Cultural Geography

connection between the sense of sight and the

physical conduct of the body, between virtual

and material worlds. We do not fully understand

the nature of that connection, but it lies at the

heart of a consistent historical attempt in western

culture to bring the visual image and the material

world into ever closer union.

PICTURING LANDSCAPE

Geographically, the idea of landscape is the most

significant expression of the historical attempt to

bring together visual image and material world;

indeed it is in large measure an outcome of that

process. The etymological roots of landscape lie

in substantive connections between a human col-

lective (denoted by the suffixes -schaft, -ship,

• scape) and its common or usufruct rights over
  the natural resources of a bounded area (land) as
  recognized in customary law. But from its late-
  sixteenth-century appearance in English, such
  usage has always been subordinated to that of
  landscape as an area of land visible to the eye
  from a vantage-point (Cosgrove, 1998: 189–222;
  Helgerson, 1992; Turner, 1979). The vantage-
  point might be a high place, a hill or tower from
  which a ‘prospect’ might be enjoyed; it could be
  provided or enhanced by an instrument such as a
  looking glass or binoculars; it could be the
  medium of a drawing, painting, map or film
  (Charlesworth, 1999; Nuti, 1999). In every case,
  location serves to disengage the viewer physi-
  cally from the witnessed geographical space.
  And, as ‘vantage-point’ denotes, landscape
  establishes a relationship of dominance and sub-
  ordination between differently located viewer
  and object of vision (Appleton, 1996: 22–5). The
  vantage-point privileges the viewer of landscape
  in selecting, framing, composing what is seen; in
  other words, the viewer exercises an imaginative
  power in turning material space into landscape.
  Implicit in this process is the idea of an aes-
  thetic response to what is seen. ‘Aesthetic’ has
  two meanings: the neutral one of sense impres-
  sion (still registered in its opposite, ‘anaesthetic’)
  and a more evaluative one of sensual pleasure
  and beauty. The sense impression is of a dis-
  embodied eye registering the formal and composi-
  tional qualities of a surface subtended to its gaze.
  The relationship between such sense impressions
  and the faculty of imagination was the subject of
  eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophical
  distinctions between sublime, beautiