling exhibit for Europe entitled Trans Emilia.
The Linea di Confine collection: A territorial Reconnaissance of Emilia Romagna.
The other question I will try to answer and which represents a central topic of this seminar is how the products
of our investigations have been useful for gaining a better understanding of the problems associated with the
transformation of the contemporary landscape.
I have to point out straight away that if, when we talk about the utility of photography, we mean how useful
our studies have been to officials or architects, town planners and so on in carrying out their institutional
or professional activities, well, unfortunately I have to tell you that only some officials from a public institutions
or architects commissioned by a public body dealing with landscape, have consulted our archive, which is a
public archive located on our premises and that users can freely consult. The mostly people who have consulted
the archive have been university students and photographic historians, for the purposes of research and study.
Since it is right to talk about utility with respect to photography of the local territory, the question is then ‘what
kind of useful purpose has been served by the products of our investigations ?’.
To try to answer this question, I’d like to give you a brief introduction to the subject. We know that any change
in the territory contains within it the complexity of social, economic and political change. In the last few
decades, however, such change has been so rapid that we no longer expect photographers so much to enable
us to understand the complex processes of these changes, in other words, to understand what happens in
a specific place, but more and more frequently we expect them to give us a spectacular image of these processes
through a product that has an essentially aesthetic effect.
I believe, however, that the social task of landscape photographs continues to be to understand a changing
reality, to be able to see what is happening in a place or in a local area, rather than looking at what happens
locally as if it were part of an indistinct and uniform global phenomenon.
In my experience, the main task of public research projects, where the commissioning body is a public institution
appointed by the community to undertake a work “of documentation”, is to produce knowledge of a particular
place or a particular phenomenon through the work produced by an artist. While the specific autonomy of the
work has to be granted recognition, the work should also be regarded as an important cultural action, since it
generates dialogue between different cultures, between different ways of representing a place or a phenomenon
in a particular context.
In some cases, when we don’t have a project with such clear-cut objectives as the Observatoire photographique
national du Paysage, the cultural function of photographic research may come to dominate other traditionally
recognized functions, like producing and making a public documents archive.
The commissioning institution may have different requirements and, depending on its nature, may require
different types of works from the artist or the project management organization, but the most widely perceived
requirement is the cultural function.
27
If we consider the changes in the local territory caused by the construction of major infrastructures, as is
currently happening in Italy with the construction of the high-speed railway line, politics needs to manage the
population’s perception of changes and particularly the perceptions of the resident population. Well, photographic
research projects can certainly provide an answer to this need. This has happened with the Linea di Confine
project conducted alongside the construction of the high-speed Bologna-Milan line since 2003. This project,
entitled Linea veloce Bologna Milano, has so far involved until now, seven photographers whose published
monographs resulting from the project are on display in the room near this one.
Exhibition Bas Pricen Galleria naturale, 2008
Exhibition Walter Niedermayr, TAV, 2006
Exhibition Dominique Auerbacher, Linea veloce Bologna Milano, 2006
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2008 - Linea veloce Bologna Milano © Vittore Fossati
2004 - Linea veloce Bologna Milano © John Gossage
Trans Emilia. Cover of catalogue
29
The Cross-Channel Photographic Mission
by Pia Viewing, Director of the Centre régional de la photographie
du Nord Pas-de-Calais
Pia Viewing enthusiastically thanked Jean-François Seguin for inviting her to present the CRP today. A photographer
collective established CRP in 1982 and Ms Viewing has been at its helm since September 2007.
The Nord Pas-de-Calais Centre Régional de la Photographie (Regional Photographic Centre) is a two-hour
train ride from Paris and about 15 km from Valenciennes. It takes up two building in Douchy-les-Mines,
a 10,000-inhabitant former dormitory town in a steel-working area. The CRP has compiled several collections
of publications, encompassing more than 100 books, over the past 20 years.
The CRP basically does what an art centre does. It is one of France’s ten or so venues specialising in photography
and hosts four or five temporary exhibitions a year in what used to be the local post office. These exhibitions
span the various aspects of current photographic creation in a series of annual cycles covering artistic,
documentary and historical photographic creation, photographs of the territory and of how it has changed.
It also features an art library and photographic collection, supports young artistic photographers, serves as
an interface between photographic images and other artistic media (cinema, video, painting, graphic arts,
live performance, writing, etc.). The CRP keeps a large collection of photographs (approximately 7,000), which
it has compiled through a number of initiatives (commissions, in particular).
That original body of photographs was produced by artists in residence in Nord Pas-de-Calais. Joint productions
with museums and other organisations have also enriched its collection, which comprises three categories:
exhibition prints, prints in proofing boxes and draft proofs.
The CRP teamed up with the French Ministry of Culture and Douchy-les-Mines Council to found an art library
in 1985. Today, that library counts more than 500 photographs. Most of those photographs are contemporary,
and they are arranged around certain topics (images documenting the region, cinema, portraits, expressionism,
poetic realism, colour, etc.). This library’s main goal is to carve out a place for art in everyday settings (flats,
offices, schools, libraries, streets, etc.). Everyone can borrow a work of art from the art library in the same way
as they can book from a library.
This organisation puts people in touch with photographs, and its efforts to educate and nurture sensitivity are
spawning new photography enthusiasts day after day.
Pierre Devin, who founded this organisation, was the one who built the Cross-Channel Photographic Mission.
He describes the Mission thus: “The Nord Pas-de-Calais CRP’s ongoing efforts involve harnessing the wealth of
changes underway on either side of the English Channel to develop a vast artistic and cultural initiative driven
by creation. The Cross-Channel Photographic Mission aims to probe the various aspects of European construction,
which the Channel Tunnel symbolises. The changes in the area, the upheaval following communication and
power network expansion, and changes in people’s daily lives, are what this project is focusing on.”
As opposed to compiling an illustrative catalogue, ordering original works will really probe the present and provide
priceless testimonies to build the future. Moreover, working with authors from across the artistic spectrum and
teaming up across national borders will build a corpus that encapsulates photographic creation.”
This mission has been active for over 18 years and has placed 27 orders. That is what gave the CRP its distinctive
identity in the 1980s and 1990s. Its orders were its way of supporting photographers and each project put a
specific aspect of this northern French cross-border area’s changes in the spotlight.
By way of conclusion, and before the presentation of the Cross-Channel Photographic Mission, I would like to
briefly tell you about the projects that the CRP is working on today under its mandate to photograph its region.
It is now vital to ask questions about our role as the ones who place orders, i.e. how a professional organisation
can support artists’ initiatives.
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The CRP is still hosting artists in residence in Nord Pas-de-Calais (one or two projects a year).
This year, Anne-Marie Filaire worked on a large-scale project spanning the border between France and Belgium.
The CRP is backing this photographer’s work with a view to enabling her to pursue her artistic endeavour in
a geographic, historical and social context that is new to her. It has also placed an order with Marc Pataut,
who is working with a group of women who live in Douchy-les-Mines.
Under its mandate to photograph changes in this region, and its aim to support young photographers, the CRP
kicked off a new project called “Territoires émergents / Emerging territories” in 2008 to highlight a network of
partners [...]
This project will last one year (December 2008 to December 2009) and will create artistic and professional
opportunities in Nord Pas-de-Calais for the three to five young photographers living in France, the UK or Belgium
who submit the winning bids. To take part, candidate must be under 35 years old or have earned a Master’s
Degree less than three years ago.
The goal is to:
• work with young photographic artists who are conducting research on a specific connection between an area’s
morphology and how it impacts the people living there;
• allow winning candidates to work on a specific project with professional backing (a residence, a commission,
a publication, etc.) with the project’s partners.
Each selected artist will be sponsored by a project partner. The partners are working together to support
projects by pooling their specific expertise, and thereby providing the young artists with informed views on
the urban environment and industrial landscapes in this region teeming with history. We are working with the
Scarpe-Escaut Regional Natural Park and Northern France CAUE, for example.
Cultural organisations are also responsible for briefing elected officials, and for showing them accomplished
artistic projects (photographs in this case).
The CRP ran a large-scale project from September 2008 to January 2009, in the 39 communities in Porte du
Hainaut.
It held 39 exhibitions, showcasing more than 850 photographs from the CRP’s collection in themed events.
These exhibitions show elected officials and raise the public’s awareness of the importance of photography
as a medium to understand the history of a site and changes in the landscape in connection to economic and
political forces.
We need to work through partnerships to cement our ties with other players in our regional, national and
international area.
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Presentation of the Cross-Channel Photographic Mission, 1988-2006
The list of Cross-Channel Photographic Mission commissions:
Bernard Plossu and Michel Butor, Paris-Londres-Paris (Paris-London-Paris), 1988; John Davies and Michel Kempf, Autoroute A26 de Calais à Reims
(Motorway A26, Calais to Reims), 1988-1989; Philippe Lesage, Chantier du lien fixe transmanche - terminal, (Fixed cross-Channel link building site
– terminal), February-March 1988, 1989; Jean-Louis Garnell, Chantier du percement du tunnel sous la Manche (Drilling the Channel Tunnel), 1989;
Martin Parr, One day trip, 1989; Josef Koudelka, Calais-Calaisis, 1989; Claude Dityvon, Canal du Nord, 1990; Jacques Vilet and Michèle Vilet, Escaut, Source Océan
(Escaut, Spring, Ocean), 1991; Lewis Baltz, Ronde de nuit (Night round), 1992; Bernard Plossu and Jean-Christophe Bailly, Route Nationale 1, 1992;
Tim Brennan, Fortress Europe, 1992; Olivo Barbieri, Frontière franco-belge (French-Belgian border), 1993; Bruce Gilden, Bleus, 1994;
Françoise Nuñez, Ports, 1994; Philippe Lesage, Espaces portuaires (Port areas), 1994; Wojciech Prazmowski, L’ange brise (Broken angel), 1994;
Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt, Sur la ligne (On the line), 1994; Daniel Michiels, Thiérache, 1995; Max Lerouge, Euralille, le chantier (Euralille building site),1995;
Michael Scheffer, Das Land, Lille, 1995; Marilyn Bridges, Vue d’oiseau (Bird’s eye view), 1995; Wolfgang Zurborn, Au centre de la vitesse (In the centre
of speed), 1996; Christian Courrèges, Capitale Europe, 1998; Bernard Joseph, Des visages (Faces),1998; Ralph Hinterkeuser, Lille Métropole, 2001;
Fabiana Figueiredo, Migrances, 2005; Jean-Pierre Gilson, Rivages (Shores), 2006
John Davies & Michel Kempf / CALAIS-REIMS MOTORWAY A26, 1988-1989
The Calais-Reims part of the motorway A26 opened in the late 1980s. It is a major link in a vast European exchange,
which ties in with the Channel Tunnel.
This road used to be a tin trail in centuries gone by and was a battle front in 1916, and it takes travellers through landscapes
brimming with signs of the area’s history. John Davies and Michel Kempf captured the wealth in this area and confronted
it with their own artistic research.
«...This reconstitution of the landscape sometimes leads to surprising discoveries in the natural landscape, which sort
of catches you unaware, in the privacy of something that was not yet in our eyes a picture...»
«...These frozen images by Davies and Kempf, these configurations of time, space and affects: are they nostalgic?
Are they dreaming of paintings and plains from another day? I think they are what only today’s images can be: lingering
between paradoxes and opposing forces: welcoming and critical at once; dense and indeterminate; an overlap of light
layers recording different states of memory and meaning...»
Régis DURAND
John Davies (1949-, England), « Autoroute A26-Calais-Reims », De l’aire de repos (From the rest areas), Saint-Quentin Nord, black and white, 38.2 x 56 cm,
CRP commission, Cross-Channel Photographic Mission No. 2, 1989, Nord Pas-de-Calais Regional Photography Centre Collection
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John Davies (1949-, England), « Autoroute A26-Calais-Reims », Canal de Calais, black and white, 38.3 x 56.1 cm,
John Davies (1949-, England), « Autoroute A26-Calais-Reims », Notre Dame de Lorette, black and white, 38.2 x 56 cm,
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Ralph Hinterkeuser / LILLE METROPOLE - 1998, 2001 EDITION
The last networks feeding the Channel Tunnel and European construction also brought Lille its finishing
architectural touches. These constructions – EuraLille, the Grand Palais and the Fine Arts Museum – are signs
of the drive to ride the crest of modernity in a city that was already known for its eclectic architecture in the
19th century. Every period in modern history – industrial growth, the wars, reconstruction and deliberate town
planning – has left its mark on older historical landmarks. The city borders, which were clearly marked by
fortifications and gates in days gone by, have blurred. They are vanishing into the networks filling the areas
lingering between the centres that made up the community in days of old. The residential, shopping and leisure
areas, and the campus, are the clearest signs of solution standardisation in the face of the growing yawning
gap between a city’s new purpose and the forms that are gasping to keep up. This question is everywhere in
Lille – and an eminently contemporary one, as it also harbours contradictions.
Ralph Hinterkeuser, a German photographer, focused his artistic project on an initiative hovering around
architecture and town planning. He uses a wide chamber because it is the only one that captures a wide
variety of information. Contrary to one typically German angle, he is less interested in taxonomy and frontality,
and keener on the articulation, seams, details and joints that hold city fabric together.
Pierre DEVIN
Ralph Hinterkeuser (1959-, Germany), « Lille Métropole », Rue de Tournai, colour, 71.5 x 97.5 cm,
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Ralph Hinterkeuser (1959-, Germany), « Lille Métropole », Démolition (rue du marché), colour, 71,5 x 88,4cm,
Ralph Hinterkeuser (1959-, Germany), « Lille Métropole », Exploitation (Villeneuve d’Ascq), colour, 23,4 x 34,3cm,
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Jean-Pierre Gilson / RIVAGES, 2005-2006
Jean-Pierre Gilson’s Rivages (Shores) consummately reassert the contemplative vein, which already shone through
his 1984 Paysages Industriels (Industrial Landscapes) for the Nord Pas-de-Calais Regional Photography Centre.
His all-round mastery – of light, grains and formats – now shines through his photographs of the English Channel’s
night-time sights. They are sometimes melancholic and musical. The references to cinema and surrealism
are sometimes self-evident. This contemplation takes us back to childhood days, to somewhere within, to a
meditation on time and space, and on photography.
Rivages is also a black fade. And it is the Cross-Channel Photographic Mission’s latest production.
Pierre DEVIN
Jean-Pierre Gilson (1948-, France), « Rivages », Portsmouth, black and white, 43.5 x 56.5 cm,
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Jean-Pierre Gilson (1948-, France), « Rivages », Brighton, black and white, 43.5 x 56.5 cm,
Jean-Pierre Gilson (1948-, France), « Rivages », Dunkerque, black and white, 43.5 x 56.5 cm,
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Exchanges
Caroline Mollie-Stefulesco points out that the Observatoire Photographique is also one of the DATAR mission’s
avatar’s – and not one of the smallest. Ms Mollie was a landscaping professional 1990 when she saw the
images. She found them amazing. Depardon, in particular, had a knack for capturing in a single image what
landscaping professionals needed endless pages, photos and slides to articulate. A single photo, she added,
encapsulated the entire issue, shift and breakpoint that they were trying to define. That, among other things,
was what led to the idea of setting up an observatory. So it was a DATAR upshot. The difference was it shifted
the focus to time’s effects on landscapes, which was probably outside DATAR’s scope but very much on the
observatory’s agenda, as it saw time as an increasingly defining dimension of landscapes. The DATAR mission
paved the way for asking artistic photographers to work on an institutional commission, and the observatory
is indebted for to DATAR for that.
Pieter Uyttenhove, from Ghent University, wanted to know if any research project had explored landscapes,
science, botany or town planning in any more depth starting with this collection, and if the collection was
available to the public and for further research. Mr Uyttenhove also asked if it might be a good time to update
research on this collection, as 20 years have gone by since its inception.
Bernard Latarjet answered Mr Uyttenhove’s question by pointing out that 30 or so researchers and doctorate
students in about 10 countries are writing theses using DATAR photographic mission material. His answer to
Mr Uyttenhove’s second question was that the negatives belong to the photographers who took them but
the photographic documents themselves are available to the public at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The collection is not yet available on the Internet as the specific copyright-related issues are currently being
discussed with the photographers.
Christian Dautel picked up Mr Uyttenhove’s third question by pointing out that knowledge in landscape-related,
scientific, sociological and aesthetic fields had come a long way since the DATAR mission. The configuration
would therefore probably be very different today. The commissions have changed and the way in which
orders are placed with artists has changed. New knowledge would also enable a much more interdisciplinary
approach but it cannot provide a usable archive in and of itself given the level of knowledge that our scientific
and cultural communities have achieved today.
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Workshop No. 1 - Exchanges
Odile Marcel, a philosopher, pointed out that Bernard Latarjet’s account of town planning in modern times,
i.e. until the 1960, depicts efforts as comparatively disjointed from the senses, i.e. that France’s modernisation
drive was mapped out on the basis of statistical data and that, surprisingly, culture had little to do with the
issue of configuration, hence of form. Architects and town planners, however, necessarily think about design,
i.e. what the project is going to mean for us who have visual cultures and bodies. She finds it amazing that the
people who drove modernisation had no artistic culture but later called in artists to ask them if they could see
anything there. There was no project behind it and they showed the result was ugly. If there is no configuration
behind landscape, then there is nothing to look at. Then came the time to start asking questions again, finding
cultural and political meaning in landscapes for the people living in that society.
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WORKSHOP No. 2
The Observatoire photographique
national du paysage
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Moderator
Deputy Director for Quality of Life Catherine Bergeal
chaired the second workshop
This morning’s sessions provided a fairly broad view of public-sector photographic commissions.
The agendas behind different commissions varied, as indeed did the resulting photographic styles. But they all
documented the landscape.
We will be spending this afternoon talking about the Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage, i.e.
the national umbrella organisation linking the landscape photography observatories that use the method you
will find in the booklet that you were given before coming into this room.
Jean-François Seguin, who heads the Landscape Office, will be telling you about this organisation. I would like
to thank him for his outstanding work, and thank Elise Soufflet, who is that organisation’s kingpin.
This method, of course, does not mean that there is anything wrong with past choices. Much to the contrary:
they have been used to focus on the essential.
That is what we will be hearing about through three photographic itineraries.
The first one is in Côtes d’Armor, dates back to 1994 and is a partnership with CAUE (in particular with its
director, Henri Le Pesq, who I would also like to thank). Here, we will be hearing about a partner organisation’s
view on an Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage itinerary.
Then we will be hearing from a photographer and his experience in the Parc Naturel Régional d’Armorique.
Jean-Christophe Ballot was the photographer who suggested the original vantage points and then captured
them time and again. He will be telling us how photographers choose the vantage points that they will submit
to the organisations they work for and how those choices enrich photographic projects.
Lastly, we will be hearing from a Government agency that rolls out landscape policy from Marie Guibert,
an architect and town planner who works for the Languedoc-Roussillon Regional Environmental Office’s team
in charge of sites and landscapes. She runs the region’s Observatoires Photographiques du Paysage and will be
zooming in on the one in the Hérault department in particular.
Our European colleagues – whom I would also really like to thank for accepting our invitation – will then be
telling us about their experience with repeat-photography projects.
The first one will be Tapio Heikkilä, an advisor working for the Finnish Environment Ministry, where he is
in charge of landscape management. He is also a biologist and a photographer, and wrote his thesis about
observing developments in the landscape (“Photographic documentation of changes in cultural landscapes”).
I also know he has become one of Jean-François Seguin’s loyal friends through the European Landscape Convention.
Lastly, we will be rounding up the afternoon with Pieter Uyttenhove, a professor who lectures in town planning
theory and history for Ghent University’s Architecture and Town Planning department. He will be telling us how
he reconstructed the Belgian landscape’s evolution using chronophotographic studies by Massart, Charlier then
Kempenaers.
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43
The Observatoire Photographique
National du Paysage
Landscape Office Director Jean-François Seguin
The Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage is not the only public-sector agency contributing to the
debate about country planning and landscape policy. Public-sector commissions that involve photographing
landscapes typically serve one of three purposes: take stock of the situation, take stock of perceptions or take
stock of changes in the landscape.
Jean-Daniel Parizet told us about taking stock of the situation this morning. That was the main driving force
behind the first and maybe best known commission, the Mission Héliographique that Prosper Mérimée set in
motion in 1851 to “photographically capture our most beautiful monuments, especially those threatened by
decay and require urgent repair.” The day’s best photographers – Gustave Le Gray, Auguste Mestral, Édouard
Baldus, Hippolyte Bayard and Henri Le Secq – contributed.
Another now equally famous assessment of the situation was the DATAR’s Mission Photographique. Its 1985
“Paysages Photographies – Travaux en Cours” (“Landscape Photographs – Work Underway”) project stated its
aim to “take stock of the situation in places where people live and work in France in the 1980s,” i.e. at the end
of the Trente Glorieuses (Glorious Thirty).
Other regional and departmental public commissions are also worthy of note. The Mission Photographique
Transmanche is one of them. Its Book 2, (“Motorway 26, Calais-Reims”), published in 1989, states its purpose:
“probe the various aspects of European construction, which the Channel Tunnel symbolises.”
Taking stock of perceptions is perhaps more delicate. The example we have in our archives is the one
that Françoise Dubost will be presenting tomorrow. The French Environment Ministry set the Mon Paysage
(Le paysage Préféré des Français) (“My Landscape (The French People’s Favourite Landscape)”) project in
motion in 1992 when it asked the French people about their perceptions of the landscape around the time
when the “Landscape” law was passed. Some 9000 replied, “casting even more light on the need for a new
policy for commonplace landscapes.”
A fairly large number of publications stemming from private initiatives feed these perceptions. Yvan Christ,
for example, wrote a book published by Balland showing photos of the same spot at the beginning of the 20th
century and in 1967 taken by Charles Ciccione. This book is not, we read, “a simple compilation of visually
pleasing or melancholic images [but] a book that shows contrasts and sometimes clashes between the past
and present, and which will serve to spur long and fruitful debate.”
Tracking developments is what the Observatoire Photographique du Paysage does. The question about the
causes behind changes in the landscape goes back a long way, to the late 19th century, when Rémy de Gourmont
was sitting in the train taking him to his homeland in Normandy and noted that “landscapes become all the
less fixed as the country becomes more civilised, active and densely populated; they are moreover dependent
on a thousand causes, which are sometimes far away and seem foreign to its development.” These thoughts
came to him when he was looking out over farmland: “trees are disappearing everywhere. People just let
them grow; they no longer plant them, as their worth is declining with every day that goes by, in contrast to
coal and iron.”
Several public-sector commissions have zoomed in on changes in landscapes and regions. Restoration work
in mountainous areas under a law passed in 1882 is one noteworthy example even though, strictly speaking,
it aimed to assess efforts underway rather than observe changes. The 1886 Notice sur le rôle et l’emploi de
la photographie dans le service de reboisement (“Note on the role and use of photography in the service
of reforestation”) states that “Simply comparing images provides an accurate gauge to measure progress and
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Workshop No. 2 - The Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage
the improvements it is realistic to expect in future.” This splendid operation, which is still underway, at the end
of the day, is quite close to Prosper Mérimée’s objectives.
The Observatoire Photographique du Paysage no doubt stems from a private initiative. Alain Blondel and
Laurent Sully-Jaulme organised an exhibition on L’image du Temps dans le Paysage Urbain – 68 Photo-Constats
(“The image of time in the urban landscape – 68 photo-facts”) in 1972. These two partners were hoping to
“simply grasp – if not understand – developments in everyday life in Parisian suburbs.” They did it again in
1990, when they published Un Siècle Passe (“A Century Goes By”), a book with new photographs of 39 of their
photo-facts. Their work is now at the Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage.
The Observatoire Photographique du Paysage was created in 1989 to “compile a collection of photographic
series in order to analyse the mechanisms transforming space and the roles that the forces driving that transformation play, with a view to steering the process in the right direction.”
Where are we now, nearly 20 years down the road? The Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage
counts 19 “photographic itineraries” across France, adding up to more than 800 “vantage points” and the
photographs depicting them time and again. Its collection encompasses more than 4000 photographic proofs
by 27 professional photographers. The “views” on these itineraries, i.e. the spots captured time and again,
have all been entrusted to well-known photographers. They each use a format and style that capture the spots
based on specifications drafted by the Steering Committee.
These orders have given us enough experience to assess practices and home in on a method to map out an
Observatoire Photographique itinerary. But it is a method, not a dogma: we simply wanted to provide a tool
that would help people who wanted to work on an Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage itinerary
or create their own landscape photographic observatory. Public-sector commissions involving photographs do
not follow the same principles as most public-sector commissions in other fields. That was why we think it
makes sense to share our experience with anyone wanting to launch a landscape photographic observatory.
Also, people who want to include their work in the Observatoire Photographique National du Paysage have
to do so by our protocol. That is neither a dogmatic tenet nor a whim. We have to “analyse the mechanisms
transforming space and the roles that the forces driving that transformation play”. Our photographic proof
collection, from this perspective, is a compendium that we will entrust to research. Collecting that information
indeed involved an artistic element – and the best one available at that – but scientific rigour is also of
the essence.
Creating a photographic itinerary at the Observatoire involves five steps.
The first one, in our case, is to identify a partner territorial community. It is not about central government
working alone: it is a concerted effort because landscapes do not come under a single public authority:
they have been under several public authorities since the “Decentralisation” law was passed.
Once we have identified a partner community, we can appoint a Steering Committee to home in on the issues
at stake in the landscape, choose a photographer and work with him or her to decide on the vantage points.
Central government and partner communities are naturally still very much in control. But they have a lot to gain
from tapping into the expertise that a steering committee can pool provided it counts the landscape’s main
stakeholders (i.e. the CAUE, government agencies, local agencies, associations, citizens and so on).
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The first thing that the Steering Committee has to do is draw up two lists, so to speak. The first one lists the areas
under review in the partner community and the second one lists the questions that the partner community
is grappling with. These two lists help us home in on the right photographer to find the itinerary’s initial
vantage points. There is a delicate phase here. People often ask us, “Why a photographer?”, “What exactly
makes someone a photographer?”, “Can’t we just get someone who works here?” or “We already have the
best equipment, why do we need the best photographer too?”
Our answer is very firm: we have to work with a well-known professional photographer. Why “well-known”?
Because, as in countless other areas, only a good professional can guarantee a good result. There are a few
simple rules to find one: a “professional” photographer is one who has registered as such with the Registre du
Commerce (business registry) and a “well-known” photographer is one who has held at least one exhibition
or published at least one book featuring his or her work outside his home area. The method includes another
clause: the project is a photographic project in itself. In other words, the photographer is not just there to shoot
a few glimpses of the area and the challenges it is facing: the goal is to produce a series of photographs that
are in and of themselves material that will make for a worthwhile exhibition and/or publication.
Another question people often ask us is, “Should we choose someone who shoots black and white photographs
or someone who shoots colour photographs?” The answer to that question, in our method, is that we want the
right photographer, i.e. the one that identifies with the area and the questions we are asking there. Whether
he or she prefers black and white or colour is immaterial: we want someone who can capture the issues that
the Steering Committee is dealing with.
Once we have a photographer, we have to make sure the project and the Steering Committee’s agenda tally.
The photographer sets out on his or her “campaign” with the two lists and chooses the vantage points.
It can take one, two or three years until the “customer”, the Steering Committee and the photographer agree.
But, when they do, the photographer’s project is bound to reflect the community’s agenda.
In general, the photographer will come back with about 100 snapshots and the next – and very delicate –
step is to choose the 40 that will make up the final itinerary, i.e. what we call the 40 original vantage points.
Why 40? Why so few? Why not 500, 1000, forgetting that the same spots will be captured time and again
and that the collection will grow endlessly as a result? After all, is refraining from making a decision actually
a policy decision?
As the spots will be captured again later on, each photograph has to be documented. Documenting photographs
involves a variety of aspects (the camera, the lens, the distance from the ground, the film, the date and time
it was taken, the exact GPS coordinates, and the reason why the photographer, steering committee and local
community chose that photograph as one of the 40 original vantage points in its itinerary).
Fundamentally and in keeping with the Observatoire Photographique du Paysage’s ultimate purpose,
these vantage points contribute to understanding developments in the landscape. And we can only understand
those developments if we document the images showing them. These photographs are not an entirely separate
endeavour in the knowledge-gathering process. We include them in the database dealing with nature and
landscapes. Observatory photographs, in other words, blend into landscape atlases, private inventories, world
heritage sites, listed sites, large statistical files, etc. We want to combine the facts, figures, maps and an artistic
angle on the area.
Once we have an itinerary, we have to manage it. That is the second adventure. It is not in our method because there are still many other issues we are not completely sure how to deal with (that was why we focused
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on creating an itinerary). The management adventure entails working on the re-photographing campaigns
to compile as many series as there are original vantage points. Here, again, the important thing is that a
professional photographer takes the new photographs. We are very strict about that.
I would like to round up by telling you how we have started using the Observatoire Photographique du
Paysage’s findings
If the first objective is to cast light on changes in the landscape, another one is to understand the phenomena
we observe. We also want to find out, for example, if our “landscape integration” practice is a good thing or
not and it if still addresses the issues. We also want the Observatoire Photographique du Paysage to contribute
to the need to raise the public’s awareness of the fact that the landscape is evolving all the time. Partner local
organisations are doing this today because they are right where the issues are, and raising awareness can
only feed the debate about how the landscape is changing. We hope to be in a better position to contribute to
raising awareness on a national level. We have started working on that and the Observatoire Photographique
National’s full collection should soon be available through SIDE (the Système d’Information Documentaire de
l’Environnement / Environmental Documentary Information System) portal.
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AUBOUE - Délaissés de la Sidérurgie (Steelworks Neglect) - Viaduc et merlon de l’Orne (Orne Viaduct and Merlon) – 1997 / 1999
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Claude PHILLIPOT
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Vitrolles (13) - D 9 et ligne TGV (Departmental Route 9 and High Speed Train Line) – 1998 / 2007
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Alain Ceccaroli
83 rue P. de Montreuil (mur à pêche / Peach wall) – 1997 / 1999
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Anne Favret & Patrick Manez
Seclin - Rond-point RN 74 et route desservant ZA (RN 74 Trunk Road Roundabout and Road to Business District) – 1993 / 2003
Observatoire photographique du paysage © Dominique AUERBACHER
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Photographic Itineraries
in the Côtes d’Armor Department
CAUE (Conseil en Architecture, Urbanisme et Environnement / Architecture,
Town Planning and Environment Consulting) Director ‘Henri Le Pesq
CAUEs are departmental associations that work in the areas of architecture, town planning and the environment.
Generally speaking, they work to promote a culture of quality that ultimately benefits the environment,
promote debates and consensus, reengineer working methods, promote innovation and support public policy
decisions.
That is why an initiative such as the Observatoire Photographique has a lot to do with what we do.
The Côtes d’Armor is a beautiful area: it skirts the sea, the hinterland is stunning, we have rivers and we have a
wealth of heritage. Not many people live there: we are only 570,000, but we are fairly evenly spread across the
department. We live off tourism (we attract fairly sizeable hoards of tourists) and farming (we raise countless
chickens, pigs and cows). Those two sources of income, however, do not always sit comfortably side by side.
The Conseil Général (Departmental Council) ran an opinion survey in 2007 and 37% of the 7700 locals who replied
picked “beautiful” as the first adjective they would use to describe their department. Even more remarkably,
60% of the 1,800 people who have holiday homes there said they had them because they enjoyed the coastal
landscape’s beauty – which also clearly ranked at the top of their list of concerns.
All that goes to say that the landscape matters there.
Back in the mid-1990s, when Côtes d’Armor embarked on a department-wide environmental drive focusing
on the “hard” issues (waste management, farmland pollution, water quality, etc.), CAUE volunteered to chair
a committee dealing with the landscape and the quality of life. We felt it was important.
Everyone with a stake in this department’s environment had a seat on that committee, which met on a regular
basis for a year and a half or two years until everyone involved signed a Charte du Paysage des Côtes d’Armor
(Côtes d’Armor landscape charter), which was indeed a declaration of good intent.
As the CAUE in Côtes d’Armor sees it, the landscape and democracy have a lot in common: nobody decides
alone what the landscape will look like but everyone contributes to it, nobody decides but everyone plays
a part. And, if we don’t do something about it, if we don’t talk about it, we will not be happy with what
happens to it.
At that time, we also ran an exhibition called Avant, Après / Autrefois, Aujourd’hui (Before and After / Past
and Present). Each pair of photos had a notebook where the members of the public could write down their
impressions.
That was a good start but, to be honest, nothing really came of it. It would have taken a lot more energy and
no doubt a lot more resources.
The only thing left from that period is the Observatoire Photographique du Paysage. We were in touch with the
Environment Ministry, which was rolling out its landscape photographic observatories and naturally suggested
building one for our department. There were already a few itineraries in other regions but what made our
situation different was the size of the target territory, as it spanned the entire department. That was what made
it original, and that was also what made it so tough. When Caroline Mollie-Stefulesco, the woman who got the
observatories off the ground at the start, showed me what a few photographers had done, Thibault Cuisset’s
approach was the one that stood out. There was something gentle and at the same time something tough
about his photos. He took a cold, hard look at sometimes painful areas and his use of colour was peculiar.
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Workshop No. 2 - Photographic itineraries in the Côtes d’Armor Department
Max Grammare effectuant les re-photographie – CAUE des Côtes d’Armor
We did not want a 40-snapshot postcard to attract tourists: we wanted him to probe ordinary places, use his
objective to shake them free from their false dullness and give them a new status. We wanted him to turn
those images into landscapes.
As months went by, the Committee started pinpointing a number of typically local issues affecting the landscape
(urban pressure on the coastline and the associated stakes in the tourism industry and, conversely, the fact
that people were slowly but surely deserting rural villages inland, and the impact of the infrastructure and air
networks). We got the Steering Committee together with Thibault Cuisset, and each committee member told
him about their concerns over these trends. We told him where he would find vantage points to capture those
issues.
Six missions and 8000 km up and down the Côtes d’Armor’s quaint back lanes later, Thibault Cuisset came back
with about 800 snapshots. And we had to narrow them down to 40. But how could 40 capture 6878 square
kilometres? I’ll tell you where we started.
We had hundreds of technically flawless 6x9 prints on plates strewn across Thibault Cuisset’s studio floor.
Every one of those 6x9s had a story to tell, had captured some of the place’s spirit or begged a question about
where the place was heading. So why did we have to keep this one and not that one? Jean Cabanel, Caroline
Mollie-Stefulesco and Daniel Quesney where there passing plates around and you could sense that they were
used to making impossible and inevitably frustrating decisions.
But the question was what impression was the collection of a whole going to make. Would it capture all the
issues that the Steering Committee was grappling with? Was it all that serious if one part of the area was left
out? Was this whole exercise not a little cruel? Daniel started cutting out the photos and they started changing
hands. It was like a bizarre game of tarot, concealing the future somewhere in there. Then it all started coming
together. We would have liked to keep a few more but we had decisions to make. We were planning to hold
the first public exhibition in a months’ time. We wanted to start building awareness fast.
Thibault’s large prints came in three weeks later. It was like discovering them all over again and the big picture
started making sense. The first impression we got was that it reflected our department. It was not flattery or
caricature: it was the places we saw every day and rarely stopped to notice, the places we found too normal
to grace with questions. The question of quality was not even there. And it was a compelling invitation to stop
and look. It was a collection of snapshots that we knew would grow into a valuable resource over the years.
But the decision was not yet final. We had to go back to the Steering Committee to fine-tune the decision
together, fill in the gaps and weed out a few repeats.
When this critical first step was over, it was time to really get down to work. We had to make sure the new
photographs would be taken for as long as possible. First, we decided to buy Thibault Cuisset’s equipment and
negotiated a few days’ training with him. Then we toured the 42 vantage points that we had finally selected
and parked them every year with white spray paint. This systematic discipline is still no doubt the toughest
part. Max Grammare, who is the architect on the team and an enthusiastic photographer, is in charge of this.
He tours the department every year, on three or four missions, depending on the season and when the original
photographs were taken (he tries to stick to the original dates, times and of course frames).
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1994
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Pleubian - Le Sillon de Talbert - Observatoire photographique du paysage / © Thibault Cuisset (1994, 1996 & 1997 ) & Max GRAMMARE (1998,
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008)
The limitations of simple images very soon became clear. An image is still an image and we needs information
to be able to decipher it. We have to know what is really going on. At that time, we had the idea of appointing
a correspondent for each vantage point to report on what had happened to the landscape between the two
photographs. This is still the case.
When we talk about landscape, we are talking about the part of the area that we can see. Time and recurring
photographs have shown the extent to which a frame is still a portion of a bigger picture. A lot can happen
right outside the picture.
The geography students we had working on the sites we photographed showed us that a photograph sometimes only captures the tiny portion of the area that the lens zooms in on.
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1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Sainte Tréphine - Entrée du bourg - Observatoire photographique du paysage / © Thibault Cuisset (1995, 1996 & 1997 ) & Max GRAMMARE
(1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008)
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A photographic itinerary
in Armorique Regional Natural Park
Jean-Christophe Ballot, photographer
Jean-Christophe Ballot will be presenting six repeat-photography series from the Parc Naturel Régional
d’Armorique, where he has been working for ten years now, then another four landscape-related commissions
and an assignment that he calls a non-commission. These examples will show how a photographer can find
his or her bearings to work on an order. The commissions in these examples span a wide variety of sites,
institutions, environmental issues and underlying political agendas.
The artist and the commission.
A number of artists see commissions as something akin to straightjackets where they will have a hard time
finding their bearings and not surrendering their soul. There is also this implied assumption that the party
placing the order is somehow pulling the strings. But does it have to come to a clash? Not necessarily.
Jean-Christophe Ballot started working with the Observatoire du Paysage by discussing the Parc d’Armorique.
There were a number of questions. Where to start broaching such a large-scale commission was one of them.
The Steering Committee was discussing the area’s issues and those were the issues the commission would
have to address.
Jean-Christophe Ballot presented six repeat-photography series on different issues taken from 1997 to 2001.
The first one, Abbaye de Relecq, involved improvement work on a listed heritage site. One of the changes is in
the centre of the images: the hedges have been cut, the lawn has been mowed and so on.
The second image shows an archaeological excavation underway.
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Workshop No. 2 - A photographic itinerary in Armorique Regional Natural Park
The second series shows rural buildings. There is a farm building to the left, a house on the right and a trail
with farming equipment. In the second photograph, there is a new object behind the farm building (sheltering
a tractor or other farming equipment, no doubt). In the third and fourth photographs, there is a swimming pool
for children (or grandchildren).
What exactly is the “right” vantage point? Based on the Observatoire’s issues, you have to try to lay “traps”
for changes. You have to try to use foresight and find spots where something is bound to happen.
So the photographer’s angle on the landscape is essential.
The third set comes from Plounéour-Ménez. It shows an entrance to the town with an EdF (electric utility)
outpost and overhead cables. The zebra crossing is the only amenity for pedestrians. In the second photograph,
the blemishes have disappeared and pedestrian protection has appeared.
The Observatoire’s main mandate involves gauging landscape quality, not necessarily denouncing. Landscape
quality can decline on one front and improve on another, as in this example.
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This set shows Monts d’Arrée square in Brasparts. The town centre is fairly old and comely, and there is an
estate in the background. So this image captures the link between the two fabrics. The second image does not
show much change, neither does the third. The fourth shows the estate stretching towards the town centre as
a new house has appeared.
This vantage point shows the nuclear plant in Brennilis. EdF sees this site as exemplary as it is the first nuclear
plant that it has shut down and is currently dismantling it. EdF considers that nuclear plants have a given
lifespan and, when it expires, it plans to restore the natural landscape’s original condition.
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This set shows improvements on departmental route D70 exiting Pont-de-Buis, looking towards the town centre.
It shows developments between the time the first photograph and the second were taken.
The hallmark you notice in this type of project is the notion of recording reality as neutrally as possible.
Jean-Christophe quoted an excerpt from a presentation of Thomas Ruff’s work at the Musée d’Art Moderne:
“Ruff strives to document reality as impartially as possible. His approach stands precisely because there is that
distance from the subject. He is not trying to bear witness to an event or capture a fleeting moment.”
There is a question here: “not trying to bear witness to an event,” i.e. inaction. When you work for the Observatoire,
there is no such thing as a “non-event”. There are no spectacular events either. But there is that desire to put
time into perspective from one photograph to the next. So, suddenly, there is an event. In the latest set of
images, the succession itself is the event. “Document reality as impartially as possible” means avoiding the
feast, Barthes’ punctum and Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. That’s a way of confining the Observatoire du
Paysage’s photographic hallmark and putting it into perspective in relation to a contemporary production.
Jean-Christophe Ballot then presented other commissions, also in reference to the Observatoire.
The Conservatoire du Littoral was his first example. As Dominique Legrain said during his presentation,
the Conservatoire commissioned artists, not reporters. The artist’s sensitivity, how he appropriates a landscape
and steeps it in a specific mood is actually at the core of the commission.
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This next commission was from the CAUE in Charente-Maritime and involved the oyster-farming landscape.
This department’s two main business sectors are tourism and oyster farming. The oyster farms on the waterfront
belong to the State but there is a tacit agreement of sorts to allow people to work on them through agreements
with town councils. Now, however, oyster farmers who are retiring are selling their farms to people who want
to use them as holiday homes. In other words, they are signing official deeds to sell something that they do
not really own. The CAUE is not there to stage a revolution: it is there to lend advice and cast light on the issues
that will have to be settled sooner or later. That was what prompted Jean-Michel Thibault, who heads that
association, to issue a commission. When he saw the work that Jean-Christophe Ballot had done on the port in
Casablanca, he realised that he would be able to find his bearings and deliver on this project.
This next project comes from abroad and dates back to 1999 ( “Morocco Year” in France). A number of French
artists were invited to work on a project. Most of them headed for Fez or Marrakech, but nobody chose Casablanca.
So the Institut Français’ director decided to open a vacancy for Jean-Christophe Ballot, who went there to
work on the urban landscape and on the milestones that define Casablanca’s architecture (the port, Hassan II
Mosque and the seafront). The exhibition finally only featured the port and one of Morocco’s main industrial
sectors. The book followed as part of the Visa collection.
Visa 1 was “Winter” (photos by Olivier Mériel, Alain Ceccaroli and Vincent Monthiers),
Visa 2 “Brasilia” (photos by Emmanuel Pinard),
Visa 3 “Nature’s Return” (photos by John Davies),
Visa 4 “Casablanca’s seafront and urban landscapes” (photos by Jean-Christophe Ballot)
and Visa 5 “Pointe du Raz” (photos by Raymond Depardon).
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This next commission zoomed in on Saint-Aubin Island, with Sarthe and Mayenne. This island is underwater
three months a year and has earned European natural heritage status, as it is a wildlife breeding spot.
Jean-Christophe Ballot presented the commission from the art resource centre and new theatre in Angers,
backed by the Agriculture and Fishing Ministry, Environment a Land Improvement Ministry, Maine et Loire
Department Council, and the Greater Angers City Council. There is a poetic dimension here, and the notion that
the swells are not floods, i.e. that they are predictable (they occur in winter and spring). There is an element
of serenity in the relationship, and not the slightest hint of a catastrophe.
Mr Ballot rounds up with a “non-commission”, i.e. a few of the personal projects he worked on in the summer
of 2008, when he visited Ladakh in the Himalayas and the Indus River Valley. This polyptych captures the same
vantage point from 2.00 pm to 8.00 pm. The main theme therefore hovers around the changes in the landscape.
This example shows how experience with commissions can spill over into personal artistic projects.
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“Under the colossal skies, the landscape looks more like an apparition than reality, a mysterious, melancholic
and poetic apparition that a slightly strong gust of wind could slowly carry away with the clouds, mist and
smoke.” (Alberto Moravia). Here, the question is how real a landscape is, and the answer is that its reality
hinges on whether it materialises in the eyes of a geographer, historian, philosopher or artist. An artist always
finds something to see. And, if there is nothing to see, there is still the void and the landscape becomes an
exercise in contemplative photography. It is precisely when there is nothing to see that landscape photography
becomes a challenge. That is when the artist needs a different angle to extract the non-event from an image.
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PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITIONS (a selection)
2008
2007
2006 2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
« Urban Landscapes from Berlin to Shanghai », Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (book).
« Hell », Beckel-Odille-Boïcos Gallery, Paris.
« Mutamorphoses », Acte2 Gallery, Paris.
« Reviews », Gallery 127, Marrakech
« Ile Seguin, a Landscape with Absent Figures », Espace Landowski, Boulogne-Billancourt (catalogue).
« Porcelain », Bernardaud Foundation, Limoges.
« Pinnacles and Termites’ Nests », Christine Phal Gallery, Paris; Chroniques Nomades, Honfleur.
« New York, Urban Landscapes », Beckel-Odille-Boïcos Gallery, Paris.
« Ostrowiec-Gennevilliers Photographic Territories », Ostrowiec, Poland (catalogue)
« Diana, a Contemporary Myth », Maly-le-Roy Museum
« Sabbioneta, an Ideal City », Rihour Palace, Lille
« Metamorfosis, Circulo de Bellas Artes », Madrid (book with Spanish translation)
« Diana, a Contemporary Myth », Villa Lemot, Loir Atlantique (book).
« Acqua Alta », Galerria del Leone, Venice.
« Waiting Stones », Beauport Abbey (book).
« Sabbioneta, an Ideal City », Dobrée Museum, Nantes
« Five to Noon », Iéna Palace, Paris.
« The Louvre’s Metamorphosis », Louvre Museum (book)
« Polyphonies », Royaumont Abbey (book).
« The Oyster Farming Landscape », Corderie Royale de Rochefort, Brouage (catalogue)
« A Night at the Louvre…» Espace Electra, Paris (book).
« Singapore », Alliance Française, Singapore
« Laudate Pueri », Chinon Chateau (catalogue).
« Under Issy’s Veil », French Playing Card Museum, Issy-les-Moulineaux (book)
« Mont Athos », Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (catalogue)
« Large Waters », Angers Art Resource Centre (book)
« Sabbioneta, an Ideal City », Lion Gallery (during the 5th Venice architecture biennial, sponsored by AFAA), Italy
« Casablanca, a Port », French Institute in Casablanca, Morocco (catalogue)
« Sabbioneta, an Ideal City », Sabbioneta Ducal Palace, Italy (book)
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS (a selection)
2008
2007
2006
2005
2002
2001
2000
« 101 Chairs », Culture Ministry, Paris
« A Photographic Journey through the 20th Century », Museum of Contemporary History, Paris (catalogue)
« Beyond the Iconic », Los Angeles Public Library
« Art Paris », Grand Palais, Paris.
« Atelier La Courière », Michèle Brouta Gallery, Paris
« Modern Life Painters », Centre Pompidou, Paris
« Artsénat 2006 », an installation in Luxembourg Gardens, Paris (catalogue)
« Nicolas Ledoux, the Second Look », Doubs Departmental Council, Besançon (catalogue)
« Objective Paris 2 », Pavillon des Arts, Paris (catalogue)
« Portraits of Trees », Evreux Museums and Maison des Arts (catalogue)
« Trans Photographiques 4 », Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille
« Shared Territories, the Metropolitan Archipelago », Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris (catalogue)
« Town Planning and the Photographer’s Strategy », Marres Art Centre, Maastricht, the Netherlands (catalogue).
« Europeans in Paris », City Hall, Paris.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / Louvre Museum / Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (National Contemporary Art Trust) /
Centre Pompidou / Maison Européenne de la Photographie (European Photography Institute) / Carnavalet Museum / Bibliothèque
Nationale de France / Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine (Museum of Contemporary History) / Musée des Années 30 (1930s Museum),
Boulogne-Billancourt / Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (a bank) / Artothèques (art resource centres) in Angers, Nantes and
La Rochelle / Le Parvis, Tarbes / L’Imagerie, Lannion / Conservatoire du Littoral
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The Photographic Itinerary in Hérault
Marie Guibert, Languedoc-Roussillon Regional Environmental Department
Marie Guibert presented the Observatoire Photographique des Paysages in Hérault, its history, what it has
learned from observation, and how it can use those findings.
The French government set up an Observatoire Photographique du Paysage to document developments
in the landscape and asked the DIREN (Regional Environmental Department) in Languedoc-Roussillon to set
up a similar observatory in Hérault. The Steering Committee’s mandate encompassed three specific goals:
capture the breadth of landscapes in Hérault from the Cévennes to the Mediterranean, illustrate a number of
issues foreshadowing changes in the landscape (in farming and urban environments, tourism development,
infrastructure, roads and public areas) and cast a critical eye – meaning a cynical rather than a complacent one
– on the department. Hérault was lucky to be able to count on Raymond Depardon, who had a house in the
department and was happy to set up this observatory with the Steering Committee.
In 2008, it counted 54 series of 16 photos, and the CAUE in Hérault is in charge of re-photographing Raymond
Depardon’s original views. A number of series, however, have been discontinued for technical reasons.
The developments that had been predicted are now visible in the observatory, which goes to say that this
observatory provides valuable insights on changes in the landscape.
There is also a difference between spectacular changes taking place on a practically planetary scale and small
touches in pinpointed spots.
The Observatoire Photographique des Paysages has also picked up changes pointing to the fact that landscapes
are becoming commonplace – or indeed entirely neglected. From this perspective, it makes sense to use this
observatory to veer changes in the landscape towards higher standards of environmental quality.
As observatories provide valuable insights on how landscapes are changing, it makes sense to hope that
they will eventually all pool their findings in the Système d’Information de la Nature et des Paysages
(nature and landscape information system) to compile knowledge on a par with that in the Atlas de Paysages
(landscape atlas).
It is also an instrument that can he used to administrate specific local spots (even though, in the case of larger
areas, it can be used to encourage policy moves but not to steer the area’s fate).
It is also fairly difficult to harness. Its findings are revealing but it is nevertheless difficult to interact with them.
The people running the observatory (the CAUE in Hérault and other regional bodies) organise exhibitions on
a fairly regular basis to showcase the observatories’ work. The idea is also to talk about them during the
“landscape days” prescribed by the European Convention.
To be able to use this observatory’s findings, we seem to need researchers to help us understand the changes
they spot (even if a part of them is already intelligible). That way, the observatory will become a proper
assessment tool and not just a gauge to measure changes in the landscape.
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Workshop No. 2 - The Photographic Itinerary in Hérault
Frontignan (34) - Lido des Aresquiers 1992 – Observatoire photographique du paysage © Raymond Depardon
Frontignan (34) - Lido des Aresquiers 2002 – Observatoire photographique du paysage © Frédéric Hébraud (CAUE 34)
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Visual Monitoring of Finnish Landscapes
Tapio Heikkilä, Ministry of Environment, Finland
The values of European cultural landscapes have been recognised in many contexts. These values are based on
the cultural, biological and visual features of the landscapes and their diversity. Cultural landscapes are valued
as an important foundation of our identity. The development of landscape management, and the measures for
its monitoring, calls for new methods and instruments, of which visual landscape monitoring could be one.
Landscape studies
Contemporary multi-disciplinary landscape research can be divided into two main branches: the natural scientific
and the humanist. The first emphasises the regional and material dimensions of landscapes, the latter stresses
the observations and interpretations made of landscapes. Photographs can be used not only for qualitative
and quantitative assessment of landscape phenomena, but also for conveying the impressions and consequent
interpretations of the landscapes.
The conceptual basic element of visual landscape observation is the view (or scene). We could say that any
geographically limited landscape incorporates countless different views observed from different directions and
at different times. Views are like samples of the landscape. When there are enough samples, we can make
generalised observations of the landscapes in question.
Photography is used in many kinds of research to illustrate landscape phenomena, although it is sometimes
used also as an actual research instrument. Typical examples of the latter are studies of landscape preferences,
where photographs are used to represent field observations. There are surprisingly few critical accounts of the
significance of photography as an instrument in landscape research, although photographs as such are used
quite commonly in all kinds of research. However, observations about photography and the use of photographs
have been made in many contexts, observations which serve as useful starting points for future documentation.
Visualisations from different periods are an important part of the source material for landscape research.
In addition to photographs, such material includes paintings, drawings and other types of visual representation.
In assessing works made by artists, however, the author’s interpretations of the landscapes must be regarded
as a factor that introduces an element of uncertainty to the documentation.
Photography offers many benefits for the documentation of landscapes. The camera records views in detail and
faithfully, and can be used to record huge numbers of observations easily and inexpensively.
When photographs are fixed to specific points and moments, they become accurate historical records.
When the same views are photographed at regular intervals, the result is an accurate record of landscape changes.
Because of its technical and precise nature, photography is an excellent tool for monitoring landscape changes.
Changes in landscapes have been studied in many ways, including a comparison of maps or photographs
produced in different times. Photographic projects, such as providing comprehensive documentation of
entire landscapes, are a good source of material when one wants to learn about the features of the landscape
at the time. Such a body of material may consist of a photographer’s entire production, for example, or may
consist of documentation collated for a specific purpose from photos taken by several photographers.
Detailed comparative information about landscape changes has been produced in rephotography projects.
In rephotography, or repeat photography, photos from archives are used as the starting point, and photographs
with identical framing and other parameters are taken to demonstrate changes that have occurred in the
landscape. The greatest weakness of the method is that repeat photographs have to replicate the photographic
choices and principles of the original photographer. The original archive material may have defects in it in terms
of quality, coverage or subject matter.
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Workshop No. 2 - Visual Monitoring of Finnish Landscapes
Some of the most sophisticated projects for monitoring landscape change involve systematic photography.
The themes to be documented are selected beforehand, and photographic methods are devised to arrive at an
optimal fit to the subject of the research and the sites representing the theme.
Visual landscape monitoring
Visual landscape monitoring is a research project that documented Finnish cultural landscapes and their changes
through photography. The landscape types documented in the project were cultivated agricultural landscapes
and semi-natural grasslands. For the first, the main emphasis was on fields, whereas the principal type of
semi-natural habitats was fresh meadows. A systematic photographic method was developed for monitoring
changes in these landscape types. The aim was to develop a photographic method applicable to a wide range
of different landscape management projects, and to produce a body of technically high-quality visual material.
Another aim was to put the visual features of landscapes in first place and make the photography independent
of the photographer’s choices.
The project began in 1996, when the initial photographic documentation was done in the fields. With the use
of those primary photos and several experimental shoots in different landscape types, the final photographic
method was developed for the project. The main photographic tools chosen were a 35 mm Hasselblad XPan
panoramic camera and colour negative film.
Ultimately 13 agricultural landscapes in different parts of Finland were chosen for monitoring. Ten of the sites
were nationally valuable landscape areas, the rest were ordinary agricultural landscapes. In each area on average
ten easily locatable vantage points were selected on a map. Photos were taken at each vantage point towards
each of the four cardinal points. In addition to the predetermined vantage points, the photographer could also
select additional vantage points and camera angles on site.
Rephotographs were taken at all vantage points in 2000 and 2005. Additional repeat photographs were taken
on three sites in 2001–2003. The photographs were taken in summer during the growing season, with the
exception of Halikko, where photos were experimentally taken also at other times of the year. The agricultural
landscape material (1996–2005) consists of about 2 200 original negatives.
Along with fields, the other theme of the research was semi-natural grasslands. Sites selected for the study included
48 fresh meadows in southern Finland. The meadows were included in a study of the Finnish Environment
Institute on the effects of management on the vegetation and species composition in meadows.
A one-quarter -hectare (50 m x 50 m) study plot for gathering biological data was established in each
meadow by the biologists. Finally, the landscape and the vegetation in the meadow were documented
by taking photographs from the corners of the study plot, two from each corner, one towards the next corner
clockwise, and another towards the opposite corner. A comprehensive initial documentation covering all
the meadows was carried out in 2001. In 2003 and 2005 a few sample meadows were rephotographed,
and rephotographs were taken in all meadows in 2006–2007. The meadow documentation (2001–2007)
consists of about 1000 negatives.
All the material – negatives, prints, maps and field notes – has been archived using standard archival methods
for long-term preservation. The material will be deposited in some suitable public archive to give researchers
free access to it in the future. All the negatives in the study have been scanned for digital processing.
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Results and conclusions
In the course of developing the method and applying it in practice, the principles of photography became
established. Practice shows that a method for documenting landscapes changes must be precise, yet sufficiently
flexible to allow adaptation to individual sites. It is better to have too many vantage points in the primary
documentation phase than too few, because changes in the landscape can be unexpected and surprising.
It is impossible to overemphasise the importance of precision and care in taking the rephotographs.
The smallest differences in the position or angle of the camera can render the resultant photos incommensurable.
The production of high-quality visual material also calls for skill and care in the actual field shoots.
At least some of the vantage points should be selected beforehand, on a map, for instance, because this invariably
leads to the inclusion of such random changes in the landscape which otherwise would remain unobserved.
Many rephotographic projects emphasise the importance of identical lighting, which is indeed essential if one
wants to maximise the comparability of details in image pairs. Another way is to take photos in all kinds of
conditions to include visually impressive diversity and variation due to differences in weather and lighting.
The more rephotographs taken and the longer the monitoring time span, the more interesting the resultant
visual material.
The aim of the project for visual landscape monitoring was to put the visual features of landscapes in first place
and make the photography independent of the photographer’s choices. Because most vantage points were
selected beforehand on maps, they can be said to represent an objective sample. Although the selection of the
vantage points was a rather mechanical process, many of the resultant photographs seem like aesthetically
intentional pictures. The method seems to do justice to the sites. The photographic method can be used as
a monitoring tool in all kinds of landscape management projects. The photographic records created with this
method can be used in the planning and steering of landscape management, in agricultural policy making and
the monitoring of land use projects.
The photographic material provides a systematic and representative record of Finnish agricultural and traditional
landscapes and their changes in the early years of Finland’s membership of the European Union
(starting in 1995). An examination of the photos shows that Finnish agricultural landscapes have more or less
retained their landscape values during that period. In the peripheries, however, open views are being shut out
by scrub encroachment and overgrowing, whereas, especially in the southern and western parts of the country,
the increasing efficiency of agriculture seems to be making the landscapes more uniform. Extensive land use
projects pose a threat to the preservation of valuable agricultural sites, as when motorways are constructed,
for example. The preservation of the cultural and landscape values of agricultural landscapes is not possible
without continuing agricultural production throughout the country.
The state of valuable semi-natural grasslands that represent biodiversity at its best gives cause for concern.
The natural and landscape values of meadows that are no longer being managed are threatened by
overgrowing. Safeguarding the management of traditional rural landscapes, and also their nature and
visual qualities, is among the most urgent tasks of nature conservation and agri-environmental management
in Finland.
On the basis of observations, landscape changes were divided into two main categories, temporary variation
and permanent landscape changes. Temporary variation is caused by more or less random and transient
phenomena, such as weather conditions, or cyclical phenomena, such as the time of day or season, or crop rotation.
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Temporary variation is present as a continuous movement in a landscape; it does not actually lead anywhere.
Sooner or later the landscape reverts to its earlier state. By contrast, permanent landscape changes remain
in place and the landscape does not return to its former state. Permanent changes may be caused by sudden
natural phenomena, such as storms or forest fires, by gradual natural processes, or by extensive changes in land
use such as construction, clearing or discontinuation of agriculture.
References
Heikkilä, Tapio 2007: Visuaalinen maisemaseuranta. Kulttuurimaiseman muutosten valokuvadokumentointi. Kuvat.
– Visual Monitoring of Finnish Landscapes. Photographic Documentation of Changes in Cultural Landscapes.
160 p. – Musta Taide & Taideteollinen korkeakoulu, Helsinki.
Heikkilä, Tapio 2007: Visuaalinen maisemaseuranta. Kulttuurimaiseman muutosten valokuvadokumentointi.
Teksti. 232 s. (Visual monitoring of landscapes. Text in Finnish.) – Musta Taide & Taideteollinen korkeakoulu,
Helsinki.
Appendix
The Method of Visual Landscape Monitoring
Initial Documentation
- Agricultural Landscapes
The sites are selected to give a representative sample of landscapes in the various landscape regions.
Using maps, vantage points are selected on each site to represent the various features of the landscape.
If needed, complementary vantage points may be established on site.
The photos are taken during the growing season when it is not raining and during daylight hours, avoiding
sunglare near the horizon.
Photographs are taken at the vantage points clockwise towards each of the four cardinal points of the compass,
starting with north. The photographer may take additional photos in different directions at his discretion.
The photos are taken at a height of 200–250 cm. The camera is tilted downwards at an angle of 5°. No tilt is
needed in hilly terrain or near woods.
A small aperture (f:11 or smaller) should be used to ensure sufficient depth of field. Set the focus point at about
8 metres. Correct exposure is ensured by taking three photos in each direction, overexposing and underexposing
two of the shots by one stop.
At each vantage point, a photo is also taken of a data sheet giving the technical data of the shot. Other photos
may not contain any extraneous material or equipment like the photographer’s vehicle.
Detailed field notes are made at each vantage point and for each direction. The vantage points are marked on
maps and cartograms. GPS coordinates are also recorded.
The films are developed immediately in a reliable laboratory. Retakes are made of all failed photos.
Two sets of contact prints are made of the developed films, one for the archive, one for field use.
High-quality prints are made of the negatives and/or scanned for digital use.
The material is evaluated using museum methods.
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- Traditional Rural Biotopes
A representative sample of meadows or other traditional rural habitats are selected for the project.
A study plot of 50 m by 50 m is established at each site in a place with representative vegetation for that site.
Photos are taken from each corner of the plot towards the next corner clockwise and towards the opposite
corner. If necessary, photos in other directions are taken as well. A few complementary vantage points may be
established inside or outside the plot.
The photos are taken at a height of 170cm. The focus point is set at 5–8 metres. If the site contains scrub, trees
or other high vegetation, the focus point can be set closer.
The camera is tilted downwards at an angle of 5°. No tilt is needed on sites with many trees or upward sloping
terrain. At some vantage points it may be necessary to take photos both with and without a tilt.
In all other aspects, the procedure is the same as when photographing agricultural landscapes.
- Repeat Photographs
Agricultural Landscapes and Traditional Rural Biotopes
Rephotographs are taken at exactly the same vantage points and in the same directions, at determined intervals
and at approximately the same time as the initial photos were taken. If one wishes to monitor changes over
the course of the growing season or the effects of the seasons on the landscape, repeat photographs can be
taken at shorter intervals.
The vantage point and direction, camera height and tilt angle are all checked from the maps, field notes and
the contact prints from the initial or previous photo shoot.
In all other aspects, the procedure is the same as when making the initial documentation.
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Halikko
2000 - Visual Monitoring of Landscapes © Oiva Hakala
2005 - Visual Monitoring of Landscapes © Martina Motzbäuchel
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Nummela
2000 - Visual Monitoring of Landscapes © Tapio Heikkilä
2005 - Visual Monitoring of Landscapes © Tapio Heikkilä
Uusikylä
June 2001 - Visual Monitoring of Landscapes © Tapio Heikkilä
July 2001 - Visual Monitoring of Landscapes © Tapio Heikkilä
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Re-photographing Changing Flemish Landscapes
(1904-2004)
Pieter Uyttenhove (Ghent University - Belgium)
Research on evolving Flemish landscapes since the 2006 Recollecting Landscapes has actually been carried out
in Ghent University itself. It is not a commission from a central or local government, or from a public-sector
agency: it is research at Labo S, the university’s lab researching countryside urbanisation and towns’ chaotic
sprawl. This lab has tried in a number of other ways not so much to catalogue the changes it has noticed but
above all to understand the processes that have been underway for a century now.
Belgium has had outstanding railway infrastructure since the second half of the 19th century (it has Europe’s
densest network). There are national and commuter lines in keeping Belgium’s policy to keep workers where
they are rather than let them move to the industrial cities they work in. A very sophisticated and inexpensive
scheme therefore enables workers to take the train or tram to work in factories in urban areas every day of the
week, and to go back home to the countryside to have dinner with their families every evening.
Against this backdrop, I would like to introduce Jean Massart, a professor who lectured at Brussels University
in the early 19th century. He was a botanist but was not only interested in the plants themselves: he was
also interested in plants as part of their landscapes. He went on to draw up a geo-botanical map of Belgium
showing its phytogeographic areas and each one’s distinctive features. Massart was interested in many other
things too: social causes and photography were two of them. He took and used photographs for his botanical
research and wanted to portray plants not as objects in themselves but as part of the larger environment, i.e.
as part of a cultural landscape that man had adapted or transformed.
Belgium’s natural or farming areas are not wide open expanses nestling a sprinkling of towns: they are farmed
extensively and sometimes urbanised, and are usually riddled with railways. Even back in Massart’s day,
they had already paled in the glare of modernity. The prints that Massart released during the first decade of the
20th century have all the information we can need to document and repeat his work (titles, the names of the
region and place, the date the photograph was taken, the geographic coordinates and directions, explanations
about the culture and botany captured in the photographs, related images, etc.). Mostly due to World War I,
Massart only produced two of the ten albums he had set out to compile, i.e. 160 plates in total.
Two Jardin Botanique National de Belgique staff chose a series of 60 of those plates in 1980 and decided to
repeat-photograph them. Georges Charlier (a photographer) and Leo Vanhecke (a botanist) published the
result in a first book and organised an exhibition.
In 2004, Pieter Uyttenhove, Bruno Notteboom and the Labo S team decided to have the same photographs
taken again and asked Jan Kempenaers, a photographer and artist, to do so on an Institut Flamand d’Architecture
grant. Kempenaers wanted a certain amount of artistic latitude, explaining why the photographs typically
feature wide, cloudy or dull skies with no direct sunlight, and why the horizons are proportionally lower than
where Massart and Charlier photographed them. That was because Jean Massart was mainly interested in
the botany, i.e. the plants in their environment and cultural surroundings and therefore shot wide, detailed
foregrounds. Charlier had done the same. Kempenaers, conversely, was keener on the skies than the
foregrounds. Looking at Jan Kempenaers’ photos, you get the impression you are standing on the ground;
looking at Massart’s and Charlier’s photographs, you feel you are looking at a TV screen.
Jean Massart’s photographs are like paintings, “images of the world” reminiscing Brueghel. They radiate
a distinctly bucolic aura, capturing the cycle of farming and countryside life in the same snapshot.
Labo S used this set of images (60 series by three photographers) to start studying landscape transformations.
One of the sources inspiring the approach from a historical perspective was the series of images that Pugin,
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Workshop No. 2 - Re-photographing Changing Flemish Landscapes (1904-2004)
one of the founders of the picturesque movement, had built to cast an accusing spotlight on industrialisation
and the scars it was leaving on urban landscapes in the early 19th century.
Multidisciplinary teams of architects, town planners, bioengineers and historians gathered to start working
on the research project. They analysed a number of photographic series in some depth, with material
they unearthed from archives at the Land Improvement and Public Works ministries, municipal records,
local newspapers and interviewing people who lived in the area. That was the case, for instance, in Kortemark,
a small Belgian commune in the Flemish region. Jean Massart had captured considerable detail when he
photographed that landscape in 1904. At that point, he was already aware that he was photographing
disappearing landscapes. Indeed, 75 years later, that landscape has changed beyond recognition, mainly due to
the railway’s expansion and agricultural industrialisation. Other examples, showing other changes in farming,
infrastructure, housing and leisure, tell similar stories.
By way of conclusion, I would like to point out that this research has been published in a book and is available
on the Recollecting Landscapes website (www.recollectinglandscapes.be). An exhibition in the spring of 2006
in Ghent’s Museum of Modern Art (SMAK) was a hit and earned outstanding reviews. Much of the publication
– which, for financial reasons, is only available in Dutch – is also available for download on the website.
It includes interviews with experts discussing image interpretation. It is vital to do more than turn these
transformations into historical accounts: they have to be interpreted through the eyes of cultural anthropologists,
botanists, town planners, sociologists and so on to draw conclusions that will serve a wider agenda.
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Exchanges
Henri Le Pesq pointed out that it is interesting to have a scientific angle from someone who can analyse
developments and understand what is happening in the area. Philosophers also have to broach the questions
to understand what is going on and to draw the necessary conclusions. The quality of a landscape does not
necessarily hinge on its beauty. It has to be friendly; it has to be a place you feel like spending time in.
Odile Marcel, a philosopher, pointed out that central government has provided a system whereby organisations
can set up landscape observatories. The mechanism is quite formal but the images themselves ‘resonate’.
There are two types of images: the ones that lead to contemplation before infinity and the ones that provide
a critical eye on what we do and why.
Another participant said that he felt it was rather natural that an organisation set up by central government
be a little “disembodied”. That is precisely why it is essential to map out these itineraries with a local partner
organisation. The two moments when an observatory really comes to life are when it captures an area’s reality,
and when the world of art and the world of science meet.
Henri Le Pesq pointed out that the CAUE in Côtes d’Armor was having problems retaking photographs that
other photographers had taken originally. From a strictly technical standpoint, you have to know the equipment
well – even if Thibault Cuisset did his best to keep his original shots as simple and basic as possible.
Daniel Quesney, who worked with Caroline Mollie at the Observatoire and contributed to its artistic and technical management until 1999, feels that observatory photographs were often assumptions about the landscape tendered by the photographers. Photographers, in turn, were also influenced by their customers’ assumptions. Photographs, furthermore, escape the photographer’s control to some extent because the capturing
mechanism is autonomous. So it is not accurate to call these photographers “artists” or “authors” insofar
as they do not have the same grasp over photographs as painters have over their paintings. So there is an
assumption, a two-way exchange that the photographer cultivates with his or her own photographs – and it
changes his or her angle too.
Then there is the aesthetic aspect, which shines through the photographs and is indeed the point of this entire
exercise (finding the right photographers who will identify with such and such a site and, especially, probe it).
This exercise is an enriching experience for photographers too. That is also an essential variable: asking local
photographers to work on the project would not work because they are already “used to” the area.
Lastly, he asks whether it is the photograph that creates the landscape or whether the landscape is already
there and the photographer captures it through his or her eyes – or through the eyes of habit and shared
culture. So there is not necessarily only one way of looking from the vantage point: it can be a shared angle,
a form of communion around the landscape, if the photographer indeed buys into that shared view. But it
can also challenge established views. The area was there before the landscape. It becomes a landscape when
people take it into account (“enshrine” it, so to speak). And there is a lesson in there for everyone.
DATAR’s main contribution was that it served as a photographer melting pot. It indeed crystallised the decade
of photography running up to its inception.
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Pieter Uyttenhove mentioned Mark Klett (an American photographer) and his “Third View Project”,
which tries to home in on a practically scientific and extremely meticulous method for repeat photography.
He has devised a system whereby photographs can be taken from exactly the same spot, using the same
equipment and the same lighting, at the same time of year. You can take this fixation with exact reproduction
as far as laboratory situations (then, the landscape becomes a lab object). These photographs can be used
for extremely rational scientific research. But what they may lack is the hallmark of time. Jan Kempenaers,
for example, invariably looks for an unexpected coincidence of sorts in photographs.
Photographers working on repeat-photography projects are really nothing more than spectres because they
only spend an infinitesimal amount of time there – even though their photographs afford them a form of
permanent presence and photographs become part of the local community’s collective memory. At the
same time, we know that science today is not just about the observer being influenced by the object he or
she observes: we also know that the object changes under the observer’s eye – even if observation only lasts
a split second. Its presence in and of itself changes the object, i.e., in this case, the landscape.
The main question is this: “What is the ultimate purpose of repeat photography?” Is it transforming or improving
an area? Is it only to analyse objects from an historical perspective in a test tube? Whatever the perspective,
it has to be open-ended. It must not answer the questions or encapsulate the photograph in any form of
restrictive agenda.
Christian Dautel came back to the fact that photographs mechanically reproduce situations. They are ultimately
blind and, to an extent, dumb. Mr Dautel argues that photographs are not enough in and of themselves.
Everything that surrounds them (i.e. the movement, the itinerary) is the blind, inaudible part of the photograph.
But it is very important. Today, enlightening photographs with comments is essential. The method, however,
warrants serious thought in order to steer clear of mechanical reruns. But photographs alone are effectively
not enough and this point is worth pondering.
Henri Le Pesq believes that landscape paintings came from the work of “landscapers”, who decided
what exactly was picturesque. That, indeed, was when the picturesque appeared. Now that we can have as
many images as we will, what artist photographers have to do is change our views on a landscape. When a
photographic observatory calls in a photographer, it is paving the way for new angles. The places were there
before but, when Thibault Cuisset photographed Côtes d’Armor, he turned places that nobody saw as landscapes
into landscapes.
Christian Dautel contends that scientific, historical and philosophical research has swept all that debate aside.
Landscapes were indeed there before. But they are not just upshots of given cultures, viewpoints or aesthetic
codes: landscapes also exist because people work on them. It is very difficult for a photographer to capture
the landscape, the itinerary, the work and so on. And, if the photographic observatory has made a contribution
to understanding a landscape’s economic, social and political dimension, it is precisely because it has asked
questions outside the realm of aesthetics. It has looked at the culture, which was also there before. It has
looked at the workers to talk about globalisation, to talk about merchandise flows, to talk about iconographic
images, how they circulate, how they develop and how they qualify objects. Those are real political questions,
which have nothing to do with the questions about representation.
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Caroline Mollie pointed out that the Observatoire du Paysage was originally intended as a tool to help land
improvement teams do their work, back their negotiations and attract media exposure. The idea underlying
this initiative was that implementing policy to provide protection or stimulus at local, departmental, national or
European level does not necessarily mean that the policymakers driving it understand the impact it will have
on the landscape. So observing landscapes over time now allows town planners and policymakers to forecast
their projects’ effects on the landscape. That was one of the important objectives. The idea of working with a
professional photographer, author or artist naturally grafted onto that.
She also insisted that it was absolutely vital to document the images. The partner organisations on the steering
committees that identify or express the issues they are dealing with have to document these photos to explain
how the observatory contributes to landscape-related policy and the consequences that measures entail over
time.
Marie Guibert stressed the fact that the most touching aspect was the connection with the public, how the
public sees these observatories that show the sometimes spectacular and sometimes slow developments over
time, and how the public does not just look at the artistic aspect of the photographs but also looks at the series
to understand the landscape’s transformation. Whether or not the landscape is beautiful is immaterial. But it
has to be inhabited and alive, and observatories have to confront all these approaches.
Pia Viewing asked how vantage points, and objects photographed for the first time and then re-photographed,
are chosen. She also asked how a scientific approach, which involves fixing vantage points for a number of years,
can encapsulate the huge wealth that lies beyond them. In her view, what is interesting is the unconscious
side of images: the fact that they can be packed with information that will only surface later on and/or after
the components are analysed. In these technical and scientific endeavours, which are no doubt commendable
on account of their rigorous approach, images could also complement the information that elected officials,
town planners and architects use. When photographic writing becomes a language, she added, it opens up
quite a surprising realm.
Pieter Uyttenhove pointed out that a photographic observatory should not settle into ranking visuals alone
above everything else. It is not the photograph itself that matters: it is what happens between one photograph
and the next that matters. Time, it seems, is invisible, because the photograph is only a step, a residue, of a
permanent meaning-seeking transformation process. This invisible aspect, however, can nevertheless reveal
an unconscious state in a cultural landscape or a constantly on-the-move inhabited area. Photographs are
doors into an area’s story. The story is extremely stratified, and only photographs can reveal the strata the
stories conceal. Unearthing the layers, however, will involve historical research and discussion in a different
type of observatory.
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Christian Dautel pointed out that the first photograph in a set necessarily accommodated the notion that the
same view will be re-photographed later on, and the fact that repeat photography appears to be a complex
exercise. There is often a tendency to photograph areas that are going to change. One issue that has not
been discussed but warrants a closer look is whether observatories are not indeed showing landscapes that
are changing faster than France as a whole is changing. But that can mean that projects tend to gravitate
towards places where change is expected to happen, even though landscaped that do not change are just as
interesting. In certain images, the changes are so deep that you can wonder if there will still be something
to photograph in 10 years’ time. That is why, in the method, it makes sense to have these 60 extra vantage
points, which can be reactivated later on. He also made another important point on landscape archives.
An observatory can have all the problems in the world but, fundamentally, of nobody had taken the
photographs, we would not be able to study them. But what are the consequences of repeat photography on
the original vantage point?
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Round-up by Deputy Director for Quality of Life Catherine Bergeal
Thank you so much for all these presentations about these fascinating projects that show the whole point
of photographic observatories. By way of conclusion, I would like to tell you about a few of the assumptions
that, I think, today’s presentations and discussion proved right.
Landscape-related public policy seem to stem from two main notions. On the one hand, landscapes are an
open door to our planet’s history and to that of the people who are shaping it. Also, to home in on the “real”
aspect, to understand our environment, we have to read and analyse changes in the landscape over different
periods of time, and record them. That is why it is important to document our photographs as comprehensively
as possible today – in our own interest and in that of those who will follow.
On the other hand, landscapes are first and foremost about sharing values and we need tools to talk
about that. Photographic observation is one tool. Landscapes are indeed interaction between people and their
environment.
Today, knowing how to talk about changes in the landscape is a necessary step towards working together to
build the future we will share on this planet. This tallies with sustainable development, which is something
that this Ministry of course cares a lot about.
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WORKSHOP No. 3
Local Photographic
Observation Projects
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Moderator
The third workshop was chaired by Pierre Grandadam,
President of the Community of Communes of the Upper-Bruche.
Mr Grandadam presented Mr Philippe Maigne who runs the Communal Syndicate of Massif de Concors and
Sainte-Victoire which has received the “Grand Site de France®” label.
The Photographic Observatory
in Montagne Sainte-Victoire
Philippe Maigne, Director of the Grand Site Sainte-Victoire,
“Grand Site de France®”
M. Maigne explained that Photographic Observation of the landscape of the Grand Site Sainte-Victoire is not
yet part of the National Observation Programme. It is a recent observation project which was created in 2005.
The procedures used for creating it retained the main components of the Ministry’s methodology, even though
it was at a time when you were not given the same assistance on a national basis as you are today. Hence it
proceeded more as a local project overseen by a management body, the Communal Syndicate of the Grand
Site Sainte-Victoire.
The Grand Site Sainte-Victoire is made up of the massifs of Concors and Sainte-Victoire, which are quite typical
of Mediterranean landscapes, covering 35,000 hectares and grouping together 14 communes. It is a peri-urban
territory bordering on Aix-en-Provence and is close to Marseille which is structured around two key components:
the forest massif of Concors and Mount Sainte-Victoire painted by the artist, Cézanne. It offers incredibly diverse
environments including forests, open land, wetlands, farmland (terrace cultivation on the hillsides, in restanques)
or big plots of land and the bottoms of valleys. They are also anthropogenic environments of dispersed habitats,
country house systems with their outhouses, hamlets and small villages. The land is protected with regard to
its listed conservation areas and is registered in the Natura 2000 network.
The objective of all of the key public players involved is to preserve and develop these environments and landscapes.
The management tool is a Territorial project in a natural regional park where there is talk of a charter, and this
particular regional project is a veritable management scheme over a ten year period timeframe. It was adopted
by all of the local authorities, knowing that the Communal Syndicate groups together the General Council, the
Communauté d’agglomération du Pays d’Aix (CAAP) which represents the 14 communes, and the Provence-AlpesCôte d’Azur region. The project was put together within the spirit of sustainable development and is based on
three main lines: managing the forest massifs (with a very strong concern for protecting them against fire)
protecting and managing the landscape heritage, both natural and cultural, and last but not least, receiving the
public, which includes every aspect of tourism and leisure. The region receives nearly one million visitors a year
and recreational activities of all sorts take place there: hiking, climbing, paragliding, mountain-biking, etc.
“Le Grand Site de France®” label requires photographic observation of the landscape
This policy is acknowledged at a national level by the attribution of “Le Grand Site de France®” label - a label
which guarantees that the site attributed with the label is preserved and managed in accordance with the
principles of sustainable development, reconciling: “Preserving the landscape and the spirit of the place, giving
a good-quality reception to the public, enabling the inhabitants and partners to participate in the life of the
Grand Site». There are currently six Grand Sites with “Le Grand Site de France®” label, and around thirty that
are in the process of obtaining the label.
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The usage regulations of the label require photographic observation of the landscape, both as an “inventory
record” of the area but also as an assessment indicator of the policy that has been carried out with regard
to the land. Hence the source of this observation has progressed from discussion on a local level but has been
very strongly influenced by this regulation or requirement for photographic observation of the landscape.
What observatory should there be for Grand Site Sainte-Victoire?
It was a matter of knowing «What kind of observation do we want to do?» An analysis of what existed was
undertaken. The observation carried out as part of the national photographic observation of the landscape,
implemented in the 1990’s, followed a rigorous and precise procedure, with a well-structured methodology
in which the sensitive and artistic dimension was greatly highlighted. Other observation projects, set up locally,
had adopted the Ministry’s procedure, while applying a more local land management approach, with a concern
for it being an analysis tool which would enable understanding the mechanisms of how the landscape changed,
and perhaps leaving the artistic, photographic part as such, in the background.
Our internal discussions also questioned what the purpose of this observation project was. Our missions consist
in maintaining and preserving the landscape, but they also involve forest management, receiving the public
and conservation and restoration of the cultural heritage. It thus seemed necessary to add to the purpose of
recording the landscape, a broader recording of developments and other traces of life and changes of the
land. Hence the observation project should be both an illustration tool to show the changes of the land up to
a certain point, a demonstration tool for councillors, the key players of the territory, to make them aware of
the transformations, explain the changes to them and draw the relevant conclusions for improving the
management of the site, and, lastly, a communication tool for the general public and the inhabitants, considering
that the photographic subject is a relatively concrete subject but it is also enjoyable and representative.
Work methodology
A classic work procedure was implemented: setting up a Steering Committee with the DIREN, the Regional
Council, Atelier Cézanne, the Natural History Museum and the councillors. The work group helped with defining
and validating the issues, choosing the sites and viewpoints worth retaining among the hundred exploratory
shots, then choosing, following the photographic campaign itself, the final photos of the observation project,
which is to say, 35 shots, and on completion, helping to make an analysis based on the renewal and changes
of the landscape. The official photographer of the Museum was chosen – an employee and a good-quality
photographer; he actively participated in all of the various stages, participating in the Steering Committee, in
the fieldwork stages of the pre-selection, contact with the partners, choice of photos, indeed in every stage of
creating the observation project.
Setting up the roadmap was an essential part of the methodology, not only with the GPS coordinates but with
a photo of the photographer taking a photo, which would serve as a reminder of how the photo was taken
during a reshoot. However, we omitted to note one of the important elements: the exact indication of why the
photo was taken, a description of the viewpoint itself and the reason why this picture in particular was taken
by the photographer.
A 5 year reshoot periodicity was defined, considering that our territory had not suffered too much from the
influence of man and was quite well-protected land on which there were no big infrastructures, the development
of which is controlled, this 5 year lapse of time was sufficient and perhaps realistic as well, bearing in mind
that a reshoot is costly and requires work. This was obviously considering that if something major occurred at
one of the viewpoints a campaign would be organised accordingly.
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The Cézanne sites and the landscape units
The specificity of this site is very strong and is representative of the provincial countryside which is a mosaic
of afforestation, cultivation and rural habitats, even though located close to an urban area. But its reputation is
essentially due to landscapes painted by Cézanne, which is to say, only the west side, southwest of the “mineral
monument” that the mountain represents. Cézanne painted from Aix/Le Tholonet, so he had a view of the
Sainte-Victoire mountain from a very biased viewpoint. Locally it is said that Sainte-Victoire was created twice:
millions of years ago according to the laws of nature and at the end of the 19th century by Cézanne. Prior to
this, the mountain was rarely represented either in art or literature.
To bear witness to these landscapes and how they have changed, it seemed important to take account of this
specificity from the very outset and so this is how the landscape part of the observation project was divided
into two approaches: one following the motifs of Cézanne and the other with a selection of photos that were
representative of the landscape units of the territory.
The Cézanne sites bear witness to the international fame of Sainte-Victoire intimately linked to Cézanne.
The mountain was one his exclusive models for nearly 20 years, from 1885 to 1906. He completed nearly one
hundred works, 44 oil paintings and 43 water colours, which took Sainte-Victoire as their motif. The starting
premise were the paintings where the mountain appears in its entirety, the chosen pictures also offered a
progression: firstly in approaching the motif, the paintings which offered a broader view of the landscape and
the multiple facets of the mountain then entering into the motif with the paintings where Sainte-Victoire is
the main subject.
This photographic reshoot work based on the works of Cézanne had already been carried out at different times.
The first campaign had been carried out in the 1930’s by John Rewald, an art historian, who arrived in Tholonet
in 1932 and who contributed a lot to its fame and to promoting the work of Cézanne, and who, with the painter,
Léo Marchutz embarked upon a systematic search for the places where the painter had set up his easel.
They photographed the landscapes painted by Cézanne by placing themselves in the same spots and using the
same framing. During the 50’s/60’s Pavel Machotka, a member of the “Paul Cézanne” society, carried out the
same photographic reshoot work based on Rewald’s photographs. So in a way it was sufficient to pick up this
work where it had been left off. Thirteen paintings were pre-selected with the curators of Aix from the Granet
Museum and Pavillon Vendôme, Bruno Ely, Denis Coutagne and Michel Fraisset (Director of the Atelier Cézanne),
experts of Cézanne’s painting and the Aix region. Finding these viewpoints was not always easy, and was
sometimes even impossible because of the changes in the landscape associated with the urban development
of Aix-en-Provence and the villages at the foot of Sainte-Victoire, and the progression of the vegetation which
had taken over land which was once farmland. Some sites were no longer accessible, in other cases there was
private property with no right of way. In the end, 9 paintings were retained.
The second part of the observation project was made up of sites whose landscapes were at stake. A summary of
documents such as the “L’atlas des paysages” (Landscape Atlas), the diagram of the renovation and restoration
work carried out on Mount Sainte-Victoire, the PIDAF (the forest response programme) enabled dividing up the
landscape of the territory into 11 units. An analysis was carried out for each unit entailing both a description
and definition of what was most at stake for each landscape unit. The analysis was carried out internally
and presented to and validated by the Steering Committee. Based on this analysis the viewpoints that were
retained were to be representative of the issues of each unit. This is what led to retaining one, two or three
viewpoints, depending on the unit, according to the size of the surface area, but especially in terms of how
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representative what was described as being at stake was. Some viewpoints were also chosen from old shots
or postcards. All in all, 26 viewpoints were retained.
In order to reply in a complementary way to our management concerns, the observation project contains a
more technical assessment tool of the developments that have taken place, either by the Grand Site, or by
the other main players of the territory. The internal approach was to have the photographs taken by official
employees of the Grand Site, which was a way of formalising the classic «before/after» coverage, except that
here the concern was to continue over time with returning periodically to shoot these developments. Setting
up a computerised photo library in 2008 made it possible to manage these successive photos more easily,
as well as to retrieve and manage them over time.
How does the observation project work?
It is a recent observation project that was only created in 2005 hence the first reshoot campaign will take place
in 2010. Following its creation a document was published and distributed to institutions and notably to the
communes so they would have this first testimonial. The document was also published on-line on the web site
so that it could be more widely distributed.
The most interesting aspect of it was the opportunity of putting it to immediate use in 2006 within the
framework of Cézanne Year, which celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the painter’s death, with an exhibition
of landscapes at the Natural History Museum, entitled “Cézanne landscapes: watching a mountain undergo a
transformation”. The shots from the Cézanne sites part of the project were used, printed in large format with
comments incorporating the mixed views of art specialist, Bruno Ely (currently the curator of Granet Museum)
and scientist, Gilles Cheylan (curator of the Natural History Museum). These big panels were exhibited outside
in the villages, accompanied by a didactic exhibition installed inside in the halls. The exhibition travelled to
a dozen villages over a period of two years in 2006/2007, touching educational establishments and public
facilities.
The observation project backed-up a beneficial development sparked off by this event, a development which
was very interesting, but perhaps not sufficiently exploited in the sense where no one took the opportunity to
get feedback on the comments, i.e. the opinion of the inhabitants. But this is a long adventure that is only just
beginning so this part can be put to better advantage in the future.
Unit 10: Provincial mosaics of Bèdes-Séouve-Vautubière
Jouques - 1950 ©clichés du passé (shots from the past)
Jouques / 07-06-2005 © I.Mommens
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Photo Facts from the Outskirts of Paris
Alain Blondel and Laurent Sully-Jaulmes, photographers
Towards the end of the 1960’s Laurent Jaulmes, a professional photographer, and myself - who in this affair
can be thought of as a sort of “walker” who is rather attentive to everyday surroundings – carried out some
work which, in the beginning, resembled a game. While we were doing it we certainly did not imagine that it
would take us so far ahead in time.
You have to try to remember the suburbs of that era; or for those of you who never knew them, try to imagine
them. First of all, whether you were on foot, on a moped or in a car, you could move around a lot more freely.
There were almost no interchanges, fast lanes or one-way streets. In those days journeys were less channelled,
less signposted and with fewer injunctions. The direction you wanted to go in was not systematically thwarted
either. In those days you turned into a road according to the direction you wanted to go in (which just goes to
show the lawlessness of the time!) But it was not perfect either. The tidal wave of cars was already clogging
up a road network which had not been designed for that use; and it became clear that the planners had a big
problem to resolve.
I was an architecture student in the early 1960’s. But as the teaching I received did not arouse my enthusiasm
I spent most of my time seeking and discovering the treasures of Art Nouveau and Art Deco architecture,
in and around Paris. The indiscriminate massacre of all this wealth had already begun and I felt I was in
a key period. I guessed, with much sadness, that very precious things, slightly eccentric houses, deserted
mansions, gardens, hundred-year-old-trees, village squares and indeed, actual “atmospheres” were all going
to be sacrificed without a second thought. Today it is hard to imagine the degree of ignorance and dogmatism
in which the theoreticians and their followers found themselves, and indeed all those who had a say in modern
architecture and whose role it was to provide the guidelines. In those days a sense of measure and respect
for the environment was not very fashionable. That which pre-existed was always considered as an obstacle.
The most radical positions were the most favourable - and the most profitable as well for the property
developers and industrialists.
I would sometimes buy old postcards; they would be of views that were almost familiar to me. In the early 60’s,
visual distance did not seem so great. Many parts of the suburbs still maintained their photogenic qualities;
popular and libertarian in some places, peaceful and forgotten with an ageing patina, elsewhere.
Obviously these shots had been taken half a century earlier but on my walks I often still found the remains
- the silhouettesof streets that had not changed. The houses and shops were all a little tired-looking, of course,
but they were still there. It was wonderful yet, at the same time, it filled me with anguish. Behind the debonair
facades you could see cranes in the background. A whole road would suddenly disappear. It was awful
– the process speeded up and no one was bothered. For the second hand goods dealers it was Eldorado;
everything disappeared to America.
Laurent and I thus decided to automatically use postcards as a point of departure. These shots had the advantage
of being the same format. They were contemporary with one another within a maximum timeframe of five
years and they were of a similar quality. From the very outset we looked for the greatest accuracy so as to
obtain perfect superimposing of the new view over the old one. The multitude of published sites enabled us
to work in a systematic way which we felt would be powerful in showing the intended subject - because our
aim was to denounce, without any ambiguity, the destruction of the villages surrounding Paris and how they
had been replaced by a nightmare of tarmac and concrete which was beginning to asphyxiate the ground and
fill the horizon with despair.
Laurent and I visited and photographed more than 150 sites in the surrounding area of Paris. Among these,
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64 were chosen for an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1972 with the title, “64 photos constats”
(“64 Official Photos”) and subtitle “L’image du temps dans le paysage urbain” (“A reflection of time in the
urban landscape”). The exhibition received a certain amount of attention in the press. For example, the weekly
paper, Charlie-Hebdo published a double-page spread with our photos. At the same time a lot of people were
up in arms against the demolition of the Pavillons Baltard at Les Halles in Paris. Soundly argued indignation
began to replace resigned nostalgia. We no longer felt so alone.
But as time does not stand still, and sometimes it even seems to go faster, twenty years later, in the early 90’s,
we decided to return to the countryside. That enabled us to ascertain that the final traces of patina had well and
truly been wiped away. It was cleaner. Effectively, this third part of our project highlighted a certain tendency
towards cleanliness and technological precision. The totalitarian heaviness of the 1970’s was disappearing
in favour of a cold high-tech look. On the facades of the relatively luxury buildings, a fragile stone or marble
veneer outlined a simple square pattern. Sometimes a plate had fallen out leaving ugly orange-coloured
fibreglass padding on display. If, on our wanderings, we were still able to guess the layout of the old villages,
it was clear to see that there were a lot of holes in the links of their past urbanisation. And it was clear that the
new buildings, as if detached from the old framework, did not succeed in filling these uncomfortable gaps.
Today, around one hundred years after the publication of the postcards, we have arrived at the fourth part
of our photographic project. This final view most often establishes the end of the transformation. Basically,
the shape of the landscape is no longer changing. And the great surprise is that for some years now considerable
plantations have helped to soften and stabilise the new landscape. With regard to common architecture,
“modern” architecture in a way, basically what we see every day, you can also see a change towards more
humanism. The height of new buildings has become more reasonable and their developments sometimes take
account of the pre-existing environment. One can observe a noticeable liking for terraces, deep balconies and
a play of simple shapes and materials that are a little more elaborate than before. That is to say that ultimately,
there is a certain empathy seems to have appeared for the final inhabitants of these dwellings; the complete
opposite of the theoretical delights planned by the big bosses of the post-war agencies. This change is,
in essence, neither spectacular nor dogmatic.
It could well be that in the space of forty years there has been a complete turnaround. In the 1960’s, it was the
construction work that destroyed everything poetic, free-spirited and communal that remained in undecided
areas of the suburbs, the charm of these suburbs also residing in the somewhat precarious creations the people
who lived there undertook with limited means; picturesque extensions, alcoves and garden sheds all built with
ordinary materials: bricks, boards, nails, corrugated iron and paint pots. It was perhaps a little anarchical but it
gave friendly and endearing little touches that combined with the lovely scent of lilac in the air. People from
the suburbs had a deeply ingrained need to arrange and embellish their home – in their own particular way.
Nowadays nothing has changed, the intention remains the same, but the results are nowhere near as charming.
Effectively, now marketing has had a say in things.
Forty years ago the ugliness of the world came from high-places. It was the responsibility of the politicians
who then applied their industrialist creed without a second thought. Then gradually the decision-makers finally
opened their eyes and acknowledged the huge environmental and social mess. Today, while corrections have
been made, we are now witnessing a different type of ugliness which is just as generalised, but more insidious
because responsibilities are more disseminated. This time it is caused by the mass distribution of manufactured
products. All of the traditional know-how has been replaced by normalised manufactured products.
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In the countryside (we have moved slightly away from the suburbs but the whole country is at risk of
becoming one big suburb), there will not be any old houses left, or a single renovated farm whose traditional
windows and doors will not have been replaced by dreadful PVC windows and frames; and hinged shutters by
roller-shutters that disfigure the facades that we once took pleasure in looking at. Paradoxically, fiscal subsidies
(introduced with the best of intentions) and increased spending power have tended to speed-up the visual
pauperisation of the traditional dwelling - as if it was not bad enough already. This is the exact opposite of what
has always happened since man has been building houses. Greater means generally led to enhanced visual
quality. It is now becoming less and less the case.
It should mainly be left up to architects to deal with all the decorative and accessory aspects that mark out our
daily routes. This is what should provide work, whenever possible, for the survivors of these archaic companies,
these manual artisans who are becoming extinct. The final representatives of the anonymous and economical
multitudes who created so many modest wonders – before the arrival of globalised large-scale businesses.
This is a development that may take a good many years - too many, no doubt. With the deluge of products
from hyper-industrialisation, it is hard to imagine any isolated haven of simple harmony will be able to hold
out much longer.
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Workshop No. 3 - Photo Facts from the Outskirts of Paris
Photographs by Alain Blondel and Laurent Jaulmes
Bobigny
Place de l’Eglise
Quartier Karl Marx
1910 – 1970 – 1990
Neuilly Plaisance
rue des Belles Vues
rue Pierre Brossolette
1910 -1972 - 1992
Noisy-le-Sec
Rue du parc
et rue Anatole France
1910 – 1970 – 1990
Courbevoie
place Hérold
1910 – 1971 - 1991
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Photographic Research Tracking Changes
in the City of Schlieren
Meret Wandeler and Ulrich Görlich,
(Zurich University of the Arts - Switzerland)
Long-Term Photographic Observation of Schlieren
A research project of the Zurich University of the Arts in cooperation with Metron AG and the town of Schlieren
Professor Ulrich Görlich, Meret Wandeler Institute for Contemporary Arts Research / Department of Photography
Supported by: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds/DORE, Documenta Natura, Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich,
Zürcher Kantonalbank, Halter Unternehmungen, Gewerbe- und Handelszentrum Schlieren AG, Wirtschaftskammer
Schlieren, Reformierte Kirchengemeinde Schlieren, Vereinigung für Heimatkunde Schlieren, Hauseigentümerverband Schlieren.
Project Goal
The Department of Photography of the Zurich University of the Arts will conduct a long-term (15 years)
photographic documentation on the town development of Schlieren. The basis of the project is the new towndevelopment concept for Schlieren by Metron AG. The long-term photographic survey should show what effect
the proposed measures of the town-development concept for sustainable development, an improvement of
the quality of life, and the identity will have on the public space. The project has been drawn up as a case study.
Using Schlieren as an example, it develops exemplary photographic methods for the visualization of spatial
development processes in the suburban area. During the first phase of the project (2005/06), a photographic
observation approach was developed and the first photographic inventory was created by Ulrich Görlich and
Meret Wandeler. In 2007 the inventory was re-photographed for the first time by Elmar Mauch. The complete
image archive is available on this website. New photographic material will continuously be added to the image
archive and presented online. Town residents, experts and the interested public can so-to-say follow the process
of town development ‘live’ during the whole duration of the survey.
Concept
The town of Schlieren is composed of a variety of heterogeneous districts. The town-development concept
initiates and steers different types of spatial change processes. The photographic surveying concept formulates
photographic strategies to make the process of building and environment development visible. Photography’s
specific reference to reality is central to this. The long-term photographic survey is a new form of monitoring
town development. With the aid of photography it will be examined how the goals and measures, abstractly
formulated in the town-development concept affect the town area as a whole. In the ongoing review the planning
tool town-development concept will be examined not only as to its effectiveness at the planning stage.
Photography will show the effects of the concept on an actual location. The photographs should show how the
town area changes as a result of the various interventions by the different protagonists who use and shape
the space. The photographic survey makes the observation of those aspects of town development possible,
which are decisive for the aesthetic and emotional qualities of spaces. These qualities, which are central to the
everyday perception of a space, cannot be conveyed by means of the abstract forms of representation, such as
data, plans and statistics with which planners generally examine a space. The development of the surveying
concept has its starting point with the question, which spatial change processes are consciously perceived and
which processes occur just beyond the borders of perception. The long-term photographic survey compares
significant structural interventions (such as large-scale structures) with the discreet changes which occur slowly
and continuously. The project will make the different speeds of parallel-running change processes visible
and show how much even a small intervention can change the character, the atmosphere and the quality
of an environment. A visual representation of temporal development processes suburban areas has as yet
never been carried out in Switzerland. In this respect, the project is to be seen as a pure research project.
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Workshop No. 3 - Photographic Research Tracking Changes in the City of Schlieren
It promotes perception of change processes in the suburbs and contributes to sensitizing the public to the
concerns of the suburban politics in Switzerland.
Timeframe
Phase 1: DORE - Research project of the Zurich University of the Arts , June 2005 - May 2006 Developing
the photographic surveying concept and the first photographic inventory, developing the image databank and
the Internet presentation.
Phase 2: Continuous research and teaching project of the Zurich University of the Arts 2006 – 2020 Continuous
documentation and archiving, interim review with reference to the planning and photographic goals every
5 years, evaluation and publication of the complete project after the long-term survey has been concluded.
Archiving
The Zurich cantonal archive is to include the text and image files for the Long-term photographic observation
of Schlieren project in a new type of long-term archive for digital data. This will be done as part of a pilot
project run in collaboration with the Imaging & Media Lab of the University of Basel and specialist laboratory
Gubler AG. The aim is to create a hybrid solution where both analogised, human-readable versions of the
documents (TIFF images and PDF printouts) and the bitstream are stored on age-resistant microfilm. This will
allow the data to be archived both in purely digital and in analogue form on the same storage medium for
several hundred years.
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Photographic Observation Concept
Within the framework of the first project phase 2005-2006, the Zurich University of the Arts developed a
photographic surveying concept together with its partners and in 2005 carried out a first review of the
photographic material. The surveying concept forms the basis for the ongoing documentation. It defines
the photographic strategies and surveying intervals and determines which locations and objects are to be
photographed. The concept is not tied to a particular person; different photographers can carry out the survey.
The photographic long-term survey studies the effect the town-development concept has on the public space.
For this reason only spaces with public access will be photographed. Metron AG’s town-development concept
for Schlieren, as at 2005, is the basis for the photographic surveying concept. The following themes and
questions resulted from the concept: development of the centre, streets and squares, the development of open
spaces, development of the areas to be restructured, development of the residential areas, development of the
town boundaries. Metron AG and the town of Schlieren selected the districts and areas of the town in which
the themes and questions concerning the town’s development will be surveyed by photographical means. The
photographic survey’s spatial representation differs from that of the site plan in that it does not depend on the
qualities of a comprehensive coverage of the whole town but, rather, on the pertinence of individual situations,
selected as examples. The photographic surveying concept combines two types of spatial perception: overall
and detailed views. These views form a flexible picture system which permits different evaluations from the
points of view of both spatial planning and photography. Depending on the area, subject and change process,
individual series, picturing central aspects of the town’s development in an exemplary way, can be compiled.
People do not appear in the pictures. In comparing the pictures, the focus should be completely on the changes
in the town area and there should be no distraction by varying positions of people in the images. The people
are indirectly present through the traces which they leave behind.
Overall Views
In the overall views one sees how the spaces interrelate. The images show the width and depth of the space, and the observer
has an overview of the whole area from a distance. The images show how the buildings, streetscapes and open spaces
interrelate in different ways. The overall views make it possible to see how the individual measures and interventions
in a location together change the quality of a spatial situation. The difference to architectural photography is that the
focus is not on a single building or object. Instead whole streets, squares, potential building sites and open spaces, resp.
the adjacent buildings are photographed in such a manner that all the elements which make up a particular space are seen
on equal terms. The photographs of the overall views will be repeated every two years from the same position and under the
same photographic conditions. The series of overall views taken from the same positions will show the town’s development
as a continuously evolving process. Both major changes and minor, almost invisible developments, can all be seen.
The positions for the overall views are selected so that there will be a single image for each view. The resulting images
will have an exemplary function: to make the individual characteristics of the selected properties and areas visible.
By standardizing selected parameters for taking the photographs, the overall views also form a conceptual series of images.
All the photographs can be combined with each other flexibly. This flexibility is a prerequisite in order that different spaces
and situations in the whole town area can be compared with each other. The following parameters for taking pictures have
been set for all the overall views:
- A photographic position is selected on the basis of how the daily users of an area perceive their environment. The camera
is level, not tilted, as the first floor is decisive for the everyday perspective, and it is positioned at a height of 170cm.
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- From the image itself one can determine where it was taken. The camera is always positioned on a public space.
- The focal length is wide-angle, to show the spatial depth.
- The light is evenly distributed so that all details are equally visible.
- The photographs will be taken between June and September. The vegetation should be visible, but should not dominate
the atmosphere of the location (for example with a pronounced spring or fall mood).
- Anticipated changes (for example the demolition, construction or reconstruction of buildings, the rerouting of streets
etc.) must always be shown in connection with the elements which remain unchanged.
A series of up to 13 different positions were selected in the town centre and in developing areas which are of prime
importance for the town’s development. Additional subjects concerning town development will be surveyed by means
of a system of individual locations spread over the whole area of the town. The locations selected in 2005 will remain the
same for the entire duration of the survey. In the case of unforeseen projects, considered to be important for the town
development as a whole, new locations can be added.
Detailed Views
The detailed views show selected objects and situations characteristic for the different areas. Here the viewer
finds him/herself within the space. The photographic perspective focuses on the things which characterize an
area and attract the attention of the viewer. The series do not form an ‘inventory’, but show, in an exemplary
way, what kind of use and design are typical for an area. Series of detail images were photographed in the
most important developing areas as well as in the centre. A thematic series of detailed images shows ground
floor utilization in the whole town area.
Every 5 years a new series will be photographed for each theme. Comparing the series of detail photographs of
the same area to each other will give a heightened sense of perception on town development: change is seen
as an event, the pictures accentuate the point at which an area has definitely changed its character.
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Schlieren-centrum-view-east - 2006 © Meret Wandeler / Ulrich Görlich /ZHdK
Schlieren-centrum-view-south - 2006 © Meret Wandeler / Ulrich Görlich /ZHdK
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Schlieren-Schlieren-West-view-west - 2006 © Meret Wandeler / Ulrich Görlich /ZHdK
Schlieren-Wagi-Areal-view-east - 2006 © Meret Wandeler / Ulrich Görlich /ZHdK
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Halland
C.G. Rosenberg & Gerry Johansson, photographer, (Sweden)
C. G. Roseberg (1883 - 1957) was for more than thirty years the most important photographer of architecture and landscape in Sweden.
He had a strong eye for the cultural traditions as well as the rapid development of modern society during the twenties and thirties.
As a regular assignment for the Swedish Tourist Federation he photographed different counties for their yearbook for more than
30 years. His photographs were widely published and the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm holds a vast collection of his photography.
In the summer of 1932 C G Rosenberg photographed the county of Halland in south western Sweden, and approximately 50 years later
I returned to the same locations with similar equipment to study the changes in urban and rural environment. For me it was also an
opportunity to regain a lost tradition of landscape photography.
The photographs were exhibited at The Museum of Moderna Art, Stockholm, and the book Halland, trettiotal - åttiotal was published
in 1985.
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Workshop No. 3 - Halland
This is the picture that made me interested in the Swedish photographer C.G. Rosenberg. I saw it for the first
time when I worked on an issue about landscape photography for the photography magazine Aktuell Fotografi
around 1980. The 70-ties had been a period of strong political documentary photography by photographers like
Yngve Baum, Jean Hermansson and Jens S Jensen. The publishing company where I worked, Fyra Förläggare,
had published a series of books by those photographers. Starting with Anders Petersen’s Gröna Lund in 1973
the series, called Aktuell Fotolitteratur, continued on for almost 10 years.
So this was a picture totally out of fashion at that time. It is strongly romantic, but it really says all about
Swedish landscape and summer. A melancholy dirt road, sun reflecting in a puddle and heavy summer clouds
drifting in the sky. A few years before, my interest in landscape photography had been aroused by photographers
like Lee Friedlander, Robert Adams, John Davies and Raymond Moore. In 1982 when I visited the Museum of
Modern Art in Stockholm I saw their vast collection of photographs by C.G. Rosenberg. I realised that I was
actually quite familiar with his work. It had been published animously in school books and encyclopaedias
over long periods. Many of the pictures were made in the county of Halland, in south western Sweden, where
I grew up. I could immediately recognise many of sites where the pictures were made.
I decided to try to rephotograph as many as possible of his pictures. Mainly for two reasons, to study the changes
in the landscape and because I wanted to study how this great landscape photographer worked. I wanted to
recapture a lost tradition in landscape photography. Between the wars landscape photography was very popular
among both amateur- and professional photographers.
Very little had been written about C.G. Rosenberg, but I learned a couple of things about him. His father was
the landscape painter Edward Rosenberg. 1904-05 he worked as a photo-engraver and photographer in New
York and he later became the distributor of a French cognac brand in Sweden. But most important of all,
he was for more than 30 years the leading architectural photographer in Sweden. I think his contacts with, the
predominantly modernist, architects was important to develop his strong eye for both the cultural traditions
and for the rapid development of modern society in the twenties and thirties. He also had regular assignments
for the Swedish Tourist Federation to photograph for their yearbook.
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The pictures from the county of Halland were made in 1932. I started the project in 1983 and came to work for
three summers and finished in 1985. I choose to work with similar equipment that Rosenberg had used and
I found it absolutely essential not only to find the exact spot, but also the same time of the day and the same
kind of weather. I started out by marking on a map the sites where he had made the pictures. I found to my
great relief that he was quite a rational photographer. It was easy to follow his route through the countryside.
The sites were sometimes not too far away from each other. As in this example: Dirt road near Veinge and Old
Norse stones at Nörby. Only some 5 minutes apart by car. Most of the pictures were made with the same lens,
120 mm, on a view camera for size 9 x 12 cm negatives.
The county of Halland had during the period from 1900 to 1930 changed from being one of the poorest
agricultural parts of Sweden to a modern industrial society with a number of hydroelectric power stations and
a worldwide reaching broadcasting station. This was well described in Rosenberg’s work but since my work
mostly dealt with the changes of the landscape only a few of these pictures were rephotographed. Rosenberg
also sought out more traditional, pictorial, sites like this stone bridge that was far away from the main road.
In my picture you can see how agricultural overfeed and water regulation has changed nature.
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An old traditional farm house. Just a small part at left is still standing and only because of the stones on the
ground was it possible to find the place.
A large part of Rosenberg’s work was of topographical nature. He would often climb a hill or small mountain
and make a series of pictures in different directions. He would often leave his car in the picture, probably a bit
proud of his new car. Just a few years earlier he had travelled by bike on his assignments.
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What really surprised me was that the trees would have almost the same form fifty years after the first picture
was made. Rosenberg often used his sons as models in his pictures. Here they act as gardeners at the castle
of Stjärnarp. Not only did his sons travel with him through Halland, their girlfriends also came along. His sons
both became photographers and in this picture, you can see one of them carrying the camera case.
The girlfriends posing in the doorway. The picture is made from right outside the hotel where they stayed.
With industrialisation came vacation for some. Again, sons and girl friends in the foreground in this beach
pictures from Tylösand. In fifty years tourism grew to industry. The correct site was recognised by the spiderlike
figure in the rocks in the lower right corner.
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Many of Rosenberg’s pictures were impossible to rephotograph. Large parts of Halland were in the thirties
moorland that later were planted with pine and fir. Generally it seems that the countryside has been forest-clad
and the towns has lost a lot of its greenery.
What I came to admire most of all in Rosenberg’s photography was his very simple and exact compositions
with great feeling for space and volume.
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His pictures were well suited for printing in the small yearbook for the Swedish Tourist Federation.
Usually 9 x 12 cm and occasionally 12 x 18 cm. These are reproductions from the yearbook.
The collection at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm holds about 300 pictures from Halland. One third
of these were portraits and work related pictures. I managed to rephotograph circa 80 pictures and I found it
interesting that this random sample gave a clear idea of how Halland had changed during 50 years.
What did it mean to my own photography? First of all it gave me a better understanding of photography as
it appeared in the beginning of the history of photography. When the camera was a wonderful machine that
clearly registered what you saw and what you felt, if you just know where to put it.
Secondly, which partly contradicts what I just said, I found it interesting to make photographs from a spot not
chosen by me, but by someone living 50 years earlier.
The following years I worked with a series of 420 degrees panoramas. Trying to capture the feeling of site and
space instead of the single motif.
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For the last 15 years I have been working on long term book projects like America, 1987
Sverige (Sweden), 2005
and Deutschland, 2009
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EKODOK –90
Annette Rosengren, Nordiska museet, Stockholm (Sweden)
Ekodok -90 was a large scale Swedish project which brought together photographers, writers and museums
in Sweden during some years in the 1990s.
The main intentions were to activate regional museums into public ecological debate through making a great
photographic commentary and witness to the relationship between man/woman and nature in Sweden at the
beginning of the 1990s.
The project resulted in some books and exhibitions and in ten thousands of images, which together with older
images in museums give rich possibilities to compare between now and then. Although the collection is a source
for everyone that works on ecological matters it seems not to have been used after the end of the project.
Backgrounds
The origin of the projects is a state commission on museums of 1986 with its proposals that the regional cultural
historic museums should widen their sphere to include natural history and ecology. The Ekodok project was one
of several examples of how such activities could take shape.
The initiative came from Statens Kulturråd, the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs, today Swedish Arts
Council, a government authority whose principal task is to implement national cultural policy determined by
Parliament.
Two persons are behind Ekodok -90: Bo Nilsson at Swedish Arts Council and folk educator Göte Ask. They both
had great interest for photography and were charismatic persons, an important asset to start a project like this.
Bo Nilsson had been working earlier for many years at museums and had a deep concern about nature and its
conditions, and about photography. Göte Ask had great knowledge about especially documentary photography
and was at that time a well known teacher of photography.
Ekodok -90 become financed by the National Labour Market Board, who demanded that the persons commissioned must be more or less out of work. When the project had started the responsibility was passed over to
the Nordiska museet.
Inspiration
Ekodok -90 was inspired by well known projects as the French Mission Héliographique from the 1860s and
DATAR from 1980s as well as the american FSA from the 1930s. Inspirations came also from Swedish photography,
for example the photographer Sune Jonsson, today 75 years old.
He was a free photographer partly working for Västerbotten museum, a regional museum in north Sweden.
Together with this museum Jonsson had made great projects about people in the countryside. He had an
enormous impact upon Swedish photography in the 1970s and -80s for his black and white, compassionate
portraits of people in their natural surroundings. A heritage from him is easy to find in some of the Ekodok -90
photographers work. Sune Jonsson’s wise idea was that time, knowledge, social compassion and a personal
bottom in what the photographer wants to narrate, is important for a rich documentary photography.
Swedish photography in the 1970s and early 1980s had a strong domination for documentary in black and
white with motives of people photographed in their own surroundings – at work, at home, in nature and so on.
During the -80s and the -90s documentary became criticized, in Sweden as well in other parts of the world, and
a more distanced way of doing photography were spread. During the -80s photography of landscapes came of
interest again, with Gerry Johansson as one example.
These different tendencies can be seen in the photographs of Ecodok -90.
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Workshop No. 3 - Ekodok 90
Going on
Ekodok -90 started to work 1990.
19 regional museums took part, 26 photographers and 8 writers. The work was concentrated to themes as
water, forest, farming, mountain, tourism and leisure time, but within the themes there were a great openness
for what the photographers and writers wanted to make. Many of them had a personal connection to the
region they were going to work in, had experiences in working documentary and by their own, and had often
knowledge about the chosen subject for their region. They were mostly employed one year on 50 percent.
Some of them had long experiences and had gained a name in Swedish photography, as Gerry Johansson.
Conclusion
Ekodok -90 never had the purpose to give a total image of contemporary life and surrounding. Some themes
are there, some are not. There are a lot of landscapes in different aspects, but not much of industry, transports
or city life. I will quote Karin Becker, professor in photography at the Department of journalism, media and
communication at Stockholm University, from her contributing text in the book about the Ekodok -90 project.
She wrote that the project reflects countryside living, transformations of the cultural landscape, signs of tourism
and leisure time in landscape, the drawing and construction of roads in landscape, turned down industrial
landscape, waste lands between town and country land, and so on.
For her the greatest value of Ekodok -90 will not be its record of the landscape but what it reveals about our
relationship to the landscape. It is a cultural document, a benchmark of what was important as we entered the
1990s and how we chose to picture it.
For Bo Nilsson now almost 20 years later, the photographs still have a great value to give attention to human
beings’ relation to life and work according to nature, as well as they are sources for historical research. But he
finds that even if Ekodok -90 resulted in some books and exhibitions, when some museums for a while opened
for debates on ecology, the Ekodok -90 gave little remaining results according to its aims. The museums have
hardly not been engaged in opinion work on ecology, and the photographs have not been followed up. Reasons
can be, I will say, the hard tradition of cultural historic museums to stay cultural historic, the constant lack of
money in museums, uneasiness with how to use these photographs in a cultural historic context, the lack of
“the right persons” to take initiative and in some cases sub cultural problems between photographers and
museums.
The lack of a gathered collection, as the images are separated to each regional museum, might also be a reason
for the silence about the project. The only possibility for an overview is the book Ekodok -90 (In the hand of
mankind, photographs about landscape of ecology) from 1994.
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GERRY JOHANSSON - EKODOK 90
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Workshop No. 3 - Ekodok 90
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The Landscape Observatory in Semois-Semoy
as a Cross-Border Project
Mireille Deconinck (Belgium – Ministry of the Walloon Region)
and Jérôme Lobet, coordinator of the Interreg III Semois/Semoy Project
Mireille Deconinck stresses how fruitful the cooperation that has grown up among the ministries is proving
and the fact that it is making for progress in the implementation of the European Landscape Convention,
likewise enabling the member states to honour the pledges they gave by ratifying it. The European Landscape
Convention has been in force in Belgium since 1 February 2005, the Walloon Region having ratified it in
December 2001.
The convention calls on the member states to identify landscapes, to analyse their features and the trends
that alter them and to monitor the changes they undergo. It calls on the member states to study cross-border
landscapes.
In this context, the Walloon Region, and the General Department of Regional Development in particular,
decided to back a series of initiatives proposed by its local partners, its partners on the ground, which wanted
to embark on landscape projects. The projects in question are of different types, and the chart presented
provides information on the fact that the projects are run by different set-ups: there are local action groups,
which report to the European Union Leader + Project; there are nature parks, which, in Wallonia, correspond to
the French regional nature parks, and there are also river contracts.
Said projects are also funded by different methods. They may be co-funded out of the European Structural
Funds, such as Interreg and Leader +, or be subsidised by the Walloon region.
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Workshop No. 3 - The Landscape Observatory in Semois-Semoy as a Cross-Border Project
Jérôme Lobet presents the Semois-Semoy River Contract approach.
Landscapes are more than mere places to travel through; they are first and foremost a living area and home
to various activities. They are not frozen and undergo metamorphoses, hence the usefulness of putting a tool
in place in the Walloon Region to monitor, study, steer and coordinate the landscape changes triggered by
social, economic and environmental developments.
Work began on a survey project under the joint cross-border INTERREG III France – Wallonia – Flanders programme
in 2003. The project’s purpose was to draw up methods whereby knowledge of the mechanisms, factors and
players making for change in the valley of Belgium’s Semois and France’s Semoy could be enhanced.
The Semois-Semoy drainage basin covers an area of 1,329 km² and is home to a 75,000-strong population.
It has been covered by a river contract since 1996, and this project is integrated into it.
The Various Methods Adopted
The scheme has revolved around three different approaches: analysing old pictorial documents (postcards),
analysing old and current maps and sequencing.
- Analysing old documents
A collection of old postcards depicting the valley was made, with two ends in view. One was to scan and file
the cards to form a reference database for the whole of the drainage basin. About 1,660 postcards were thus
collected. The other was to reproduce on the ground the frame lines of a number of old plates for the purposes
of comparative analysis and objective logging of the landscape changes that had occurred over the 20th century.
This made it possible to set up 130 “old postcard/current view” pairs, and hence to identify various factors for
change by analysing the various cases in point. These factors helped single out the chief mechanisms influencing
landscape change in the Semois-Semoy Valley.
In parallel, several old maps (Ferraris 1775; Van Der Maelen 1850; IGM 1922 and IGN 1983) were analysed,
thus backing up or complementing the study of the postcards with figures on ground occupancy trends
in particular locations.
- Sequencing
Sequencing involved a grid comprising 147 landscape observation points (125 Belgian sites and 22 French sites)
selected to be photographed over time and season by season in identical framing conditions. The advantage
held out by this method is that the various photographs thus obtained may be compared with a view to singling
out the mechanisms, factors and players making for the current changes in our landscapes.
The sites were selected by a cross-border steering committee to be the most representative of the living
conditions encountered within the confines of the Semois-Semoy drainage basin. Various selection criteria
were adopted, such as the geological (Ardenne-Lorraine) and geomorphological contexts (valley-plateau).
The observation points were likewise selected on a proportional basis in terms of the five topics most
frequently encountered in the area, viz.: the open environment (agriculture), the woodland environment,
built-up areas, grids (road network, electricity grid etc.) and the river.
Particular attention was paid from the outset to the reproducibility of the views selected. To this end, the fieldwork
was assigned to a Liège University engineer with a fairly good knowledge of the area and photography and
digital remapping (GIS, GPS etc.) skills. This fieldwork resulted in the creation of a set of site localisation
charts, their marking on the ground and the mapping of itineraries for taking repeat shots of the same views.
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The photographs were taken in digital format and panoramic form in each season and systematically filed
according to a code generated by specialist software. Lastly, a database was set up to characterise the sites
photographed with the utmost precision.
After 10 photographic campaigns (four each year) conducted during the project’s funding period, a set of
methods was tested with a view to highlighting the various alterations that had emerged and the development
trends observed.
Analysing the series of photographs revealed two main tendencies impacting most frequently on the SemoisSemoy Valley’s landscapes: the harvesting of compartments of conifer woodland and the expansion of housing.
Meanwhile, the plate comparison also made it possible to identify various individual examples of landscape
alterations that had occurred over the period, such as the appearance of mobile phone antennae, the renovation
of facades, the disappearance of hedges etc., and various natural processes triggered by time and the cycle
of the seasons: infrastructure absorbed into the vegetation, flooding phenomena, perspectives cut off by the
growth of the vegetation and so on.
Conclusions
This pilot project more clearly identified a number of mechanisms and factors that had altered the Semois-Semoy
Valley’s landscapes. Nevertheless, observation over the longer term is needed if a more detailed knowledge
of contemporary transformation processes is to be acquired. The practical criteria adopted when establishing
the observation site grid within the drainage basin will make it possible to monitor the views over the coming
years and to assess the changes that emerge on a periodic basis. The photography is currently being continued
annually, albeit at a different season each year.
The methods adopted have aroused much discussion, which has led to the drafting of a report and a
methodological guide that may be downloaded from the www.semois-semoy.org site.
In terms of awareness raising, the project has led to the publication and distribution of a CD-ROM showing
the sequencing photographs, a CD-ROM showing the old postcard database and a CD-ROM showing the old
postcard/current view pairings. Last but not least, two calendars – 2007 and 2008 – based on the project have
been published and given broad circulation (10,000 and 25,000 copies respectively).
In parallel, and on the basis of findings that emerged while the final touches were being put to the
landscape survey, concrete measures were undertaken on the ground. A view restoration business has thus
been growing up since 2004 in partnership with the town councils and the Walloon Region Ministry of the
Natural Environment and Forestry. 150 sites along the Ardennes stretch of the Semois have been listed,
inspected and analysed with a view to planning landscape reopening measures. Several panoramas have been
reclaimed, whereas management of other views in the form of the pasturing of hardy goat or sheep breeds
that would otherwise be dying out is being set up.
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Prospects
In the future, the examples obtained by sequencing are expected to make it possible to involve and effectively
raise the awareness of various landscape stakeholders (public decision-makers, management authorities,
riverside residents and so on).
A follow-up committee comprising various local stakeholders, will have the task of interpreting the various data
and proposing both overall and local management measures.
Several joint processes will shortly be embarked upon with a view to setting this type of participatory
management of the Semois Valley’s landscapes in motion.
Last but not least, fresh projects taking their cue from the Semois-Semoy landscape survey method will be
seeing the light of day in other areas in the Walloon region, or in cross-border areas. Exchanges of experience
and good practice will undoubtedly enhance this initial pilot scheme.
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The village of Poupehan, old and current panoramic views.
The changes that emerge from a comparison of the two plates are striking and representative of the Ardennes
stretch of the Semois Valley. The decline in farming in the alluvial plain has often given rise to profound
changes in land occupancy, fostering reforestation (natural or planted) and the advent of holiday (camp site),
residential (cottage) and sports facilities. This has resulted in the landscape being closed off and legibility
being lost owing to the disappearance of demarcation between the major types of land occupancy (woodland,
farming and dwelling).
Example of land occupancy trend analysis at Stockem (mapping by A. Hulpiau)
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The alluvial plain of the Semois observed from the Laspote Laviaux viewing point (Mouzaive, municipality of
Vresse-sur-Semois): Metamorphosis of the site over time and from one season to another. This concrete example,
recorded by sequencing, reveals two major alterations to the landscape in question: the cutting of a conifer
wood compartment followed by the extension of a camp site.
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Viewing point site location chart
Form for encoding photos in the filing software.
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The Cordemois (Bouillon) viewing point, before and after the clearing work.
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The photographic observatory
in the Massif Central
Pierre Enjelvin and Christian Guy
Pierre Enjelvin explains that the Photographic Observation Project of the territories of the Massif Central
(OPTMC) is a small association which was created in 1999 on finding out about the “Sequencing and
Landscapes” journal of the National Observation Programme. Thus it was two photographs that prompted them
to embark upon this adventure, taking their inspiration for the greater part from their elders, by wishing to add
various other skills as well, whence the presence of a scientific committee at their side.
Prior discussions
One surely has the right to expect a photographic observation project to serve the landscape policies and
consequently that the landscape policies – indeed that those responsible for devising and implementing them
– may use make use of (to enhance) the data supplied by photographic observation.
After several experiences of using landscape photography as a medium and tool for understanding and gaining
information on projects relating to the land, OPTMC and its photographers subscribed to these two voluntarist
propositions... but with prudence and on the understanding of meeting certain conditions that may be resumed
in the following questions:
How and with whom should a photographic observation project be set up?
How do you implement it?
How do you share and distribute its data?
In fact these questions require more than a single answer, and you could even say that there are as many
answers as there are projects; that every goal aimed at requires a sometimes specific method of action as we
will see in the following part of this presentation.
The answers we supply are based on several experiences some of which are only just beginning and others
which have been relived on several occasions, while another one has been continuing for several years.
They only give an idea, and sometimes a methodological outline that needs to be compared with other realities
beyond those that we have encountered and shared with other photographic observation projects.
Tailor-made methodologies
Setting up photographic observation projects of the landscape at departemental level on behalf of the
Auvergne Regional Council within the framework of its policies on sites and, more globally, the landscape.
DEPARTEMENT OF ALLIER (03)
- Discussion and implementation of a photographic observation process: the client, two landscape architects
and OPTMC*
A prior study on our behalf of the department of Allier was entrusted to landscape architects. They proposed,
among other things, to observe the landscapes of this department by creating an observation project of landscape
practices.
After a three day “trip” with the client and the landscape architects, which enabled us to exchange ideas
with them, discuss photographic procedures, adopt a common approach to a landscape culture common to
the landscapes of the department and begin finding a few locations, we embarked upon the photographic
mission.
We worked on a total of 9 practices, notably forests, conservation and field observation of the natural heritage,
conservation of the historical heritage, the scenic touristic heritage – natural and historic sites, farming with
hedged farmland, something that was so characteristic just a few years ago of Allier landscapes (Bourbonnais).
A first photographic campaign with a potential follow-up was carried out for all of them.
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Workshop No. 3 - The photographic observatory in the Massif Central
– Implementation of the photographic observation project: OPTMC, the client, the landscape architects and the
inhabitants of the territory*
Example: farming practices in connection with hedged farmland
A series of shots were taken of the hedged farmland to take account:
of its four current states within the department :
Maintained and regenerated hedged farmland
© Ch. Guy-P. Enjelvin/OPTMC
Mechanically maintained hedged farmland (trees are not
regenerated, the hedged farmland is doomed to disappear)
Gradually disappearing hedge farmland that appears only in the
form of lines of trees
The hedged farmland has virtually disappeared replaced by
single crop farming
– of a practice which, up until now, has guaranteed its renewal and durability.
Observation of the hedged farmland should include this practice which is at the heart of the development and
dynamics of the regenerated and maintained hedged farmlands of Bourbonnais.
This tagging practice known in French as “rubande-chantier” or “chiffon avertit” during the mechanical maintenance of the hedges keeps this young
subject thus tagged. In a way it guarantees an
emblematic landscape.
Hedged farmland in the Bourbonnais. Autry-Issards, Allier (03) France.
Mr Lacarin preserves young trees for renewing the hedges.
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- Sharing and distributing the data of the Photographic Observation Project: the client and OPTMC*
Based on our shots and the organisation of the data (location of the viewpoints on a topographical map, combination
of keywords, in particular those concerning the practices observed, and a key to each picture), the client can
create a database combining the geographical information and the photos.
DEPARTEMENT OF HAUTE-LOIRE (43)
– Discussion and implementation of a photographic observation process: the client, two landscape architects
and OPTMC*
A study of the policy of the registered and listed sites and, more broadly, of the landscapes of the Haute-Loire
was entrusted to the landscape architects. They proposed, among other things, to observe the landscapes based
on experiencing the distances and panoramas. Effectively, the department of Haute-Loire could be looked at
– without reducing it however - as a vast system of viewpoints (from which you look at it) and focal points
(that attract attention).
As with the department of Allier, we began this mission by making a “trip” with the client and landscape
architects with the same objectives.
– Implementation of the photographic observation project: OPTMC, the landscape architects and client*
The idea of taking panoramic views was retained but in integrating local landscape practices like, for example,
Hokusai in the 36 views he gave of Mount Fuji.
The “inventory” work of the panoramas, viewpoints and practices engaged in the first two days of the trip
voyage was completed by another trip with one of the landscape architects. A third time around it was enriched
by two other local landscape architects.
Examples of a few experiences of the landscape
Le mont Bar
View of Le Mont Bar and its houses with effect from D906, Saint-Geneys-près-Saint-Paulien, Haute-Loire (43), France.
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Le mont Mézenc
Whether it is for Le Mont Bar or Le Mont Mézenc or even for any other focal points identified in the department
of Haute-Loire, the choices of viewpoints adopted (focal point very present in the picture or more discreet)
always including a foreground portraying a landscape practice.
View of a vegetable garden in a field in the foreground and Le Mont Mézenc dominating the village of Estables in the background, Haute-Loire (43),
France.. - © Ch. Guy-P. Enjelvin/OPTMC
In the future the paths will need redoing between the different viewpoints that “look over” the focal points
which make up the framework of the photographic observation. This will allow for changes in the kinds of
relationships between man and a given environment at different times, in particular in the foregrounds, but
also the possibility of whether to redo an unusual landscape experience or not over the whole length of the
observation time.
- Sharing and distributing the data of the Photographic Observation Project: the client, the landscape architects
and OPTMC*
On completion of this first shooting campaign, OPTMC, as for the previous operation (photographic observation
project of the landscapes of Allier), will supply the client with a database containing, notably the geographical
coordinates of the viewpoints.
The client is wondering about the possibility of producing a publication that groups together some of the
panoramic photos that will have been taken during this campaign.
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Using diachronnous photography within the framework of participative operations
Participative operations which have to be organised by the local authorities, and which are now clearly included
in the European Landscape Convention, can be implemented from diachronous images. At the request of
several clients (village communities, intercommunity syndicates responsible for a specific competence),
we have designed and produced what we call “photographic surveys”.
Even if this operation is not directly aimed at creating a photographic observation project, it could be one way
of sharing, distributing and making use of the results. It could also be used for a proposal for an implementation
and discussion on a photographic observation initiative.
- The “photographic survey” or visual aid for implementing a photographic observation project: the inhabitants
of the territory, the client and OPTMC*
We base ourselves on a diachrony that we do ourselves, or that is sometimes done by the survey participants
themselves. Based on this photographic reiteration, each participant answers a relatively directive questionnaire
that we have put together with the client.
On the left is an example of the survey
questionnaire complied as part of raising
awareness and providing information on the
“Vallée de la Veyre-lac d’Aydat” river contract
sponsored by SMVV.
The questionnaire has several objectives which are also those that one
might expect on comparing two diachronies:
– becoming aware of the changes
– a qualitative assessment of the changes highlighted by the necessity
of the intervention
– gathering ideas of proposed actions
– providing information on the thoughts of the community (imperatives,
objectives and proposed actions)
– adhering to a procedure by amending or completing it if necessary.
1. Why did you choose to reshoot this photograph?
2. What do you feel are the five most significant changes (a, b, c and d)
between the two dates of these shots?
3. Are you surprised or satisfied with these changes?
Why?
4. Based on your answers to the previous three questions, do you feel it
is necessary to do something and if so, with what objective?
5. Who do you think should carry out these actions?
6. Within the framework of the current river contract for the valley,
four key objectives have been set (see list below). Do these objectives
correspond to those you have evoked in your answer to question 4?
If “yes”, which ones? If “no”, which ones are missing?
7. What about the future? The river contract ends in 2010. Should the
actions that have been started continue? If “yes”, who should carry
them out?
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Based on the survey we are organising a photographic exhibition which gives an opportunity to all the key
players of the local authority for sharing and discussing.
This exhibition is the first stage of promoting a participative operation which took between 12 and 18 months.
It is also an opportunity to enhance the operation further: visitors to the exhibition can in turn become players
on reading the comments of the other inhabitants; in a certain way a (silent) dialogue establishes itself
between them that could be made audible; if we had the necessary manpower, we could collect their words
thanks to a special questionnaire which would enable them to react, not only to the exhibition itself but also to
take part in the debate on the local authority project; if there is a strong political desire on the project territory
we could begin by laying down the foundations to a “classic” photographic observation project by relying on
the network of key players which was set up during the participative operation and the photographic funds that
were raised within this framework.
The various components of the exhibition
- Diachronies of the inhabitants and comments from the same inhabitants from a survey questionnaire
(see previous page)
On the right is an example of a completed survey questionnaire based
on the above diachrony.
Extract of the “Rivières d’hier, d’aujourd’hui et de demain”
(“Rivers of yesteryear, today and tomorrow”) exhibition,
October 2007.
1. These pictures show a significant change for the hydrologic cycle.
2. a) Double the amount of surface occupied by the urban area
b) The “La Prairie” farming area” (middle and left side of the picture) was
uncultivated wild land in 1980 and is now once again being cultivated
c) The “Pradier” vine (to the bottom left of photo 1) is overgrown with
weeds now
04/2007 - Les Martres-de-Veyre vus du puy de Tobize, Puy-de-Dôme (63),
France. © Ch. Guy-P. Enjelvin/OPTMC
3. I am not surprised.
- The urbanisation in the form of housing is very characteristic of our
society. Very “greedy” for property it has significant consequences on
the hydrologic cycle: the rainfall collected by the huge tarmac surfaces
or many roofs goes directly into the river or the purification plant. The
filtering effect and the role of storage in the soil no longer come into play,
thus leading to flooding.
- The last land consolidation has once again enabled using the “La Prairie”
sector. The abandoned vines have been replaced by the growth of cereals
which require a lot of fertilizers and part of the latter not used by the
plant finishes up in the groundwater.
- The “Pradier” vine becoming overgrown with weeds is a practice that
produces better quality wine and also enables better respecting of the
hydrologic cycle. The big storms drag less earth towards the village.
- It is not a change but the fact that the arid or too craggy sectors (slopes
of the high ground) remain wild land which enables a well-regulated
hydrologic cycle.
4. The rainwater collected should pass through the soil and not go directly
into the river.
It would be worth getting the abandoned irrigation system back into
working order.
A policy for managing urbanisation management is also needed.
There are simple methods for collecting water and using it. If they were
implemented they would reduce the cost of water treatment as well as
the cost of tap water.
5. Local communities (communes, communities of communes).
6. 2, 3 and 4 correspond.
The information is essential, particularly with farmers and anyone who
builds so as to preserve and manage our water resources.
7. The communities need to confirm their desire to sponsor and finance
the river contract to ensure it lasts a long time.
06/1989 - Les Martres-de-Veyre vus du puy de Tobize, Puy-de-Dôme (63),
France. Carte postale ancienne © D.R.
SMVV could retain their management of water resources on a catchment
area scale, with the communes occasionally intervening for issues that
fall within their competences.
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- Diachronies of OPTMC commented on by the experts
We always use experts in the photographic survey operations we run, so as to get a different view.
The experts’ comments are presented next to those of the inhabitants as part of the exhibition.
They put themselves in the inhabitant’s shoes:
- comparing a diachronous series to check the changes from one image to the next for themselves;
- highlighting, at our request, the mechanisms at work behind the changes that have been noted;
- indicating the clues to follow and the actions to implement to provide solutions in the face of the situations
shown in the diachronous images.
Photographic observation of motorway A89
For nearly eight years OPTMC has been the client of the photographic observation project of Motorway A89
(Clermont-Ferrand-Bordeaux). As such, based on the principle of photo reshoots, every year it takes pictures
that make up a diachronous series likely to make people realise the changes taking place in the landscape
around Motorway A89 and supply material for an assessment of the “1% landscape and development” policy.
We have deliberately left to one side the subjects concerning a discussion on setting up this Observation project
as well as its implementation, so as to look more closely at those regarding the distribution and sharing of
photographic data.
– Distributing and sharing data of the photographic observation project: OPTMC, the Steering Committee and
all the key players who are potentially concerned by the creation of the infrastructure*
It was a two-step process:
- Creation of a database and html page to have a consultation tool that is easily appropriated by the Observation
project partners (concessionary company, the State, Departments: 19, 24 and 63);
– Creation of a web site http://poptmc.free.fr coupling the database to a mapping server to have a territorial
entry and favour distribution to all audiences.
Visiting the site enables instant access to the following data:
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Map locations of the photographic series of the photo shoot sites of the A89
Simultaneous viewing between the geographical location of the series and the number of series per commune
Fast display and comparison of all the photos of the same diachronous series
What shocks me about this picture and the three previous ones is to see
what the local inhabitants have lost since the first photo. While one can
justify the need to build a motorway, it is difficult to understand why the
“landscape” developments of the embankments are so mediocre. It is
obviously impossible to get back what has been lost but one simply cannot
accept this kind of contempt for those who have to live there, at the foot of
this embankment. Couldn’t they be shown a little more respect and a little
more imagination rather than these expensive plantations all in a row and
on a plastic frames?
Why did you choose to comment on this series?
I regularly go to see a friend who lives near the A89 in this precise place.
And the view out of his window upsets me as much as it does him.
Comments left with regard to the photographs of each series by the visitors to the site which can be found by
going to the site of the A89 Photographic Observation Project
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Photographic observation at the service... of a landscape culture
The different experiences that we have just presented all implement photography, and often photographic
reshoots.
One would tend to classify them into two categories:
- A first one which aims at informing / raising awareness / consulting / communicating on the implementation
of a policy where the landscape holds a central position;
- A second one with the ambition to participate in assessing the results of a policy - landscape policy or otherwise –
but which has an impact on the landscape.
Effectively, it seems to us that it would be wrong to disassociate the different objectives being pursued and that
it is necessary to have them all in mind, whether one is responsible for making people aware of the necessity
of implementing a river or trying to account for the “1% landscape and development” policy as part of creating
a major motorway infrastructure.
Without needing to mix approaches which may be different and require specific answers to the three questions
we asked at the beginning of this presentation: How and with whom should a photographic observation project
be set up? How do you implement it? How do you share and distribute its data?
We feel it is essential to mobilise a maximum number of key players (clients, councillors, inhabitants, experts,
photographers) for implementing the photographic observation project and making it an element of mediation
between the landscape policies, those who implement them and those on the receiving end, both having to
conform to them.
This is perhaps the price you have to pay, and thanks to photography (and broadly to the image) for hoping to
raise awareness with regard to the landscape issue and later, a landscape culture.
This is where we see a place for photographic observation. This is where it can be of service to landscape
policies, when it makes the landscape become an experience in which one feels the need and the desire to
talk to one’s neighbour, one’s mayor, an expert, etc.
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Exchanges
Following Philippe Maigne’s presentation, a participant pointed out that it was a beautiful example of how to
undermine the sacred aura surrounding authors, artists and photographers.
One of the problems that have slowly emerged within the Observatoire National is that it overloaded,
over-enshrined the first steps, so it has stifled smaller, simpler, more straightforward and more instant projects
addressing specific requirements. There is a really interesting connection between these two aspects. Using the
feedback and analysing documents are absolutely essential.
Pia Viewing pointed out that it is a spot that has been through throughout art history, all the way back to
Cézanne, and that art has therefore added to this project’s depth.
Philippe Maigne added that there was more than that to the agenda in that area. The artist’s vision is
of course important but it does not encapsulate that area’s full identity. It is also working on a project delving
into its images and identifying values, which in a way puts it in a category of its own. He noted that it was not
simply a mountain that Cézanne painted: it was also a place where people lived. The mountain is more than
a 35,000-hectare massif. Cézanne’s painting made it a name but it is also the area as a whole that brings that
mountain to life, and that is what this tool is trying to reflect.
A participant asked for more information about how the 26 vantage points were chosen, why there are 26 of
them, and where they are in relation to the units.
Philippe Maigne explained that each unit’s main issues had been presented, described and explained: it could
be a village’s outskirts, the fact that urban sprawl was engulfing the villages, or the areas interlinking the village
and the forest (planted and unplanted areas).
He provided another example: the large farming units and the Concors valley floor, which is an absolutely
fantastic sample of Provençale countryside, and indeed stunning in itself, from a representation perspective.
Choosing a vantage point because you think it will evolve can probably bias analysis. That is indeed an approach
in certain cases. In other cases, the approach centres on specific vantage points that seem to represent the unit.
It is sometimes difficult to substantiate choices rigorously and methodologically. Many factors and concerns
stemming from a global analysis lead the group to choose this vantage point or that.
After Alain Blondel’s and Laurent Sully-Jaulmes’ presentation, M. Grandadam refuses to believe it was better
in the past. During the field work he carried out with his team to get people to advance, photographs were
presented to arouse emotion and curiosity but afterwards they had to come up with something for today.
He feels that we need to accept to live in the present and get things moving in order to progress rather than
remain with the nostalgic idea that things were better in the past.
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Christophe Camus, photographer and architect at CAUE in Puy-de-Dôme, feels that acknowledging the 60’s/80’s
is extremely interesting because it shows our approach to public spaces and towns and the way in which
extremely sudden proposals caused the mess we know today. What is also interesting in the work shown and
which is also one of the aims of the observation project, is the ability to gain something from the discussions
and policies we have, and by the new professionals we have to work on these things (landscape architects,
architects) to provide good-quality towns and good-quality developments. It is possible to regain something
far more humane, with much better quality towns and streets than those created in the 1970’s. The work that
has just been presented carries that message and it is a very positive one.
Alain Blondel effectively notes a big difference in everyday building compared with what was being built in
the 1970’s. Nowadays the height of new buildings has once again become more reasonable and housing developments try to integrate into what already exists rather than start from scratch. A sort of “bland-but-pleasant”
architecture is a solution which resembles what was being done before, in other words, before the villages and
the urban environment were being built virtually without “star” architects but with construction companies
who knew their trade and who created a “contextual” architecture. To a certain extent, this is what could be
done today in some successful and humanist developments. Today you can see developments in the suburbs
where the architect favours terraces and more elaborate materials and you can feel a kind of sympathy towards
the inhabitants who are going to use them. This was not the case in the 70’s where harshness was the order
of the day.
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WORKSHOP No. 4
Landscape photographs,
tools for learning and discussion
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Moderator
Pere Sala, Coordinator for the Catalan landscape observatory
I would like to say first of all that the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia has different functions from those
of the Observatoire Photographique du Paysage. The Landscape Observatory of Catalonia has the function of
supporting the Catalan Government and Catalan society in general in implementing the European Landscape
Convention. That means that the Landscape Observatory does studies, make proposals and support educational
projects on the landscape.
Having said that, I will now start the fourth session on the landscape photograph as a medium for knowledge and
discussion. Before presenting the speakers, I would like to congratulate the organisers and give special thanks
to Jean-François Seguin and Elise Soufflet for inviting me to this seminar, where we are discussing a subject
that unfortunately does not always receive the attention it deserves. Over the last three sessions, we have
seen how photography is not just a complement to landscape studies or communication strategies; rather, it is
a fundamental pillar for creating and applying a good landscape policy, both in terms of communication and
decision-making, raising awareness or education. The image that we see on the screen currently (image 1),
for example, comes from an educational project on landscape, carried out jointly by the Government of Catalonia
and the Landscape Observatory, which we are about to implement in all secondary schools in Catalonia.
This project uses a photo as a basic tool and with the assistance of an interactive instrument we will be able to
zoom the photo (image 2), study its details and learn about the landscape’s trait and its evolution.
Image 1: Educational project “City, territory, landscape”
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Image 2: Educational project “City, territory, landscape” with the main photo zoomed.
Image 3: One mechanism of the participation process in Landscape Catalogues
of Catalonia.
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Before we begin the presentations, I would like to make a few comments on the topic that we have been
discussing over these past two days.
Firstly, in an increasingly complex and sophisticated society, issues which we were able to resolve from a single
perspective before, today require dialogue between the different perspectives. The landscape is one of these
issues, and I think that it is important to remember that it has to be seen from different viewpoints – in this
room, there are historians, photographers, geographers, architects, philosophers, sociologists and more- and we
also have to use a wide variety of tools, including photography, images, videos, websites and so on (image 3).
The photograph is an up and coming tool.
Apart from being an indicator of landscape evolution, photography can also help us recognise landscape
identity, as we heard this morning. For example, the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia is now preparing
landscape catalogues, similar to the French Atlas de paysages. One of the first and most significant results
of the landscape catalogues is the identification of landscapes (image 4), understood as areas that have the
same landscape character, the same idiosyncrasy. These landscapes are important because they constitute the
basic territorial pieces to which specific landscape policies are applied. In that sense, people who live in all the
landscapes help us in the definition of their character, using photographs.
Another example is the exhibition being held at the Contemporaneous Art Museum in Barcelona over the next
two months. It shows photographs of people who discovered the different characters of the contemporaneous
landscapes of the Barcelona metropolitan region (image 5).
Thirdly, in addition to photos which allow us to recognise clearly elements and places, other less explicit
elements emerge, transmitting other messages. The image currently on the screen (image 6), which is
apparently unrecognisable, led us to the idea of soundscapes, which is a subject that will be discussed in a
seminar that we are organising for next December. The aim of this image is to invite us to explore these other
landscapes.
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Image 4: Landscape units in Catalonia (provisional map November 2008)
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Image 5: Exhibition at Contemporaneous Art Museum in Barcelona, autumn 2008.
Image 6: Seminar “Paisatges sonors de Catalunya” (11 December 2008), organised by the Landscape Observatory
and the Grup PaisatgesonorUB, group within the Department of Sculpture at the University of Barcelona School
of Fine Arts.
Fourthly, I would like to underscore a phenomenon which is increasingly important: the multiplicity of spaces
in which a landscape photo can be shown, with different functions and objectives. In other words, the digital
nature of images makes an image taken initially for private use and enjoyment, for instance, also susceptible
to being published in the local, national or even international press, or on the cover of a regional environmental
magazine or even – why not? – being exhibited in the Pompidou Centre. At the same time, a student might
decide to photocopy the magazine cover and pin it up on a wall in his o her room. They could also decide
to scan it and put it on YouTube or Facebook. Somebody on YouTube might then decide to touch it up with
Photoshop and give it a different aim than the photo’s original purpose. And so it goes... We have to bear in
mind this extraordinary versatility that is available today.
Lastly, I invite you to think with an example about the limits of photographic observation in terms of landscape
policies. I would like to refer you to an example from history. Everyone knows about the little regard that
Stalin had for Trotsky within the Russian Communist Party. Well before the invention of Photoshop, Stalin was
able to erase Trotsky from official images. If Trotsky did not appear in photos, Stalin thought, he would end up
disappearing from people’s minds. In the end, the idea did not turn out as expected, but the intention of this
anecdote from history is to stress the importance that photography can have in this area of new technologies
in the creation of new landscape imagery.
In other words, and with other images, here we have a symbolic landscape of Catalonia: Cadaqués (image 7).
This other image is at the same place (image 8). In this field, we all have a great responsibility. While we might
not have time to discuss all of this, I will ask the speakers in this session to take these concerns into consideration.
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Image 7: Image of the city of Cadaqués (Girona)
Image 8: Aerial image of the landscape in the municipality of Cadaqués (Girona)
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The Mon Paysage (My Landscape) Operation
Françoise Dubost, sociologist
Françoise Dubost presents the “Mon paysage” (“My Landscape”) project, launched in 1992 just before the
1993 Landscape Law (“Loi Paysage”) by the Ministry of the Environment, which intended to “allow the widest
public to speak”. Everyone in France was invited to participate in a competition by sending in a photograph of
their favourite landscape along with a written commentary. The goal was quite different to the Photographic
mission launched by the DATAR (Délégation à l’aménagement du territoire et à l’action régionale, French
Delegation for land development and regional action) whose objective was to quash old stereotypes and offer
new representations of the country by asking well-known artists to photograph landscapes in France.
The “My Landscape’ project on the other hand was aimed at the general public and as a result it gathered more
images of times past than of modern times. We understand all too well that representations of a place can live
much longer than the reality of it does.
This competition, the full title of which was “Mon paysage, nos paysages” (“My landscape, our landscapes”)
was a rounding success and received some 9,000 photo entries. The media campaign was well orchestrated
and vigorously supported by the regional environmental departments. A conference was organised following
it, as well as an exhibition at the Maison de la Radio in Paris. 90 photos were selected for this exhibit by the
regional environmental departments and then by a national jury; the photos were accompanied by commentary
written by the photographers themselves.
The remaining thousands of photos that were not selected may well have held less artistic value but regardless
of that they were of major interest in that they reflected the image that French people have of their landscape
and came with explanations for their preferences.
Françoise Dubost, at the request of Mission du Paysage, carried out a study on this impressive corpus, using a
sampling only (a twentieth, more or less) due to the short amount of time allowed. This study, under the title
“My landscape” with the subtitle “French people’s favourite landscape”, was published in 1995 at the same
time as the photographs selected for their artistic merit with comments by Lucien Clergue.
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Workshop No. 4 - The Mon Paysage (My Landscape) Operation
First question: who sent in photos for the competition?
The competition’s organisers had the clever idea of asking participants to give their age, place of
residence and their profession. This provided a sociological marker that made it possible to make a profile of
the photographers.
Their responses showed that for the most part, they were between 25 and 60 years old, most likely because
people older or younger than those ages generally don’t have a solid grasp on photography techniques.
More men sent in photos than women; it is a fact that photography is a more common pastime among men
and photography clubs are particularly male dominated.
A high percentage of entrants worked as employees and middle management. Professionals, upper management
workers, shop owners and craftsmen were under-represented in proportion to their percentage in the general
population. There were practically no farmers or labourers. It may have been that the way in which the
competition was presented and the wording of the pitch in particular, intended to reach the widest public possible
(“speak from your heart”), did not appeal to the most highly educated categories of the population, who
evidently stayed away from the competition. The academic style may have discouraged farmers and labourers
while being particularly well suited to middle management and employees: many teachers sent in photos
and some teachers even had their classes participate. Again, the means of expression certainly played a role.
Pierre Bourdieu noted in the mid-1960s that the so-called middle class were particularly active in photography
and that photography clubs included mainly members of the middle class. Their appreciation of the medium
was undoubtedly a factor in making the subject more attractive to them.
Another characteristic common to the photographers is that they were for a large majority, city dwellers.
Rural residents represented less than a third of the competition’s entrants and yet the countryside is omnipresent
in the photographs. So the majority of entrants were urban residents who appreciate the rural landscape.
An important detail should be added to correct this detail bordering on caricature: a large number of these
urban residents live in small towns in the countryside or in little townships on the edge of rural areas.
Lastly, nearly all of the photographers had a personal attachment to the place they photographed, as we learned
from the comments that accompanied the photos of holiday sites, places where people were born or grew up,
almost all of them sent with some nostalgia-infused comment. More importantly, the most striking trend noted
was that more than two thirds of photographers chose their place of residence, either the town they live in or
places in the region where they regularly spend leisure time, particularly weekends.
French people’s favourite landscapes then are the ones most familiar to them, their everyday landscape,
“if you look you will find beauty at your door”. Even the most commonplace landscape is idealised when there
are emotional ties to it.
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Second question: What types of landscapes are in the photos?
Candidates chose to photograph everyday landscapes rather than exceptional ones. It should be mentioned
that the wording of the competition pitch clearly pointed them that way. There are very few major sites, either
natural places or historic monuments, represented in the photos.
Some of the photos depict damaged sites or destruction of the landscape: trash dumps, electricity towers, etc.
But more often, these problems are discussed in the comments (more than a quarter listed their complaints
and grievances). It seems as if the candidates had seized upon the competition as the opportunity to sound an
alarm and protest planned projects that they know about: motorways, TGV tracks, waste collection centres, new
housing developments, etc. And in these cases, the photos show an idyllic landscape that will be destroyed
if the project is carried out.
The landscape depicted is first and foremost a traditional landscape, showing old houses, huts for fisherman
or shepherds, mills at the water’s edge, country churches, landscapes without any modern buildings. There is
no trace either of modern agriculture, not a tractor or farm tools to be seen, but there are old women milking
cows or shepherds watching their sheep.
The urban landscape is the one subject conspicuously absent from the competition – only 28 photos out
of more than 500 while more than 350 entrants live in urban areas. The city then has no right to be part of
the landscape; the urban landscape is not yet accepted as a concept. This should not be all that surprising.
After all, geographers themselves, who were the first to show interest in the countryside (that is one of
the French school of geography’s and its founder, Vidal de la Blache’s claim to fame at the beginning of the
century), long equated landscape with rural landscapes; the urban landscape was a discovery of the seventies.
Our entrants have not accepted this concept yet, and for them the city is the opposite of a landscape; it is the
place we leave to rediscover nature and the country, i.e. landscapes. The few urban photos depict the oldest centre
cities (the Loire Valley, Burgundy) or city parks (Nord-Pas-de-Calais, greater Paris, Provence-Côte d’Azur):
the city is only a landscape if it evokes the past or the natural world, the essential attributes of the rural landscape.
The few photos of the city of today and modern architecture were taken for the most part in Paris.
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Nature and the country are by far the predominant themes of these photos, taken for the most part by people
who live in cities. They are rarely wild, completely natural scenes; more often it is the peaceful and domesticated
“French countryside” which 19th century painting, from Corot and the Barbizon school to the Impressionists,
made into the archetype of our national landscape, later popularised in postcards and calendars. There are two
types of this pastoral archetype represented in this photo competition, hedge- and tree-lined fields and the
pastoral, agricultural mountain landscape, in both cases traditional, rural landscapes that are threatened by
the modernisation of agriculture. The idea that we must protect these landscapes, along with the water, trees
and traditional architecture was clearly expressed both in the photos and in the comments attached. We would
note then that the idea of protection is not now reserved for an elite of enlightened government officials or
cultured individuals. It extends to the general public, and the ideas of landscape and heritage, in their most
basic conception have become increasingly well-accepted.
We could deplore French people’s marked preference for such old-fashioned values, which are so far from the
goal of DATAR’s photographic mission of bringing about an acceptance and even a celebration of modernity.
Yet we cannot deny the importance that this traditional landscape holds in the collective imagination, and if
landscape comes up so consistently in land planning, local development and in making areas attractive as
tourist destinations, it is in fact because politicians and developers must face and answer the public’s requests.
These requests include both a desire to rebuild identity and strong attachment to place as well as the wish to
preserve the quality of the setting where people spend their lives. But we must not overlook the fact that this
desire is often extremely varied and contradictory: one person’s landscape is another’s eyesore. Landscapes
are necessarily subject to many varied points of view and conflicting uses, and while they may not be readily
apparent in the photos submitted we should remember that the competition’s entrants represent only certain
social classes (absence of farmers for example, who would not have the same vision of landscape as do new
rural residents, weekend residents and tourists).
What we should remember from these images and comments is that what people want is to have their point
of view be taken into consideration. To illustrate that, Françoise Dubost quotes something written by the great
geographer Gilles Sautter in 1979: “It is constantly becoming more difficult to develop a site or even to understand
what places are without taking on board the essential element that is the residents’ viewpoint.”
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Excerpts from the book “Mon paysage, le paysage préféré des français” («My landscape, the favourite landscape
of the French») by Lucien Clergue and Françoise Dubost.
Mauquenchy seen from the Mont aux leux, Roncherolles-en-Bray,
Seine-Maritime region.
With its network of pastures and fields, criss-crossed by green paths
that are like an invitation to a walk, bordered on the south-west
by the cultivated slope that descends from the heights of the Pays
de Caux, my country the Pays de Bray, remains a sensitive area
of hedged fields that even its location on the edge of the famous
“Boutonnière” area cannot protect from devastating development.
My country is my window on the world, a fragile area shaped by
generations of field labourers and modest magicians who have
generously given us this valuable landscape heritage. Together,
we must find the means to preserve the quality of this setting so
that we too may pass it on to future generations.
(Michel Lavenu. 42 years old, teacher)
The whole town, Saint-Martin-aux-Chartrains, Pont-l’Evêque, Calvados.
This isn’t really a landscape, but this is what it’s like at my grandparents,
and I like calves.
(Hortense Fenet, 8 years old)
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Schoolyard at the Emilie de Rodat School, Toulouse, Haute-Garonne
region.
I love my schoolyard because it’s lively and there are pretty trees
there, in the courtyard and in the gardens of the people next door.
When I was three, I filled my pockets with the shiny horse chestnuts
from the chestnut tree that welcomed us to the doorway of the
school. When I was four, I liked to sit on a stump in the middle of
the golden leaves from the plane trees, and read like the big kids
did as I waited for my mom, the schoolteacher. When I was seven,
I collected the prettiest flat, white stones I could find in the gravel
courtyard; here there’s no asphalt! Now that I am 10, I want all the
schoolchildren in the city to have trees in their schoolyards, not just
walls around asphalt.
(Muriel Thomas des Chesnes, 10 years old)
Allée de la Myrte, La Valette-du-Var, Var region.
I love this little flower-filled garden. Nature lies before me, so
colourful and so attractive under the Mediterranean sun. A beautiful
apricot tree and a fig tree in front of the house make it look like the
South of France. The pink laurels beside the gate are enchanting and
invite me to make a little stop there. This little pathway bordered
with pinks and giant geraniums seems idyllic for tourists from the
North here on holidays. The tree trunk is an invitation to laziness.
The old, black pump adds a touching rustic touch. It reminds me of
the one at my grandmother’s. The copper kettle makes me think of
old-fashioned jams. The roses are so magnificent and vibrant that
they don’t quite seem real. They rise so majestically; I don’t want to
cut them, just admire them.
(Jeanne Villemant, 61 years old, retired schoolteacher)
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Disposable Cameras for a Development Project
Yves Michelin, UMR Metafort
(Agro-Paris-Tec, Cemagref, ENITA de Clermont-Ferrand, INRA)
Yves Michelin presents the work he is currently doing; it is rooted in standard research, but it also has an
applied dimension that is more focused on action.
For several years, since the signing of the European Landscape Convention in 2000, local government has been
pressed by an increasingly pressing need to manage and organise the ways in which their landscapes evolve.
But for the people responsible for this management, it is difficult to actually take action. On the one hand, the
request from the public is not clear and is rarely shared by all social groups, and on the other hand, it is difficult
to motivate people locally about a landscaping project that is vague and for many, devoid of meaning.
Lastly, it is important to recognise the conflicts that arise whenever landscape is the subject in question:
- underlying conflicting points of view between those who defend a landscape as part of a heritage to be
preserved, an idea which is shared by several different groups of society, and economic figures who consider
the landscape principally as a resource to be used;
- conflicting expressions; some figures monopolize the discussions about landscape while others say nothing,
not because they have no opinions on the subject but because they lack the tools to discuss the subject.
- conflicting significance: because the same words do not hold the same meaning for everyone, the discussion
quickly turns into an ideological debate about what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is or is not a good
landscape, which have nothing to do directly with the local situation.
Despite these difficulties, studying the personal and cultural values that residents hold concerning their land
can play an important, instructive role in understanding the identity of their landscape and thereby contributing
to developing landscape policies in which everyone had a say. As early as 1979, G. Sautter, a geographer who
has really inspired this method stressed that it is impossible to “to develop a site or even to understand what
places are without taking on board the essential element that is the residents’ viewpoint.”
But deciding to take this into account is not an easy thing to do because landscape has its own material existence
in addition to a socio-cultural construction. For this reason, if we wish to speak of the landscapes in a region in
a way that is acceptable to everyone involved in managing that landscape, we must specify the biotechnical
dimensions (explaining how and why this appearance is the result of the process related to the management
and to the use or non-use of the perceived space), with the psycho-sociological approaches that explain how,
based on what we perceive, we create elements and objects with meaning for which we can determine a value
and make judgements. If we don’t include this social backdrop then the landscape will remain merely the
decorated setting and only an aesthetic discussion can be had concerning it – a very limited process compared
to the totality of what can be done with a landscape.
To summarise, if we want to consider public policies that will interfere with the landscape, we need to understand
everything that is represented by that portmanteau word. This is a problem of language, different people have
different points of view, as much as it is a problem of relating different opinions. Which means, how we are
going to discuss the importance of a landscape and how we are going to organise the discussion and in relation
to what types of actions? It is also a problem related to social issues. What values, what meanings, what symbols
are contained in landscape? Lastly, it is a practical problem. How can we create conditions that are favourable
to these different points of view being expressed and how can we discuss them?
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Workshop No. 4 - Disposable Cameras for a Development Project
In fact, if we want there to be a discussion, it has to be organised using the right tools. Behind these tools, the
point is to move from controversy to a debate, that is to say, for a given place, under the given conditions, at
a given time, discuss the possibilities and the limits for a type of landscape in relation to the types of policies.
In order for this to happen, five points need to be considered:
- shift the subject of the discussion: move beyond the concept of landscape, of the landscape in general,
understood as an ideology or as a something reserved for an elite, to discuss the landscapes where
people live.
- how do we make sure that people can express themselves? For that to happen, a knowledge base has to
be constructed and shared.
- give back a voice to those who have been silent and make their point of view one that other people can
understand and discuss.
- For that to happen, we must have means of mediation that will facilitate discussion; images, and photography
in particular, can be a way to make up for some people’s lack of words to discuss landscapes.
- To be able to discuss it, there have to be proceedings, a place for discussion that lead to finality, projects
to be carried out, a goal.
To illustrate this method, Yves Michelin explains the goal of his project: the idea is to propose a simple, easy
method that any local group can make use of without the help of specialists and that will help a field operator
explore the murky world of residents’ representations in order to help him/her understand the deep-seated
motivations and reactions of the people involved who will help create the landscape project.
In the field of land management, what is important is the relationship people have to the space. We therefore
focused our questions on 4 key points, which must be preliminary to any action concerning the space or landscape:
1. What intimate, emotional connection does the landscape have for every resident that forms part of their
identity? Is it shared or specific to each individual?
2. On the other hand, which elements of the landscape are rejected, for which any improvement would give
landscape management a positive image?
3. What elements do residents consider integral parts of their landscape or their country; which do they
consider representative enough to want to show them:
- to their children and their children’s children. This question allows you to see a characteristic vision of the
landscape that is less individual than in point 1.
- to tourists as an attraction. This question helps explore the way residents see their landscape as an experience
for visitors.
4. How aware are residents of the landscape changes currently taking place, how do they feel about them,
what do they want for the future?
In order to motivate participants and help them express their own personal views, the questions were written
as a sort of “mini-drama”. For example, question 1, which addresses personal emotions was presented as
“If you had to leave your country and could only keep three images of it, which ones would you take with
you?”; question 3 examines identity and landscape was less direct, “If you had to describe your country to a
distant cousin who wanted to learn about his family origins, what would you choose to show him?”
After several experiences over more than 10 years in different regions of France, we think that using disposable
cameras is a useful way to better grasp the emotional dimension of landscape, pick out the elements that
residents consider to be the most representative and begin a dialogue about the future. But these images are
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only meaningful if we take the time to ask the photographers to explain their reasons for taking the photo.
The image becomes the item around which the interview is organised. The subjects rely heavily on the image
to express their ideas. Furthermore, the questions force the subjects to ask themselves questions, to go to the
site where they will be confronted with the reality of what they hoped to show, which means subjects are
much more motivated and have more clearly formulated ideas to express during the interview.
Points 1 and 3 help make the landscape’s strongest features stand out and reveal the spirit of the place.
They can help reveal the basis for landscape projects. It would be interesting to compare this personal vision
with an outside landscape analysis.
Point 4 sheds some light on what parts of the landscapes residents would readily show off. By comparing
that to the personal, emotional landscape, we can help those involved target their communication and their
opening strategy.
Point 2 is a subject that interests and motivates people and that makes it easier to understand what is behind
someone’s negative experiences (for example, pine trees are only disliked when they are too close to houses).
It helps them to formulate in clear terms which scenarios would be unacceptable. We can then create a formal
vision of the “undesirable” possibilities and using the negative, sketch out the major lines of what people
do want.
The final point looks to the future. This is also a very motivating point. By considering the landscapes that
are going to change, we can sketch out the most likely scenarios and the hypotheses that people would be
happiest with, using those as a base for a landscaping project.
In fact, the landscape quickly becomes a reason for subjects to develop a clear idea of the development they
envision for their country, including the dimensions and representations that have just been introduced.
It is quite natural to consider that asking people to express their points of view about their landscapes using
photos that they took themselves along with some written comments is a good way to get to their opinions,
however, we must not deny the risk of these opinions being manipulated, even if it is done for good reasons.
The main danger is the possibility of projecting your own point of view into the thoughts expressed by the
subject because the tool used is so powerful.
In practical terms, the photo only has meaning when there is a discussion to go with it. The photo may depict
things that are of no interest to the subjects or it may not show things that they would like to talk about.
The most paradoxical thing about it is that in some cases, the photo doesn’t show anything at all. It simply
serves as a stepping off point for a difficult but important subject; take for example the blurry photo from the
Thiernoise Mountain of a grove where there was an abandoned old cutlery workshop, taken by an elected
official who was more interested in discussing the critical state of the cutlery industry than landscapes being
enclosed. Group discussion is therefore of the utmost importance to find what people have in common and
work towards a cooperatively constructed landscape identity.
We can summarize the four essential points that need to be approached carefully: the wording of the questions,
the choice of the subjects who will answer them (you need motivated people who truly represent the public
and will express their viewpoint), the right time to start the action (this should be done in parallel with the
questioning) and organisers who want to involve people through discussion and action and who want to listen
to them.
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Workshop No. 4 - Disposable Cameras for a Development Project
In conclusion, landscape photographs created this way are like a language that can give people who are powerless
and left out of the decision-making process the means to stand on equal footing with experts. It takes time
to do this because the process gains by letting people’s viewpoints develop over time. It requires structured,
theory-based work and patience to help people express their own points of view about the landscape and as
much patience to lead decision-makers to realize that local residents expressing their viewpoints is not such a
dangerous thing, rather that it can be a useful tool for development.
Illustration 1
Some sample responses
In the Cérou Valley, to prepare a landscape charter (led by L. Lelli)
Comments on the photo
Instructions: “A cousin who has researched his genealogy contacts you, telling you that you are
from the same family, and asks you to send him some photographs of the country his family
comes from, where his roots are. What photographs would you send him?”
Answer: “a countryside that is deeply rooted in its rural heritage”
Instructions: “You have to create a tourist brochure for the tourist promotion office,
what photos would you choose to illustrate your land?”
Answer: “Crespin, the grass is greener in our pastures”
In the Sancy Massif, for a study on the product-landscape connection in the Saint-Nectaire area (led by L. Menadier)
Instructions: What would you like to see disappear from your operations?
Answer: “Trail maintenance, I think that for people who come here to walk, if they come
across blocked trails and then if there are lots nearby that aren’t maintained, they get
the impression that its sort of been abandoned, that it’s an area people don’t care about
and I think that can hurt the image of the product.”
Illustration 2
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The Circular-Area Method
Terry O’Regan, Landscape Alliance Ireland
Introduction
I am here to share a small book* with you. It may seem strange to say this, but I suspect that people often
lose their landscape. If you will forgive me a degree of arrogance, my little book is intended to help people to
avoid or remedy this serious mishap. Some people might well ask – “Does it matter if we lose our landscape?”
I think it does and I hope that my book supports this claim.!
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Workshop No. 4 - The Circular-Area Method
In the preface I wrote “Your landscape is not just the land that you may or may not occupy, but the place
or places that are important to you, framing memories of the past, shaping your sense of local history, your
consciousness of wellbeing and belonging in your present landscape and your vision of its future. You might
say that you own your landscape, but it is deeper than mere ownership – you are part of your landscape and
it is part of you – a relationship that is very organic and close.”
How well do you remember this morning’s landscape?
It is said that goldfish have very short memories. I suspect that our landscape memory is even shorter than
the memory of a goldfish?
We now live in a world of image overload! Our local landscape memory has to compete with a multitude of
images for receptive storage space in our brains. Each day we are exposed to landscape images from all over
the planet via television, computers, the internet, billboards, mobile phones, the cinema and the print media.
On holidays via trains, boats, planes and cars we have easy access to a vast array of diverse landscape images!
How do we cope with all these images? Every few months I have problems with my computer – the hard drive
memory is full. I have to delete images to make space for new images. How many gigabytes of images can our
brains store? Do we all need a plug-in hard drive?
I suspect that to avoid overload we subconsciously switch off our image memory button. In fact I think we may
not even receive the landscape image at all! At first it may have been a conscious decision and then it became
automatic!
How alert are you? If Mona Lisa gradually developed age wrinkles and the odd grey hair and you went to view
her every day – would you notice the change? I doubt it!
Small wonder then that you fail to notice gradual changes in your familiar everyday landscape!
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Captured images such as photographs are vital to assist our understanding of the importance of landscape,
its fine detail and the processes of change at work under our noses.
When preparing my presentation I came across the image of a painting on Google Images – Woman Contemplating
a Landscape (after Friedrich), by Ed Ashton. Strangely he portrayed her virtually naked – it was a mountain
landscape – probably cool and windy! It must have been difficult for her to concentrate.
In my experience even with intense concentration we rarely capture the detail of a landscape viewed.
But if we are alert and aware we do capture a ‘Sensation of Landscape’ – the sight, the sounds, the smells,
the movement, the humidity, the atmosphere, the spirituality and the history.
I am not sure if it is really necessary to experience landscape naked to heighten the sensation to its maximum.
But contemplating landscape should be a sensational experience!
I think it is possible that in the past before our lives involved image overload, we were capable of contemplating
landscape in a multi-sensory way.
Maybe today we need to be trained again to contemplate landscape – to enable us to reflect on the evolutionary
processes of change, slow, fast, neutral, loss and gain; and consider our role in the landscape and the role of
the landscape in our lives.
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The Landscape Circle Study Guide is such a training template – structured in 7 steps:
1.
Scoping the Study Area
2.
Research
3.
Creating an Image Observatory
4.
Information Gathering
5.
Evaluating the Landscape
6.
Identifying Actions & Actors
7.
Landscape Study Report + other outputs
Step 1 – Scoping the Study Circle
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Using a 1:50,000 map and a simple plastic template that I have devised, a landscape circle with a radius
ranging from 1-5 km is chosen as the study area. The size selected depends on your objectives, the consistency
of the landscape and the resources available to you. The circle is more important than the centre. You should
start small and enlarge the circle if necessary. Outer vista circles may be added to allow for distant iconic
features (e.g. the Eiffel Tower)
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I have examined the Rathbarry Landscape Circle in West Cork, Ireland as a test case – a rural landscape close
to the sea with an old demesne estate and buildings. The required radius was 2km. I also examined my own
homeplace – the Ballincollig Landscape Circle, just west of Cork City – an urban landscape and a rapidly growing
satellite town. These are illustrated in my book.
Step 2 – Research
Each state will have its own excellent landscape reference books. Ireland is no exception. I particularly recommend
the ‘Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape’, (1997) by F H A Aalen, Kevin Whelan & Matthew Stout, Cork University
Press. . But as a European reference textbook I recommend the excellent CEMAT publication ‘The European
Rural Heritage – Observation Guide’ which is based on the original French work of Jean Moulias and Jean-Claude
Rouard.
There are also internet sources such as www.buildingsofireland.ie – a wonderful resource courtesy of our
Department of Environment. It is a web site featuring designed landscapes complete with aerial photos, maps
from an 1840’s survey and an assessment of the landscape change that has occurred.
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Step 3 – The Landscape Circle Observatory
In the mid 1990’s a landscape movement emerged in Europe – in northern Europe (UK and France)
and in southern Europe (around the shores of the Mediterranean). There was even a small uprising in Ireland.
For my sins, I led that revolt in Ireland. The activists in the north and south with a little late help from Ireland
came together under the banner of the Congress of Regional and Local Authorities of Europe to create the
European Landscape Convention.
A central part of the process in Ireland involved a National Landscape Forum. The very first such gathering
on Mid-Summers Day, 1995 heard about the French Photographic Observatory from Mansil Miller (Mansil is
from Northern Ireland and had worked on secondment in France). I subsequently attended a seminar on the
observatory in Belfast in 1996 and with the generous assistance of Caroline Stefulesco, Isabelle Paulvé and the
Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie of Paris we brought an exhibition of the Observatory to the 1997 National
Landscape Forum in Maynooth.
Landscape images have been central to the activities of Landscape Alliance Ireland from the beginning and the
French Photographic Observatory was a particularly rich addition to the panorama and provided the inspiration
for the integration of such an observatory into the Landscape Circle Study Guide.
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Maple Lawn Green, Ballincollig 1997
Maple Lawn Green, Ballincollig 2008
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The Landscape Circle Observatory is intended to feature a portfolio of current images, followed by time frame
images using the same scene replicated as accurately as possible each year or every few years to illustrate
change over recent times. My book features comparisons between scenes in Ballincollig Co. Cork in 1997 and
2008. The final section of the Observatory might feature older images (paintings, drawings, postcards and
photographs) replicated today.
Main Street, Ballincollig 1997
Main street, Ballincollig, 2008
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Step 4 – Information Gathering
This requires desk-study & groundwork involving the identification and listing of the elements of the landscape
within the circle as good, bad, old, new, common, rare, iconic or even missing! Patterns, linkages & composition
are also relevant. Bearing Step 5 in mind will save time.
Stone Walls 1, Rathbarry Landscape Circle
Stone walls 2, Rathbarry Landscape Circle
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Step 5 – Evaluating & Prioritising
The LANSWOT Analysis
The elements identified in Step 4 are categorised & prioritised as Landscape Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats
It is important to realise that landscape elements may be all four at the same time.
For example the unique stone walls in the Rathbarry Landscape Circle are landscape strengths, interventions
can be inappropriate in material used and construction style giving rise to a landscape threat.
Barracks Square, Ballincollig, Cork, – former army barracks converted to offices
Step 6 – Identifying the Actors & Actions
This step transforms the study into an action plan. Here is a brief listing of the typical actors and actions.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Yourself
Your Neighbours
Developers
Local Authorities
Government
Government Departments
Government Agencies
The EU
- Lead by Example!
- Advise diplomatically?
- Engage with or Object!
- Engage with or Protest!
- Lobby or Vote out!
- Engage with or Lobby!
- Engage with or Lobby!
- Lobby, Address or Petition?
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Step 7 – The Landscape Circle Outputs
Depending on the energy and resources of the study team the outputs from a landscape circle study are potentially
very far-reaching and could include:
• The Landscape Circle Study Report
• Questionnaires
• Exhibitions
• Booklets
• Video/DVDs
• Web Sites
• Talking Landscape
• Providing Advice
• Participation in consultation processes
• Intervening in the planning process
• Lobbying politicians
• Legal Action
• Interacting with fellow Landscape Circle exponents
• Influencing policies, strategies and instruments
Workshops & Facilitators-Worthwhile Investments!
Workshops though not essential are likely to support and improve the process and the value, quality, uniformity
and objectivity of the reports produced.
Having facilitators will assist in ensuring a reasonable degree of consistency between different study reports
& reduce problems with communication. Facilitators may be trained members of the communities involved.
The Firkin Crane, Cork City
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The Landscape Circle Guide Strengths?
It is easy to comprehend and use with early hands-on involvement. It ensures community ownership and
engagement through reading, learning, experiencing, evaluating and managing their landscape; addressing
the macro and micro landscape; understanding landscape actions & actors and most importantly influencing
landscape policies. It is a local landscape process that leads to a product that is a dynamic process in itself!
Conclusion
John Feehan, a landscape giant on my shoulder wrote the following in his exceptional local landscape book
Laois – ‘An Environmental History’ (1983):
“The landscape is an open book. From an educational viewpoint it is a resource book of incomparable richness,
though we have been accustomed to consult only a few pages. It belongs to all of us, and it cannot survive
unless all of us care, because particular pages are in the keeping of individuals who may not understand what
they possess.”
I hope that my little guide will help to open the book of the landscape for citizens and communities not alone
in Ireland, but possibly in France and elsewhere in Europe.
The ‘Landscape Circle Study Guide is available from LAI – cost of € 15.00 incl P&P
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Conclusions
Vincent Piveteau, representative of the Minister of State,
Minister of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development
and Land Management
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to express heartfelt thanks on behalf of Hubert Falco, secretary of state responsible for land
management under Jean-Louis Borloo, who unfortunately couldn’t be with us today. Thank you for your speeches
and the discussions that have been so important throughout these two days of work.
I have heard about this from organisers, the director general of development in housing and nature,
Mr Jean-Marc Michel and his teams (Catherine Bergeal and Jean-François Seguin in particular). I would say that
I have unfortunately only heard of it, but I can fortunately reassure myself by reminding myself and you that
the proceedings will be published soon so that we can all have a written reminder of what was learned at this
conference to study and to share with others later.
On behalf of Hubert Falco, I would like to share with you today two convictions, the first one being a general
observation and the second concerning operations.
The first conviction is that we must place the question of landscape at the heart of public action. Because the
landscape unites people at the same time it poses important questions.
The Grenelle Environmental Forum led to deep-reaching transformations in the fields of construction, transport,
agriculture, energy and resource and land management.
What is important, what in fact made the Grenelle such a success is a coming together of these various policies.
This coming together has come about through a territory-centred approach. And the primary, basic dimension
of territory is something physical, it is our landscapes.
And so your conference has just set begun the plan that will focus very adamantly on landscape, as the secretary
of state responsible for ecology, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Hubert Falco, secretary of state responsible
for territory development will launch the National landscape council next week, with the goal of advising
the Minister responsible for landscape.
The second conviction is of a more operational nature.
I would like to say that your collective intuition has been right and your work has shown results: the photography
project is a tool that will allow or at the very least encourage every leader to participate in this coming together
of public and collective works.
It seems that no situation has escaped the photographers’ lens. The proof that they have provided will play an
important role in helping us realise the questions and problems facing urban or rural areas, blighted or preserved
land and remarkable or the most everyday areas.
Several tools were presented and discussed. The photographic landscape observatory is not the only tool to
understand the places we live, but it is ONE of many excellent tools. Re-photographing sites is clearly making
a choice to monitor the transformation of a landscape.
The transformation of landscapes is also part of our heritage, on the condition that it some record of the change
is made. The photographic landscape observatory is a priceless archive of the landscape, as noted by historian
Alain Corbin. It is created little by little as the record grows over time in photos and hard drives.
And this is what today justifies this process being continued and extended in the future.
And one of the observations that was made during this conference is the fact that we are dealing with a process
that is alive. Publishing the methods of the photographic landscape observatory in a clear, specific document
will encourage other such initiatives. But it is not a set of restrictions; it is a tool to help us move forward our
reflections on the matter.
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Conclusions
Taking up new programmes in cooperation with government and using the collection for scientific purposes
must remain priorities. On the latter point, the MEEDDAT’s next call for research proposals will be closely linked.
Moreover, I would like to remind everyone that the data from the Photographic landscape observatory is
included as an integral part of the information system on nature and landscape. This way, they can be used
in conjunction with other information about landscapes.
Changing our habits, the way we live, travel and consume takes on meaning or seems meaningless when
it is understood in relation to the landscape (meaning and meaninglessness in the three points evoked by the
terms: significance, direction and sensitivity).
In that respect, the title of your conference is too modest by far. The initial goal and what has indeed come
out of your discussions is not merely that “photographic observation [is] at the service of landscape policies”
but that “photographic landscape observation serves public policy”.
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ADDITIONAL
CONTRIBUTIONS
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Additional Contributions - Photography and how it Prompts Discussion about Motorway Landscapes
Photography and how it Prompts Discussion
about Motorway Landscapes
Jitka Tomsova, doctoral student
Jitka Tomsova is a doctoral student at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles,
(ENSP, 10 Rue Mal-Joffre, 78000 Versailles) and at the Landscape Architecture Department,
Mendel University, Brno, Czech Republic
Valtická 337, 69144 Lednice, Czech Republic / jita.toms@gmail.com
For my thesis on motorway landscapes in France and the Czech Republic, I am comparing concepts and practices
in terms of how the landscape is taken into consideration in motorway construction in a Western European
country and a post-Communist, central European country. I used a survey with photographs as an auxiliary tool
to better understand the social context and the problems associated with motorway landscapes and to learn
about and confront the Czech and French populations’ perception of motorway landscapes.
Questions
For the portion of my work concerned with landscaping, I needed to have an understanding of people’s
points of view on motorways and landscapes in the two countries in question. It was, in particular, important to
understand the publics’ opinions of real situations. I asked myself the following questions: If these two populations
see the same motorway landscape, what would their reactions be? What would they observe specifically?
Would there be a relationship between opinions and nationality?
Method and goals
The goal of this survey is to bring about a debate on motorway landscapes and cause people to reflect on it in
order to have a spectrum of opinions and also to discover the diversity of people’s perceptions about motorway
landscapes. For these reasons I relied on a surveying method that uses photographs representing the various
landscapes that we may be faced with on motorways. The photographs are a medium to inspire a reflection
on motorway landscapes.
This survey method using images has been used by Pierre Donadieu and Alain Fraval (1995), with the goal of
demonstrating agriculturalists’ perception of agricultural landscapes1.
The survey was developed using a series of 26 photos. It is a qualitative method: fewer people are interviewed,
and they give more complete answers than with quantitative methods. The subjects are invited to select and
comment freely on about ten photos without having received any information about the image. The subjects
are not limited in their comments by having to answer a specific question.
The surveys were distributed in printed form and via e-mail at the same time in the Czech Republic and in
France. The participants were chosen based on age, profession and nationality.
Choice of photographs
The photographs were chosen from photos taken in the Czech Republic and in France and used as part of
my thesis. They represent a sampling of motorway landscapes. Some images are from various books or
publications on the subjects of landscapes and motorways, with different points of view on and proposed
solutions to the question. We wanted to compare their conclusions with the public’s opinions. The photos
selected were intended to present the diversity of motorway landscapes that can be seen: from different scales
(from the aerial view to the user’s view), different types of landscapes (plains, mountains) different types of
terrain and layout (embankments, fill-dirt) and various motorway designs like overpasses (seen from the user’s
and the resident’s pint of view), rest areas as well as different urban areas along the motorways and various
advertising billboards (found particularly in the Czech motorway landscapes) and finally, different iconic sites
(the Millau Viaduct, for example).
1 Donadieu,
P. –Fraval, A. Des agronomes devant des paysages agricoles. (Agriculturalists and agricultural landscapes). Paysage et Aménagement no. 33, 1995/1996. P.19-33
159
Examples of photos and comments
Note: Nº = subject number; (Fr,22)= nationality (FR – French, Tch – Czech) ; subject’s age
Photo source: fig. 1, 2 Jitka Tomsová, 2006; fig. 3, 4 Jitka Tomsová, 2007
Fig. 1: This makes me think that we are giving up a lot of space that is
occupied by motorways. These spaces are like military zones or nuclear
waste dumps: they are places that are lost to people. Anybody who
has hitchhiked or walked alongside a motorway knows that. No. 41
(Tch, 24)
The area along the roadside is badly managed. No. 34 (Fr, 25)
This looks like a country road, if it were not any busier than a small
road, it could be a nice drive. No. 1 (Fr, 23).
Fig. 2 Make a virtue of necessity. These spaces should have more to
offer. No. 9 (Tch, 23)
An unpleasant reststop. No. 3 (Tch, 55)
I often find motorway rest stops very unwelcoming (with a few
exceptions), you never have the feeling that you’re seeing anything
beyond the road. No. 33 (Fr, 22).
Fig. 3. Useful, but not very pleasant… It happens all the time. No. 34
(Fr, 25)
Industrial landscapes, they depersonalise landscapes like petrol stations. No. 37 (Fr, 24)
It’s bad, all these industrial parks and storage buildings along motorways. No. 12 (Tch, 27)
Fig. 4. Visual pollution. I hate it! I’m more accepting of advertising in
urban landscapes. No. 27 (Fr, 56).
Advertising gives you something to look at on a regular journey; in
small doses, it doesn’t bother me. No. 2 (Tch, 56)
I have a hard time knowing where I stand on these images; I don’t
really know what to think about advertising on the roadside. It reminds
me that we are prisoners of a society of consumption. I think that advertising like this is in some ways a blemish on the landscape. No. 31
(Fr, 24)
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Additional Contributions - Photography and how it Prompts Discussion about Motorway Landscapes
Results
At this time, the first round of surveying has been carried out. It served to test the method and allowed us to
make corrections to it. 41 subjects have already participated, 25 of them in the Czech Republic and 16 in France.
Initial analyses have been done with the aim of highlighting the diversity and complexity of the viewpoints
and the possible relationship between the subjects’ opinions and their nationality.
Conclusions
- This provided a rich palette of viewpoints and personal references. The results indicate major trends in the
perception of motorway landscapes in these two societies and they provide indications on possible conflict
within the question of motorway landscapes. This could inspire more in-depth sociological research.
- The images served as a medium to set forth a problem, not simply to represent the situation as it is captured
in the frozen image of a snapshot. The subjects’ reflections go beyond the situation as it is shown in the frame
of the snapshot. The subject reveals his/her own experiences and associations in the comments.
- The results indicate that the question of the perception of motorway landscapes is more complex than
a simplified notion of “I like/I don’t like motorways” or “I’m for/I’m against” the construction of motorways.
The contextualisation of the question plays a significant role in a person’s opinion.
- There is nothing to indicate clearly that their nationality influences people’s opinions. Despite this,
we do note some trends among the Czechs and the French, for example: among the French subjects, bucolic
Impressionistic scenes were more popular. As for the Czechs interviewed, they are more drawn to so-called
(by the subjects) everyday landscapes or landscapes that pique their curiosity vis-à-vis technical problems.
We noted that the two groups are equally divided in their criticism of the growth of commercial constructions
alongside motorways and about advertising and its impact on the landscape.
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Landscape Transformations in Majorca (1904 - 2008)
Jaume Gual Carbonell, Photographer and Geographer
Marti Rubi, 30 – Apt 181 / 07141. Marratxi / Mallorca - Spain
jaume@jaumegual.com / www.jaumegual.com
My project is based on a collection of drawings of landscapes on the island of Majorca made by Rafael de
Ysasi2 at the beginning of the 20th century. The collection includes more than 300 drawings, all drawn with
extreme attention to detail, that depict all the zones on the island: the coast, the interior, the mountains, ports,
villages, etc. I plan to select roughly 100 of them and take photos of the same landscapes today, a hundred
years later.
I discovered this artwork in December 2007 when an order was placed with the Museum of Majorca
to reproduce a selection of the drawings. At that time I was publishing a new edition of a book of photos taken
of shop fronts in Palma in two series: the original facades photographed between 1983 and 1985 and photos
from 2007 showing the dramatic changes that had taken place with these facades over the course of nearly
25 years. I should note that 85% of the shops had disappeared and a large portion of the ones that remained
had been changed significantly and depersonalised. We sold all the copies of the book in two months and
the exhibition of the photographs (before/after photos of the facades) was really well received by the public.
This showed me how important the places people live in are for them, and it made me consider how we could
document our lives, our environment and the everyday landscapes around us.
Majorca experienced an urbanisation beyond all measure over the past 60 years. The arrival of mass tourism
radically altered the environment on the island. The economic changes had a huge impact on the land and on
the relationship that residents and visitors have with the land.
All of a sudden, Ysasi’s drawings were there, showing me an unknown Majorca, well before the phenomenon
of tourism and of course, before globalisation. That was when I began to think about the idea of creating
a landscape documentary centre that would include all kinds of graphic representations of the island throughout
history (cartography, painting, drawing, engraving, photography). All of the material would be scanned,
catalogued and entered in a database. Along with this, series of photographs would be constituted from these
documents showing the changes in the landscape. At the same time, we would need to work to photograph
and document the areas that would develop quickly.
This would allow us to constitute an archive of the land that would be available to researchers in all fields,
biology, history, geography, and even urbanism and architecture. Most importantly, this material would serve to
create awareness-raising projects about landscape. The vision we have of landscape and a comparison with the
landscape we have currently will surely lead us to consider what sort of landscape we want for the future.
These are the ideas that Ysasi’s drawings gave me. So I requested authorisation from the Majorca Museum to
use a dozen or so of these drawings as a reference to begin outlining my project. During the month of August
2008, I located and photographed the places that Ysasi had drawn a hundred years before. With these photographs, I could begin to present my work and seek funding for my project.
2
Rafael de Ysasi Ransome (? - 1948), army colonel, archeological researcher on assignment. His skill as an artist meant he produced a significant amount of graphic material
that today has enormous documentary value.
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Additional Contributions - Landscape Transformations in Majorca (1904-2008)
Some information concerning the work process
First, I would like to point out certain characteristics of the drawings that make them particularly interesting
for this project:
- Painstaking attention to detail in the way they are drawn.
- The drawings contain abundant information on place names and the topography.
- They are all dated.
- For the most part, the place the artist stood to draw them is noted.
All of this makes finding the places today much easier. However, sometimes it is impossible to determine
the exact location the image was made from because the process of urban colonisation of the land has changed
everything, sometimes the slope of the mountain where Ysasi was able to create his image has disappeared or
the site is now occupied by buildings and it is impossible to respect the exact original framing. In these cases,
I attempted to find the closest possible framing to that of the drawing that would also allow me to show the
landscape. Because what is important is to see how the landscape has evolved in general rather than to show
the 15 metre-high wall that now stands in front of the exact spot where the artist stood to make his drawings.
For this reason, the drawing and the photograph can’t always be superimposed exactly, but they are close
enough to allow us to appreciate the drastic changes that have occurred in the 100 years that have passed
since the first image was made.
Naturally, there was some documentation research work to prepare for finding the viewpoints in the field.
For this I used the information available from the SITIBSA (land information services for the Balearic Islands),
the national topographical map of Spain (1:25000), the toponymic corpus of Majorca along with the general
map of Majorca by J. Mascaró Pasarius, as well as Google Earth and Google Maps.
In the field I used a copy of the original drawings and all the references I was able to obtain from cartographic
and aerial photographic analysis.
The photographs were taken using digital camera: 16 Mp Canon EOS 1 DS Mark II.
Once I had found the site of the viewpoint, I took the coordinates using a GPS and located the place on the
map. I then set the camera on a tripod and took the photo(s) necessary, multiple photos particularly if it was
a panoramic view.
Back in the workshop, I downloaded the photos to a computer, and for the panoramas I made a montage with
The Panorama Factory programme.
Once I have documented the reference for the image, it remains filed and ready to be analysed.
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A few examples from the drawing-photograph series
These are some of the images I worked with and that I think clearly show the value of the project.
From the Cap Gros lighthouse (Sóller). Drawing dated 25 March 1915.
From the Cap Gros lighthouse (Sóller). August 2008.
Port of Sóller (Sóller). Drawing dated 15 April 1915.
Port of Sóller (Sóller). August 2008.
Coordinates: N 39º 47’ 49’’/ E 2º 40’ 55’’
From Ca l’Ardiaca (Palma). Drawing dated 22 July 1911.
From Ca l’Ardiaca (Palma). August 2008.
Coordinates: N 39º 35’ 38’’ / E 2º 38’ 31’’
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Additional Contributions - Landscape Transformations in Majorca (1904-2008)
Son Vent from Cas Català (Palma). Drawing dated 14 August 1911.
Son Vent from Cas Català (Palma). August 2008.
Paguera Beach (Calvià). Undated drawing.
Paguera Beach (Calvià). August 2008.
La Porrassa (Calvià). Drawing dated 13 September 1913.
La Porrassa (Calvià). August 2008.
From El Caragol, Génova (Palma). Drawing dated 31 December 1916.
From El Caragol, Génova (Palma). August 2008.
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The Landscape Photographic Observatory in Savoie
Jean-Pierre Petit of the CAUE of Savoie
Head of Photographic Landscape Observatory of Savoie
Council for Architecture, Urbanism and the Environment of Savoie
2, rue de la Trésorerie BP 1802 73018 CHAMBERY / Tel: +33(0)4.79.60.75.52 / mobile: +33(0)6.81.04.93.83
jppetit@ymail.com / caue.savoie@libertysurf.fr
The O.P.P.S. (Observatoire photographique de paysages de Savoie, Photographic Landscape Observatory of Savoie)
was founded based on the European Florence Convention particularly on the protocol concerning monitoring
of landscape transformation, as well as the Observatoire photographique national du paysage (OPNP, National
Photographic Landscape Observatory). Its aim is to support increased knowledge of the subject and local policies
in the field.
The OPPS was born 14 November 2007, an initiative of the CAUE of Savoie (Council for Architecture, Urbanism
and Environment) with the support of the DIREN Rhône-Alpes, with the aim of constituting a distinct unit that
can be integrated in a future multidisciplinary observatory (geography, sociology, urbanism, aesthetics, etc.)
and in addition to the usual functions of presentation, monitoring, serving as memory, teaching or policy
evaluation also has the ambitious aims of carrying out research and experiments on new “ways” of seeing.
In the meantime, the OPPS is getting its start by producing:
- Fifty series of digital photos, new shots to be taken every year;
- Five reports on major development operations;
- A collection of photos, for any useful purposes, from the preliminary research.
It is directed by three authorities:
A steering committee, making decisions on orientation and actions, made up of three members:
- The CAUE of Savoy (Chairman and events)
- DIREN (co-financer and representative of the OPNP)
- Local government (representing the local region’s landscape policy)
A limited consulting group, called upon to critique the observation principles, includes:
- The steering committee
- Three landscape specialists:
Photographer: Béatrix VON CONTA
Landscape architect: Marc CLARAMUNT
Historian: Jean-Pierre LE DANTEC
An expanded consulting group, not yet made up, intended to critique the utility of the observatory,
which could include the following bodies:
- the limited consulting group
- the regional government monitoring centres (CG73, DDE, DDAF, ONF, SDAP, CDPNS, etc.)
- local GIS and observatories (national and regional parks, Landscape charter areas, etc.)
- Occasional guest members (landscape consultants, conservationists, others)
After defining the objectives and the method on 10 December 2007 and having gone over three quarters of
the regional territory during the season in 2008, the OPPS currently has a stock of about 8,000 digital photos
(12 Mp) that are currently being indexed.
In 2009, the Observatory will finish a systematic registering of the territory, and the limited consulting group
will select a batch of some hundred shots from which the extended consulting group will select the 50 photos
to be shot again regularly.
More than simply illustrating the changes in landscapes or previously noted problems, the OPPS will be attentive
to any transformations in terms of topology and semiology, even informal or natural ones, in keeping with an
intuitive and rational method that is at once holistic and analytical.
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The selection criteria for the images should be geographic and ecological as well as cultural in order to observe the
viewpoint as much as the territory. The OPPS will attempt to observe, among other things, signs of artialisation,
identification (between tradition and modernity) and appropriation (between owners, figures who are involved
and consumers).
This reflection, which we hope will act as a visual aid alongside landscape policies that typically intervene on
site, intends to raise the general public’s opinion of landscapes by revealing everyday, emerging, damaged or
remarkable but unknown landscapes and the process of their transformation.
Photo by Jean-Pierre Petit (CAUE)
Aix Nord 1: “Area undergoing intense structural changes (destruction of the two tall buildings) to create an eco-neighbourhood”
Photo by Jean-Pierre Petit (CAUE)
Bauges 2: “3 fields for observation that are likely to change due to the land and property market, decrease in agricultural livelihoods and
global warming: 1st field, the rurban model, 2nd field maintaining fields and meadows, last field, limited high mountain pasture”
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The Observatoire Photographique du Paysage
Experience in Haute Vallée de Chevreuse
Laurence Renard, park employee
Parc Naturel Régional de la Haute Vallée de Chevreuse /Atelier d’Architecture, d’Urbanisme et du Paysage
Laurence RENARD, Landscaper / Maison du Parc / 78 472 CHEVREUSE cedex
Tel : 01 39 56 78 48 / Fax : 01 39 56 78 47 / paysage.pnr.chevreuse@wanadoo.fr
Expectations in 1997
In 1993 the Ministry of the Environment entrusted the Federation of regional nature parks with a mission:
to determine how the landscape law would be applied in regional nature parks (PNR, parcs naturels régionaux).
The Federation therefore undertook, among other things, an experimental programme to set up Photographic
Landscape Observatories. Five parks volunteered, including the PNR of the Haute Vallée de Chevreuse
in 1995.
The Haute Vallée de Chevreuse park was created in 1985 south of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and included
21 villages and towns. Some 10 years later, local officials and park employees hoped that the observatory
would allow them to take stock of the changes in the land and measure the effects of the policy on the park.
For this reason, a monitoring committee made up of local officials, park employees, partners and volunteer
organisations was created. In their meetings, they identified the problems and issues that the photographer
Gérard Dalla Santa would address:
Changes from rural land to a
residential garden, rurbanisation.
Valley bottoms being enclosed,
prairies abandoned.
Loss of trees found regularly
across plains
Changes in infrastructure
Changes in agriculture, commerce
and small craft workshops
The future of important domains
and chateaux.
Photographs: Gérard Dalla Santa
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The monitoring committee and the photographer held extremely fruitful discussions on how different people
conceive of the park’s landscapes. After the photographer scouted landscapes and made proposals for two
years, the committee chose 40 shots which have been photographed every two years since then; 60 shots have
not been repeated. The photographer originally proposed 41 additional shots.
10 years of photographs
The park quickly noted that taking 40 new shots again every year didn’t provide a record of enough change
between two years. It was proposed that only half of them be repeated every year.
During these 10 years, the work has principally consisted of determining with Gérard Dalla Santa which shots
would be taken again and organising the storage and collecting of the photos. The prints have been organised
in folders to make them easier to consult. All the various information about the shots has been recorded:
the geographic coordinates, a description of the landscape photographed and a list of what the photos have
been used for (exhibits, publications, etc.)
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At various occasions the collection of photos have been needed: the exhibition “Regards croisés sur le paysage”
(“Looking across the landscape) in 2000 (350 visitors), the national exhibition “Chers paysages”
(“Priceless landscapes”) in 2003 (9 series exhibited), used in the study done in 2003 on the storm of 1999,
summary method in the “Savoir Faire et Faire Savoir” information sheet (“Knowing how to do it and showing
it”) for Paris-area parks in 2006, presentation of some shots in the exhibition “Couleurs du Parc” (“The Park’s
Colours”) in 2007 (415 visitors).
468 photos and then what?
After financing the re-shoots of photos for 10 years, park elected officials expressed some dissatisfaction with
this tool because of the lack of communication concerning the results obtained, which can be explained by the
vacancy in the landscaper position on the park’s rolls. This led them to question the partnership with a professional
photographer. It was time that an analysis be made and the results presented to everyone.
The analysis.
The first step consisted of gathering the local officials’ and employees’ questions about the past 10 years
of work:
- What do these series of photographs show?
- How should the photos be analysed?
- How should the work be shared with the public?
- Should we continue to work with a professional photographer?
- Should we reconsider the 40 shots selected?
- Should we use the 60 shots that were set aside?
- Should the observatory be enlarged to include the new extended limits of the park?
Eight Master’s students in History and cultural heritage management participated in a workshop and polled the
opinions of the photographer, the local officials and park employees on the origin of the shots, their evolution,
the new problems being faced and proposals for development.
This discussion revealed the difficulty of interpreting changes in the landscape using these photographs. Firstly, the
photo format imposes a cropping of the view of the surrounding environment that can lead to false interpretations.
Then, they point to the way they are included in the public or private land that should not be criticised without
more information.
Following this workshop, the decision was made to create documents to facilitate the understanding of each
series. A colour code allows people to understand the elements and landscape structures in the original photo.
A view cone that shows the photo’s angle was included on an aerial photo in order to provide context. A short text
now describes how the choice was made when the point of view for the photo was originally selected. Another
text comments on the changes that can be seen in subsequent shots.
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Communication
It was important that these 468 photos be used and quickly, beginning with all of the park employees who
had only rarely consulted the collection. Viewing them again was a chance for the team to rediscover this tool
and include it in their work. They made proposals, including putting the shots regularly taken over the past
10 years on the park’s internet site and creating an exhibition for the European Heritage Days that would then be
open all autumn. This medium brings together landscape, culture, heritage, urbanism, agriculture, architecture
and environmental concerns, among other things, and supports transversal approaches that encourage widereaching projects.
In this vein, in less than a year, the observatory has put information on line with a geographical indicator giving
the photo locations on the map of the park along with illustrations and explanations. This interactive page is
intended for the general public and makes the entire collection available.
http://www.parc-naturel-chevreuse.fr/observatoire.php
The park’s residents and people in surrounding areas have made it a habit to visit the various sites, like
the mill at moulin d’Ors in Châteaufort in celebration of European Heritage Days. The theme for 2008,
Heritage and creation, was the perfect opportunity to have an exhibition of this work from an artistic perspective,
the work of an artist-photographer and his view on the heritage represented by the park’s landscapes.
700 visitors enjoyed the exhibition of the six series of photos, the observatory’s information being shared on
line and an outdoor exhibition of a selection of the photos showing the landscapes in the 21 towns and villages
within the park.
Exhibition “Un regard sur les paysages“(“A look at landscapes”) at the mill in moulin d’Ors in Châteaufort, autumn 2008
171
All of these supports needed to include two teaching posters and workshops for children.
What we learned from this experience is that the subject interests the public but there must also be an
increased educational component.
Teaching poster and children’s workshop in conjunction with the “A look at landscapes” exhibition.
During the two months following European Heritage Day, the exhibition was open to school groups of varying
ages. These visits revealed the teaching potential that these images have as an illustration of our abstract ideas
about the population’s abandoning agricultural activity, the closing of landscapes, etc.
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Questionnaire for children and school groups visiting the photographic observatory.
In other uses, some of the observatory’s photos have been included in the park’s Baladio’guides (palmtop
computer with GPS for hiking without a map) and were featured in the article “Past uses, ideas for the future,
how do we preserve while still allowing change?” in the Echo du Parc magazine.
A year of activities
All of the activities carried out in 2008 required a human and financial investment:
Activities in 2008
32 days of work by a project manager in the park
Printing of teaching posters and photographs and extending the internet site
20 photos repeated during the spring 2008 session
Communications for the European Heritage Days and the programme in autumn,
10,000 copies (promoting the photographic exhibitions of landscape and contemporary
architecture, art installations in the landscape and in churches, poets in residence and
Medieval demonstrations)
Total for the year 2008
9 440 €
2 515 €
3 650 €
1 700 €
17 305 €
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Together, these informative documents, meetings and workshops helped shape answers to the questions
raised about the tool at the beginning of the year.
- What do these series of photographs show?
Several meetings with the photographer, an analysis of the archives and looking at the shots made it possible
to propose an initial analysis of the changes in each series. However, deeper analysis to examine the historical
context of each change still needs to be carried out.
- How should the photos be analysed?
The first thing to do was poll the people who originated the idea of the observatory, then the re-photographed
shots were carefully analysed. A method that would include comparisons between the field and the photographs
by the figures who know the landscape still needs to be developed.
- How should the work be shared with the public?
The experience of the past year brought answers to this question: the photos should be provided to the park staff
on a CD, and we need to inform the public who has already been made aware of the question at the Heritage
days via the photo exhibition and informative posters; inform the general public on the park’s internet site and
use workshops, questionnaires and guided visits to educate children. Inform local government officials through
the “A look at landscapes” exhibition; a presentation to a commission still needs to be organised.
- Should we continue to work with a professional photographer?
Discussions with the photographer made it clear how important the framing of the shots is to illustrate
the theme. It is of the utmost importance to understand that these photos are not intended as illustrations of
the landscape in the region, they serve to show the changes in it. Someone with an outside point of view is
more detached from clichés about the landscape and can provide a more objective vision of what constitutes
the landscapes of today. The skills of a professional photographer, when choosing the original points of view,
seem absolutely necessary.
But the question also concerns the necessity of having someone with artistic skill take the later shots,
which, given the framework of the ministry’s methods are very strictly controlled – the same framing, same
season, same photography techniques. But here again, during our discussions the photographer pointed out
the importance of lighting that can make or break the “image”. Light, colour, shadow, the contour of shapes,
depth and ambiance are all such a part of how the landscape is perceived that only an artist can effectively
capture all these elements.
Moreover, comparing the costs of a professional photographer and the costs for the same work done in-house
doesn’t seem to show a major difference:
Professional photographer
Photographer’s services, including
copyright, travel expenses,
scanned and printed photos
Total
In-house work
3 650 € Employee’s salary for 5 days
of shooting photos
Travel expenses
Film, development, scanned
and printed photos
Costs of investing in
photography material
3 650 € Total
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1 475 €
60 €
1 450 €
Not
calculated
2 985 €
It should be noted also that the park signed a contract with the photographer and with the national government
via the Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Land Management that set the financing for
the project. The ministry and the park co-finance the project, each covering €3,650 every other year.
- Should we reconsider the 40 shots selected?
This question was not raised. We will need to make an evaluation with the photographer, the employees
involved, elected officials and organisations.
- Should we use the 60 shots that were set aside?
21 photographs from the ones set aside were exhibited during the European heritage days in the autumn.
This collection of photos is truly a rich resource that depicts the various landscapes in the area and constitutes
a body of reference for contemporary landscapes that should be shared.
- Should the observatory be enlarged to include the extended limits of the park?
This point was not discussed much, but it did seem important to take advantage of the park’s enlargement
(from 21 to 77 towns) to raise profound questions about the future of this tool.
The analysis should continue
At present, the initial analysis of the photos needs to be supplemented with other opinions that are not limited
to the field of landscape.
Simply looking at the photos has proven to be insufficient to understanding the reasons for the changes seen.
Gathering information in the field, analysing archives of photos and aerial photos from the French national
geographic institute (IGN) and polling local figures all needs to be done in a more than superficial manner.
In order to do that, a master’s student in geography studying Society and Technical Environmental Mediums
in Paris, Juliette Berny will begin a study shortly on 10 of the observatory’s series to measure the influence of
agriculture on landscapes.
During discussions park employees suggested ethnological approaches that would involve local residents such
as requesting old post cards from the region to make copies of them, studies with photographer about the
subjects’ favourite landscapes, surveying elderly residents to depict what the landscape was like in the past
with the help of an illustrator, and other ideas.
The work should continue to be shared with the public
The exhibition from the heritage days should continue in each town hall within the park by giving them
the photograph taken in their community along with an informative poster for display.
A series of propositions came out of various discussions with students, elected officials, the photographer
and park employees: marking a walking path between some of the observatory’s points of view with
information concerning them available in the tourism office, organised walks to read the landscape based on the
observatory’s work, events to raise residents’ awareness about the landscape through the observatory’s work,
a photography contest, etc.
A long-term investment
The photographic landscape observatory requires an important time investment at the beginning when it is
necessary to determine the goals and select the shots to be included in the series that will be shot again.
But the landscape changes on a timeline somewhere between Nature’s and our own and so we must be patient
if we want to see what the photographs can show us about these changes.
As we wait for clear results, it is up to the park employees to maintain motivation about the project.
We will not be able to carry out a major analysis and communications project until after 8 to 10 years;
during this time, the photos will need to be taken regularly for all 40 shots. This is a long-term investment of
both money and time that will not show results until some 8 to 10 years on.
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The Landscape Photographic Observatory
in Vanoise
Patrick Folliet of the Vanoise National Park
135 rue du docteur Julliand / BP 705 /F 73007 Chambéry cedex
phototheque@parcnational-vanoise.fr
http://phototheque.parcnational-vanoise.fr
http://observatoiredespaysages.parcnational-vanoise.fr
Photography and the Vanoise National Park
Many of the staff of the Vanoise National Park (Parc national de la Vanoise, PNV) have always been photography
enthusiasts, and the park itself has always included photography in many areas and for many uses: publications,
exhibitions, events (slide shows) and now in multimedia format via the internet.
While there are unfortunately few archival photographs from the early years after the park’s creation (1963),
photography has become an organised, professional pursuit, beginning in 1985. This was firmly put in place
with a “photo policy”, which set down:
- an in-house team of photographers: photo workshop,
- a strategy organised around campaigns of themed shots with specific objectives,
- training,
- professional management, with a manager-leader, a photo bank, acquiring equipment for taking and
archiving photos , an annual investment budget to run the programme.
The team of photographers is made up of volunteer employees who agree to fill requests by taking quality
photos that they allow the park to use. The team has varied, depending on staff size, from 12 to 15 members,
rangers for the most part.
The advantage of having an in-house team is that they know the area very well and are constantly on site,
so they have many more opportunities to take photos when something special happens, when the light is just
right, etc.
The national park’s photo bank is eclectic and covers many subjects in order to be able to meet whatever
the PNV’s photo needs might be. In the spring of 2009, it included more than 40,000 photographs, 13,000 of
which are available online at the extranet site: http://phototheque.parcnational-vanoise.fr
The ranger photographers of the PNV, who, as they regularly took photos in the mountains were the first
to notice changes in the landscape, shared this information, causing everyone to realise how important it is
to preserve a visual memory of landscapes in the Vanoise. One of the most striking changes in the mountains
in the Vanoise is the glaciers that have shrunk significantly between the time the PNV was created and today.
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Additional Contributions - The Landscape Photographic Observatory in Vanoise
The development programme 2003-2009
So with this preservation intention and this know-how, a project was developed to create a photographic
observatory of landscapes in the Vanoise (observatoire photographique des paysages de Vanoise, OPPV)
and included in the PNV’s Development programme 2003-2009.
The guidance document includes a large chapter on the idea of the “character of the national park”.
In the original law creating the statute of national park (and again in the 2006 law concerning national parks,
natural maritime parks and natural regional parks) and in the decree creating the PNV in 1963, it is noted that
the park has a duty to preserve the national park’s character unaltered (through construction or development).
This idea of conservation supposes that we have determined the status of biodiversity and of the landscape that
we wish to preserve. Preserving the park’s character is not a way of freezing nature and keeping landscapes
from changing (the intention is not to put them behind glass); the purpose is to preserve the identity and the
essence of the land. In other words, the intention is to work with the changes that occur naturally, being careful
to pass it on without changing it, to future generations.
The PNV, taking this point of view, set the goals of highlighting, preserving, and passing on the memory of the
park. And as a way to make this memory of changes in the Vanoise landscape a visible, concrete thing, the use
of old photos compared with the same shot taken today seemed the best idea.
Photography allows you to have relative control over the technical conditions that yield the image when it
is originally taken and also later when it is shot again, allowing us to concentrate on a comparison between
the landscape at two different times and see the changes or what has remained the same in a more
objective way.
Setting up the Photographic landscape observatory in the Vanoise
Work really began in 2005.
We started out knowing that we couldn’t photograph everything, and so we had to make a choice of specific
things and portions of the landscapes to be photographed to correspond to the needs we would determine
beforehand.
As an example, initial consideration allowed us to point out a few criteria for selecting the places and things
to be photographed:
- those that would be affected by programmes or work within the park,
- those that are “inventoried” – buildings within the park, high pasture chalets, noteworthy buildings in the
towns that have signed onto the parks charter, etc.;
- those that are rapidly changing, currently or in the near future (natural or man-made changes);
- those of great interest (to the park or its partners), particularly in terms of the landscape or that are threatened
in the short term by foreseeable damage (from development, possible damaging human activity, etc.).
Preparations for making record of this information were then carried out during team meetings at the PNV.
The steering committee was made up with a careful intention to include several partners, beginning with local
authorities, which are sensitive to changes and the risks of degradation of their landscapes in the context
of tourism based economies.
We drew heavily on the methods used by the National Photographic Landscape Observatory (the OPNP).
In order to be more effective and save time, we worked with Caroline Mollie (landscaper who worked to create
the OPNP) for three years of this initial phase.
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Initial results
The Photographic landscape observatory of the Vanoise is divided up into two sections, prospective and
retrospective, and at the beginning of 2009 the material collected or created included:
- Prospective portion
121 photos taken for the first time in 2006 and 2007 by photographer Beatrix von Conta, 50 of which were
shot again by her in 2008.
The creation of a collection of prospective series evolved through a process of discussions between
the photographer and the steering committee, whose members were able to point to issues related to changes
in the landscapes that are part of their communities: infrastructure, constructions, tourism and leisure, natural
areas, risks, natural habitats, etc. The photographer also met with park rangers in the field. Over two or three
photo taking expeditions over a year, she took shots and regularly updated the steering committee on them.
The selection was made collectively as the photos were presented.
- Retrospective portion
Véronique Riselhueber, an iconographer and document researcher, gathered more than 700 old photos,
300 of which were recreated by members of the PNV’s photography workshop.
The idea here was to collect old images from public and private collections, select the most interesting from
among them with the assistance of the steering committee and photograph these sites again. Particular attention
was paid to collecting images dating from after 1950 because they often show in a very striking way the massive
changes that took place in the past couple of decades.
Beginning in 2009, all the work to recreate photographs from particular viewpoints was carried out entirely by
the park’s photography workshop members. In 2008, they worked as closely as possible with Beatrix von Conta
in the field in an effort to take up where she left off, in a way.
© Parc national de la Vanoise – Patrick Folliet
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In all, some hundred sites will be re-shot, at varying intervals (adjustable as necessary):
- the 50 series in the prospective portion begun by Beatrix von Conta;
- some shots that are “backups” (from the 121 initial photos),
- some images from the retrospective portion, which were deemed to be an important complement to the
panel of themes covered by the prospective portion.
Putting it to use
In 2009, the steering committee moved forward in a major project to put the photos to use. Under the heading
“Seasons of the Landscape 2009” (“Les saisons du paysage 2009”), the PNR invited residents, visitors and
professionals to discover the rich collection of photos taken by the OPPV and to take an interest in the landscapes
of the Vanoise.
On the programme:
- An exhibition “Updated landscapes, images from the Vanoise National Park” (“Paysages à l’heure du jour,
images du Parc national de la Vanoise”) created by Beatrix von Conta from her work for the OPPV.
- An exhibition “Vanoise, Mirrors across time” (“Vanoise, Miroirs du temps”) to show nearly 50 past-present
photo pairs, created with the help of the CAUE of Savoy and the Musée Savoisien (in Chambéry).
- Evening events and informative walks throughout the summer led by national park rangers on the theme of
landscape and their landscapes.
- A landscape seminar will be held in the autumn in the park directed mainly at local decision makers and
elected officials but also professionals working in the landscape.
- A regular article in the regional newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré in which the newspaper has readers consider
a past-present photo pair taken in a town in the Vanoise. The images are presented with the public’s personal
comments about the changes in the landscape.
- Teaching projects with primary schools in the region: children from towns in the area look at their landscapes,
talk about the different elements that make them up and consider how they change. This includes a visit to
the field with PNV rangers and more discussion with them in the classroom.
- In addition, a book of watercolours is being published for another point of view on Vanoise landscapes.
Les saisons du paysage 2009 sont aussi l’occasion de mettre en service le site internet dédié à l’Observatoire
photographique des paysages de Vanoise :
Seasons of the Landscape 2009 is also an opportunity to get the OPPV website up and running:
The purpose of this site (completely separate from the PNV’s photo bank extranet site) is to give the public
access to all of the OPPV’s collection and all photos or information associated with it (geographic coordinates,
descriptions, comments). In addition to that, it was designed so that people can search for points of view with
an interactive map or compare different photos of a site side by side.
What’s next?
The organisation and the work of the OPPV are, all told, fairly close to what the Photographic landscape
observatory recommends and follow their methods closely. Given that, the PNV and its observatory steering
committee have requested official recommendation from the National Photographic landscape observatory.
By becoming part of this network, the observatories will be able to share their experiences and pool their
photo collections in order to use them better.
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Chef-lieu de Peisey-Nancroix – vers 1950
© Édition L. Chevalier
Chef-lieu de Peisey-Nancroix – 2007
© Parc national de la Vanoise – OPP – Régis Jordana
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Town of Villarodin-Bourget and the Maurienne valley – 2007
© Parc national de la Vanoise – OPP – Beatrix von Conta
Town of Villarodin-Bourget and the Maurienne valley – 2008
© Parc national de la Vanoise – OPP – Beatrix von Conta
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Observatoire Photographique du Paysage Viewing
in the Système d’Information Documentaire
de l’Environnement (Environmental Documentary
Information System)
Bruno Rambourg, Head of the study leading to including
the observatory’s collection in SIDE.
Contact :
Rosa CASANY, head of documentation department, CGDD/SoeS
Rosa.casany@developpement-durable.gouv.fr
Brigitte MAGNE, SIDE administrator, CGDD/SoeS
Brigitte.magne@developpement-durable.gouv.fr
First Photographic landscape observatory collection available online
The Environmental Document Information System (Système d’Information de la Documentation Environnementale,
SIDE) portal is intended to provide easy access to all the environmental documents produced or held by the
Ministry of Ecology. Photos and audiovisual documents are valuable, specific work documents that should be
made available via this tool. Digitising and making them available via the web allows the widest possible public
access to the original documents and to analyses of them, thereby promoting better understanding of the
ministry’s public policy.
Since the historic 1851 Heliographic mission, French administrators have commissioned many photographic
works, recognised early in the technology’s development for their importance as a documentary tool, in that
an image is not reduced to the written word. The photographic collection constituted by the Photographic
landscape observatory since 1993 is the continuation of this history. It is therefore quite natural that it should
be presented to the general public as part of the ministry’s work.
The portal provides several ways to consult the collection. By going to “focus on” the Photographic landscape
observatory (in the navigation bar at the top of the screen) visitors can look at the photos in the collections and
at different sub-headings to learn more about them. A simple search for either the name of a photographer who
has worked for the observatory or by town name proposes works sorted by those details (this is appropriate for
those who have some knowledge of the collection). The entire digital collection is thereby directly available on
the internet, and the collection will be added to as the observatory does more work in the future.
In addition to being able to view the entire collection, people can share their opinions or add information about
the images, allowing for more in-depth analysis.
Two goals are achieved by including the photo collection in the SIDE portal: first, to make the public aware of
this essential work by the landscape department and second, to give this documentation life by including it in
a process that encourages participation on the part of portal users.
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Additional Contributors - Observatoire Photographique du Paysage Viewing in the Système d’Information Documentaire
de l’Environnement (Environmental Documentary Information System)
SIDE website : www.SIDE.developpement-durable.gouv.fr
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BRIEF BIOS
& contacts
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Brief Bios & Contacts
A State Architect holding an (Ecole Nationale Supérieure
des Métiers de l’Image et du Son / Sound and Image
School) degree
École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs
(Decorative Arts School) degree.
Villa Médicis Guest in 1991.
Contact :
18 rue de la Sourdière 75 001 Paris / France
Tel. +33 (0)1 42 60 59 29 / jcballot@orange.fr
Catherine Bergeal
Catherine Bergeal is the Deputy Director for Quality of Life
at this Ministry’s Habitat, Town Planning and Landscape
Department. Her department is directly responsible for
land improvement and landscaping policy.
Contact :
French Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Sea
Ministry
92055 La Défense cedex / France
Catherine.bergeal@developpement-durable.gouv.fr
Alain Blondel
Alain Blondel is an art historian and art gallery owner.
It was he who discovered the drawings from Hector
Guimard’s office and deposited them with the Musée
d’Orsay for their permanent collection. He is the author of
the Tamara de Lempicka Catalogue Raisonné. As co-authors,
they exhibited the first two parts of their report at CCI
in 1972 under the title, “L’image du Temps dans le paysage
urbain” (“A reflection of time in the urban landscape”).
In 1994 they published the three parts in “Un siècle passe ...”
(“A century gone by....”). A second edition of this book
was published by Dominique Carré in 2007.
Contact :
Galerie Alain Blondel
128 rue Vieille du Temple 75003 Paris / France
Tel: +33 (0)1 42 78 66 67 ● Fax: +33 (0)1 42 78 47 90
galerie.blondel@wanadoo.fr
Christian Dautel
Christian Dautel is an architect and heads the Ecole Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Angers.
He served as a member of the Ecology Ministry’s scientific
advisory board working on the Politiques Publiques et
Paysage (Public Policy and Landscape) programme from
1998 to 2005 and has served in a similar capacity on the
Paysage et Développement Durable (Landscapes and
Sustainable Development) programme since 2005.
Contact :
École des Beaux-Arts d’Angers
72, rue Bressigny
49100 Angers / France
christian.dautel@ville.angers.fr
Mireille Deconinck
Doctor of Geographical Sciences
Serving with Wallonia Civil Service D.G.O.4
Regional Development Department (D.A.R.) in Namur.
Assistant lecturer at the Free University of Brussels
Faculty of Sciences, Geography Research Unit.
As Walloon Region representative for the Council of Europe’s
European Landscape Convention, Mireille Deconinck
has for several years also been running an information
exchange and alignment platform on the landscape
projects underway in the Walloon Region.
Contact
Mireille Deconinck
Wallonia Civil Service
General Department of Regional Development, Housing,
Heritage and Energy
Regional development and Town Planning Division
Regional Development Department
rue des Brigades d’Espagne 1
5100 JAMBES-NAMUR
Belgium
mireille.deconinck@spw.wallonie.be
185
Françoise Dubost,
sociologist, research director at the CNRS (Centre national
de la recherché scientifique, [French national centre for
scientific research]), associate member of the Edgar Morin
Centre at the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales, Graduate School of social sciences).
Her research ranges from the rural habitat to secondary
residences, from gardens to landscapes and looks at
the ways we, both ordinary people and professionals
specialised in architecture and landscaping, inhabit and
create our environment. She also specialises in heritage
and its recent inclusion of rural and plant heritage.
Contact :
Françoise Dubost
dubost.francoise@free.fr
Pierre Enjelvin & Christian Guy
Considering that landscape photography enables all the
key players of a territory to take a second look at the
practices and the spaces on an everyday basis as well as
at the development projects, Pierre ENJELVIN and Christian
GUY, both photographers who are particularly sensitive
to environmental issues, created the Photographic
Observation Project of the territories of the Massif Central
(OPTMC) in 1999. One of OPTMC’s objectives is to associate
the inhabitants of a territory with their operation by working
from private archives and enabling them to express their
point of view on the transformation of their everyday
landscape.
Pierre ENJELVIN also works on producing tourist guides
for Éditions Chamina publishers and teaches at ITSRA (the
Institute for Social Work in the Auvergne Region) where
he initiated students to experiencing the landscape.
Christian GUY is also a photographer working for various
picture agencies.
Contact :
OPTMC
10, avenue de la Gare
63160 Billom / France
Tel: +33 (0)4 73 68 30 14
optmc@orange.fr
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Ulrich Görlich
Born 1952 in Germany
Working as an artist with photography since 1976
Taking part in exhibitions like the documenta 8, 1987 and
the Museum of Modern Art New York
Since 1991 professor at the Zürich University of Art
Since this year head of the new Master in Fine Arts-program
http://www.ulrichgoerlich.ch/pages/information/03.php
Contact
Prof. Ulrich Görlich
Master of Arts in Fine Arts
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste ZHdK
Ausstellungsstrasse 60, Postfach, 8031 Zürich
Tél. : +41 (0)4 34 46 31 40
ulrich.goerlich@zhdk.ch
www.zhdk.ch
Pierre Grandadam
Mr Grandadam, a councillor, is President of the Community
of Communes of Haute-Bruche, an inter-communal structure
located in the Bas-Rhin in Alsace and made up of
25 communes. Within the scope of his competence in the
environment field, this inter-communal structure has been
at the forefront of landscape issues for more than twenty
years which is what earned it its special mention of “Prix
du Paysage” in 2007 awarded by the French Ministry of
the Environment for this exemplary piece of work.
Contact :
M. Pierre Grandadam, Président de la communauté de
communes de la Haute-Bruche
36 rue Principale
67420 PLAINE / France
Tel : +33 (0)3 88 97 62 78
William Guerrieri
(Rubiera, Reggio Emilia, 1952).
William Guerrieri lives and works in Modena and Rubiera.
After studying pedagogics, he attended the DAMS art school
in Bologna. He, alongside Guido Guidi, was one of the
founders of the project Linea di Confine per la Fotografia
Contemporanea, of which he is the director.
As a photographer, in 1991 he carried out methodical
research on the interiors of public buildings, and
continues to work on the themes of recovery of historical
testimonies and the social dimension of architectural spaces.
Among the publications featuring as editor by Linea di
Confine Venti fotografi italiani (edited with P. Costantini),
Rubiera, 1995, Via Emilia. Fotografie luoghi e non luoghi,
1 e 2, Rubiera, 1999-2000; Luoghi come paesaggi.
Photography and Public Commissions in Europe in the
‘90s (edited with G. Guidi e M.R. Nappi), Rubiera, 2000;
Linea veloce Bologna-Milano (edited with Tiziana Serena),
Rubiera, 2004-2009.
Contact :
Linea di confine per la Fotografia contemporanea
Associazione culturale
L’Ospitale
Via Fontana, 2
42048 RUBIERA / Italy
Tél. : +39 05 22 62 94 03 Fax : +39 05 22 26 23 22
linconfine@comune.rubiera.re.it
www.lineadiconfine.org
Marie Guibert
Marie Guibert holds a State degree in architecture and
town planning. She is the deputy head of Sites, Landscape
and Biodiversity Department, and runs the Sites and
Landscapes office. As such, she contributes to rolling out
the European Landscape Convention and coordinates the
OPP’s programmes in her region.
Contact :
Languedoc-Roussillon Regional Environmental Department
Sites, Landscapes and Biodiversity Office
58 avenue Marie de Montpellier
CS 79034
34965 – Montpellier Cedex 02 / France
marie.guibert@developpement-durable.gouv.fr
Tel. +44 (0)4 67 15 41 13
Tapio Heikkilä
Tapio Heikkilä is a Senior Advisor to the Finnish Ministry of
the Environment, where he is responsible for landscape
management issues.
He has trained as a biologist and photographer (he holds
a PhD in Photography and an MA in Biology). He wrote
his doctoral thesis on Visual Monitoring of Landscapes –
Photographic Documentation of Changes in Cultural
Landscapes in 2007.
He has held several photographic exhibitions and
published several books on cultural landscapes.
Contact :
Tapio Heikkilä
Doctor of Arts, Senior Adviser
Ministry of the Environment
Finland
tapio.heikkila@ymparisto.fi
Laurent Jaulmes
is a professional photographer. He was Robert Doisneau’s
assistant, working with him on advertorials. In the 1960’s
he photographed the works of architect, Hector Guimard.
From 1980 he worked for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs
as well as for art dealers.
Contact :
Galerie Alain Blondel
128 rue Vieille du Temple 75003 Paris / France
Tel: +33 (0)1 42 78 66 67 ● Fax: +33 (0)1 42 78 47 90
galerie.blondel@wanadoo.fr
Gerry Johansson
Gerry Johansson is working in southern Sweden. He has
participated in the Swedish EKODOK project 1989 - 1991 and
European Eyes on Japan 1989. He has published America,
1998, Sverige, 2005. Deutschland to be published in
2008/09. Presently working on city projects: Kvidinge,
Tokyo and Ulan Bator.
Contact
Gerry Johansson
Hults Värg 7
263 58 Höganäs
Suède
mail@gerryjohansson.com
187
Line Lavesque
After training in photography techniques and history
under Claudine and Jean-Pierre Sudre, Line Lavesque spent
about ten years working as a landscape photographer’s
assistant. In 1993, she went back to school at the Musée
de l’Elysée in Lausanne to train in photographic collection
conservation, management and indexing. In 1994,
she created A Travers le Paysage, an association, for and
with the Musée de l’Elysée. This association aimed to
encourage proposals hovering around photographic
research (by bringing together organisations interested
in these endeavours and artists willing to work on them)
and to contribute to project preparation and artistic
production. See www.atraverslepaysage.com for details.
Contact
Conservatoire du littoral
27, rue Blanche
75009 Paris / France
Tel : +33 144 635 669 / Mob: +33 607 789 471
linelavesque@free.fr
Henri Le Pesq
Henri Le Pesq qualified as an architect in 1975, served as
a consulting architect at the Côtes du Nord Departmental
Farming Division, was appointed CAUE Côtes d’Armor
Director in 1979, and has remained there since.
He has chaired the Côtes d’Armor Sites and Landscape
Departmental Committee since 1977, holds a Chevalier
des Arts et Lettres distinction, is a member of the Brittany
Regional Heritage and Sites Committee, and the National
Historical Monuments Committee (waterside division).
He lectures at Brittany’s school of architecture.
Contact
CAUE des Côtes
29, rue des Promenades
22000 Saint-Brieuc / France
Tel. +33 (0)2 96 61 51 97
caue22@wanadoo.fr
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Jérôme Lobet
Academic qualification: Agricultural industrial engineer,
agronomy and environment option, at the Higher Industrial
Institute in Huy. Graduated in September 2001.
Since January 2003: Coordinator of the INTERREG III
cross-border programme entitled “Semois/Semoy
Cross-Border River Contract” at the University of Liège
Environmental Sciences and Management Department,
Arlon Campus (formerly the Luxembourg University
Foundation).
In parallel with holding this coordination post, Jérôme Lobet
has been project manager for the specific scheme to set
up a cross-border landscape survey.
Contact
Jérôme Lobet
Ulg – Département des Sciences et Gestion de l’Environnement
Contrat de rivière Semois/Semoy
Coordinateur du programme transfrontalier interreg III
185, avenue de Longwy
6700 Arlon
Belgium
jlobet@ulg.ac.be
Philippe Maigne
Philippe MAIGNE, director of the Grand Site Sainte-Victoire
since 2002. His career path led him to Languedoc to the
Regional Directorate for the Environment (DIREN), as well
as to the National Parks of Cévennes and Ecrins, and to
Camargue. He runs the Communal Syndicate of Massif
de Concors and Sainte-Victoire which has received the
“Grand Site de France®” label.
Contact
Directeur du Grand Site Sainte-Victoire
Syndicat mixte départemental des
Massifs Concors – Sainte-Victoire
Immeuble Le Derby
570, avenue du Club hippique
13090 Aix-en-Provence / France
Tel: +33 (0)4 42 64 60 90
philippe.maigne@grandsitesaintevictoire.com
Yves Michelin
Education
Accreditation as a research supervisor in geography and
development, University Toulouse le Mirail, 2000.
Doctor of geography and development, University
Clermont II, 1992.
Master’s in geography, University of Clermont II, 1988.
Agricultural engineer INA-PG 1976.
Current position: Professor, ENITAC agricultural engineering
school, Marmilhat, Lempdes, France.
Director of “agriculture – environment – territory” branch
at ENITAC
Coordinator for the ERASMUS “landscape ambassador”
intensive study course in partnership with the universities of Aas (Norway) , Arlnap (Sweden), Evora (Portugal),
Ljubljana (Slovenia), Sopron (Hungary) and the landscaping
school of Bordeaux.
Formerly (1982-94) head engineer in the territorial public
service, head of development department in the regional
natural park of Auvergne volcanoes.
Research coordinator:
Joint director of the UMR METAFORT (INRA, cemagref,
ENGREF, ENITA).
Member of scientific councils at:
MEDDAD: “landscape and sustainable development” call
to tender
Photographic observatory of the territories in the Massif
Central
Skills
Practical relations in agriculture, landscape (modellingsimulations)
Landscape analysis (description, manual and computer
graphic modelling)
Archaeology of landscape
Landscape mediation
Contact :
ENITAC de Clermont-Ferrand
Tel : +33(0)4.73.98.13.59
michelin@enitac.fr
Terry O’Regan
founded Landscape Alliance Ireland in 1995 and is the
on-going co-ordinator, a Council of Europe landscape
expert and member of the European Landscape Convention
steering committee. Graduate in Horticulture (UCD, Dublin
1969) with some 38 years’ experience of the Irish landscape
industry. Member of the Irish Landscape Institute and
the Institute of Horticulture, practises as a landscape and
environmental consultant.
A life-long member of
heritage/environmental NGOs, he convened the National
Landscape Forum series (7 to date). He was founding
chairperson of the LA21 body – the Cork Environmental
Forum and the first to call for a national landscape policy
in Ireland, championing the case for such a policy over the
past 14 years. He has effectively represented Ireland in
the development of the European Landscape Convention
since 1996 and is a member of the consultative panel
for the proposed Irish National Landscape Strategy.
Writes and lectures on all aspects of landscape evolution,
quality and management. Contributed to the 2007 KNNV
publication ‘Europe’s Living Landscapes – essays exploring
our identity in the countryside’; has just published the
‘Landscape Circle Study Guide’ and the LAI ELC Marking
Progress Template. He has contributed to and edited the
proceedings of the Irish National Landscape Forum and
created the web-site www.landscape-forum-ireland.com
Contact :
Terry O’Regan,
Founder/Coordinator,
Landscape Alliance Ireland,
Old Abbey Gardens,
Waterfall,
Cork, / Ireland.
Tel. 00353 21 4871460,
lai.link@indigo.ie,
www.landscape-forum-ireland.com
189
Jean-Daniel Pariset
Jean-Daniel Pariset is a chief heritage curator and heads
the Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine,
a national agency reporting to the French Ministry of Culture.
This agency is in charge of the historical monuments
and heritage archives, and of the Fort de Saint Cyr photographic archives.
Contact
Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine
11 rue du Séminaire de Conflans
94 220 Charenton-le-Pont / France
jean-daniel.pariset@culture.gouv.fr
Annette Rosengren
Annette Rosengren at Nordiska museet, Stockholm.
Working as a museum curator, where her main doings
have been related to her fieldworks as an ethnologist.
In doing long term fieldwork she has learned a lot from
documentary photographers.
She has had a close connection to photography since 30
years and has written and given lessons on photography
in different ways. She is also an author to books and reports on Swedish sub cultures and various kinds of social
exclusion.
Contact
Annette Rosengren
Nordiska museet
Box 27820
SE-115 93 Stockholm / Sweden
Tél +46 8 51 95 46 00, +46 8 51 95 46 43
annette.rosengren@nordiskamuseet.se
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Pere Sala
graduated in Environmental Science, is the Technical
Coordinator of the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia.
His responsibilities include the coordination of the
Catalonia Landscape Catalogues and he is co-author
with Joan Nogué of the guides for their implementation.
Previously, he worked for the Department of Environment
and Housing within the Catalan Government in strategic
environmental assessment in Catalonia, and promoting
sustainability policies at the local level. He is co-author
of the document Challenges of the Implementation
by the European Region of the Directive on Strategic
Environmental Assessment (Departament de Medi Ambient,
2001) and he has published L’evolució del Paisatge de
Sant Feliu de Guíxols. Revisió en clau ambiental de cinc
dècades d’aprofitament, transformació i revalorització
del patrimoni natural *(Diputació de Girona and Ajuntament de Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 2001). He is also author of
numerous articles on landscape patrimony.
Contact
Observatoire Catalan du paysage
Coordinator
C/ Hospici, 8
17800 OLOT / Spain
T : 00 34 972 27 35 64
pere.sala@catpaisatge.net
Jean-François Seguin
Jean-François Seguin heads the Landscape and Advertising
Office at the Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development
and Sea Ministry’s Habitat, Town Planning and Landscape
Department. He is France’s delegate to European Landscape
Convention meetings and currently chairs that convention’s
conference. He holds an ScD in veterinary science and has
been working on landscapes since he worked on a project
involving a marine national park in Iles Chausey and
contributed to the project to restore Mont-Saint-Michel
maritime environment.
Contact
French Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Sea
Ministry
Landscape and Advertising Unit
92055 La Défense cedex / France
jean-francois.seguin@developpement-durable.gouv.fr
Pieter Uyttenhove
Pieter Uyttenhove lectures in town planning theory and
history at Ghent University’s Department of Architecture
and Town Planning. He runs Labo S, a town planning
research laboratory and wrote a dissertation on Marcel
Lods at EHESS, a school of social science.
Contact
pieter.uyttenhove@ugent.be
Meret Wandeler
Born 1967 in Zurich.
Photographer and Performance Artist.
Teaches at the Zurich University of the Arts.
Ulrich Görlich and Meret Wandeler work together on artistic
research projects concerning Photography and Spatial
Development at Zurich University of the Arts.
Contact
Meret Wandeler
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste ZHdK
Vertiefung Fotografie
Sihlquai 125 / 8005 Zürich
meret.wandeler@zhdk.ch
Pia Viewing
Pia Viewing is an art historian and a curator in
contemporary art. In September 2007, she was appointed
Director of the Regional Centre of Photography in the
Nord Pas-de-Calais region of France, where she has the
entire responsibility of the Centre’s artistic, cultural and
development programme.
Born in Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, her father is English
and a geologist and her mother Dutch and a ceramic artist.
Pia grew up in an environment that gave her a taste for travel
and stimulated an interest in art right from an early age.
When Pia was 18, she left her native land to pursue
artistic studies in France. Interested in work linked to
production and exhibiting contemporary works, she
began her professional career at la Criée, the Contemporary
Art Centre in Rennes. Her work included the creation of
the education department.
From 1996 to 2004, she was appointed Assistant Director
of the Centre International d’Art et du Paysage de l’Ile
de Vassivière in the Limousin. She worked alongside
Dominique Marchès, founder of the project and Director
of the Centre from 1986 to 2001, and then with Guy Tortosa,
inspector at the ministry of Culture and Communication,
whose artistic project aimed at connecting the Centre
with the local area.
From 2004 to 2007, she was head of education for the
public sector and in charge of international relations at
the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Caen.
At the Regional Centre of Photography, her main objectives
are to pursue the mission of commissioning photographic
works in the Nord Pas-de-Calais region, to develop an
artistic programme that has an influence on local, regional,
national and international levels and to promote the centre’s
activity through exhibiting works and producing publications.
She has created an educational department, which raises
awareness among people interested in current photography
and deepens knowledge about this art form.
Contact
Centre Régional de la Photographie Nord Pas-de-Calais
Place des Nations, 59282 Douchy-les-Mines, France
Tél : + 33 (0)3 27 43 56 50
crp.contact@orange.fr
191
LIST OF
PARTICIPANTS
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Jean Paul Achard (ENESAD - DIJON) / Regis Ambroise (MAP) / Marc Antrop (Université de Gand) / Chantal Auvry (MEEDDAD)
/ Isabelle Baffou (Conseil Général 94) / Jean-Christophe Ballot / Agnès Bataillon (CAVE ORNE) / Catherine Bergeal (sousdirectrice de la qualité du cadre de vie) / Juliette Berny (Université Paris 7) / Arnaud Bertolotti / Sophie Bessi (CAUE 41)
/ David Betzinger / Eva Biganto (CEPAGE) / Alain Blondel / Thérèse Blondet-Bisch / Agnès Bochet / Frédéric Boeuf
(RBandCie Paysagistes) / Stéphanie Boisson (BSP) / Amandine Bommel-Orsini (SETRA) / Denis Boterel / Annick Boterel /
Sabine Bouche-Pillon (École Nationale Supérieure de la nature et du paysage) / Frédéric Boucher (DIAPHANE) / Michèle
Bouis (CAUE de L’Hérault) / Clément Briandet/ Julie Butto (MEEDDAT) / Sylvie Cachin-Laroche (CAUE Val d’Oise) / Christophe
Camus / Danielle Caron (Université polytechnique de Catalogne) / Juliette Carré (CEPAGE) / Monique Casse (projet de parc
naturel régional du Golfe du Morbihan) / Alain Ceccaroli (photographe Observatoire) / Nasma Ceccaroli (photographe
Observatoire) / Jérôme Champres (CERTU) / Philippe Chapuis (Ville du Havre) / Thierry Charlemagne (COFIROUTE) / Jean
Chaletut / Michel Corbou (MOTS D’IMAGES) / Bertrand Creuchet (CGEDD - MIGT 9) / Zsuzsa Cros (CNRS/LADYSS) / Gérard
Dallasanta / Christiane Danard (DHUP) / Christian Dautel (directeur ENSBA Angers) / Loïc De Larminat / Mireille Deconinck
(Ministère de la région Wallone) / Clémentine Delahaut / Brigitte Delattre (membre du CA de la LUR) / Elisabeth Demenge
/ Isabelle Doppe / Carlos Dora (OMS) / Françoise Dubost / Solange Duchardt (PNR Oise Pays de France) / Sylvain Duffard
/ Anouck Durand-Gasselin (Association des Sentiers des Loses) / Pierre Enjelvin (OPTMC) / Francesca Fabiani (Musée d’Architecture de Rome)/ Guy Focant (Ministère de la région Wallone) / Jac Fol (ENSAPM-ACS) / Philippe Follenfant / Françoise
Gaillard / Philippe Ganet (Ministère de l’Agriculture) / Muriel Garrigues (ACIDD) / Thierry Girard / Jean-Marc Giraudeau
(PNR) / Magali Gondal (PNR SCARPE ESCAUT / PNTH) / Ulrich Görlich (Université des Arts de Zurich) / Pierre Grandadam
(Président de la Communité de Communes de la Haute-Bruche) / Marie Grande (DIREN Rhône Alpes) / M. Groult (CNRS)
/ William Guerrieri (directeur de Linea de Confine) / Alain Guglielmetti (CETE MEDITERRANNEE / DAT / PE) / Marie Guibert
(DIREN Languedoc Roussillon) / Gérard Guillaumin (MEEDDAT/DRI-SR) / Armelle Guimard (DIREN) / Christian Guy (OPTMC)
/ Frédéric Hebraud (CAUE de l’Hérault) / Tapio Heikkila (Ministère de l’Environnement Finlandais) / Dominique Iattoni
(Secrétariat d’État aux PME et au Tourisme) / Jean Isenmann (ADEUS) / Gual Carbonell Jaume / Erika Jauschova (Ministry
of Environment of SR) / Frédéric Jean / Gerry Johansson (NORDISKA MUSEET) / Florence Jourdain (AURG) / M. Kotheim /
Serge Koval (ENSAP LILLE) / Magali Laffond (PNR VEXIN) / Yves Landhungh / Gaëlle Laouenen (Conseil Général du Val de
Marne) / Finn Larsen / Bernard Latarjet / Jean-Sébastien Laumont (C.C Haute Bruche) / Laurence Le Du-Blayo (Université
de Rennes) / Henri Le Pesq (directeur du CAUE) / Hervé Lefort (DIREN 59-62) / Yannick Legal / Cindy Lelu (ENSP Arles) /
Eric Lengereau (Ministère de la Culture) / Françoise Lepage (DIREN 35) / Anais Leroux / Line Lavesque (Conservatoire du
Littoral) / Jérôme Lobet (coordinateur du projet INTERREG III SEMOIS - SEMOY / Philippe Maigne (directeur du grand site
Sainte-Victoire) / Catherine Marette (MEEDDAT) / Mara Marincioni (UPC-CATALOGNE-SPAIN) / Marc Mathe / Alain Mazas
/ Lydie Menadier (UMR METAFORT ENITAC) / Yves Michelin (ENITA de Clermont-Ferrand) / Caroline Mollie / Cécile Monchamp (Terres de Loire) / Brigitte Mortier (DIREN Midi Pyrenées Toulouse) / Clémentine Mosdale / Didier Mouchel / Terry
O’Reagan (Landscape Alliance Ireland) / Agnès Pachebat (CAUE 64) / Jean-Luc Paille / Jean-Daniel Parizet (Directeur de la
Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine) / Hélène Pellegrin (Lycée Vert d’Azur) / Gislhaine Peral (Conseil Général
Gironde) / Alexis Pernet (PNR Livardois Forez) / Jean-Pierre Petit (CAUE de la Savoie) / Stefan Piat / Véronique Ploye /
Josiane Podsiadlo (Pays BMP) / Chantal Pourrat (Conseil Général du Val de Marne) / Jean-Baptiste Pozzer (Conseil Général
du Lot et Garonne) / Christian Queffelec (CGEDD) / Daniel Quesmey (PERIPLE EDITIONS) / Myriam Quiby (MEEDDAT-DGEHP)
/ Stéphanie Quinault (MEEDDAT) / Bruno Rambury / Laurence Renard (PNR CHEVREUSE) / Pascal Rete / François Riquiez
(DIREN Picardie) / Florence Robert (RBandCie paysagistes) / Augustin Roche (CNRS) / Bernard Roland (INHP) / Claude
Rollin (IL PHOTOGRAPHY COMPANY) / Annette Rosengren (NORDISKA MUSEET) / Emile Rossa (PNR Normandie Maine) /
Mechtild Rossler (Centre du Patrimoine Mondial) / Remi Rouillat (DIREN Bourgogne) / Père Sala (coordinateur de l’Observatoire Catalan du paysage) / Joseph Salvini (Office de l’Environnement de la Corse) / Jean-Pierre Saurin / Jessica Savreux
(CREN Poitou charente) / Frédéric Schaller (PNR des Ballons des Vosges) / Jean-François Seguin (MEEDDAT) / Sylvie Servain
(École du paysage de Blois)/ Marie-Françoise Slak (Ministère de l’Agriculture) / Elise Soufflet-Leclerc (MEEDDAT) / Laurent
Sully-Jaulmes / Martine Sylvos (DHUP) / Luc Talassinos (DIREN PACA) / Zhaoyi Tan (PARIS1 LADYSS) / Geneviève Teil (INRA)
/ Christine Tena (École du paysage Versailles) / Juliette Tilliard-Blondel (DIREN Auvergne) / Jitka Tomsova (ENSP Versailles)
/ Monique Toublanc / Marie Noëlle Tournoux (Ministère de la Culture - UNESCO) / Monique Turlin (MEEDDAT) / Pieter Uyttenhove (Université de Gand) / Patricia Vaquette (Direction Eau et Biodiversité - MEEDDAT) / Isabelle Vauquois (DIREN) /
Van Eetvelde Veerle (Département de Géographie) / M. Velche / Nathalie Vicq-Thepot (DGALN - MEEDDAT) / Pia Viewing
(Directrice du CRP) / Didier Vivien (Université de Lille 3) / Beatrix Von Conta (Observatoire Photographique) / Anne Vourch
(Réseau des Grands Sites de France) / Gilles Walusinski / Meret Wandeler (Université des Arts de Zurich) / Adriana Wattel
(DIAPHANE) / Pascal Xicluna (Ministère de l’Agriculture)
193
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195
Direction générale de l’aménagement, du logement et de la nature
Direction de l’habitat, de l’urbanisme et des paysages
Arche Parois Sud 92 055 La Défense cedex
196 — Paris, jeudi
et de la 2008
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13duetDéveloppement
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www.developpement-durable.gouv

Photographic observation a tool for landscape policies

Transcription

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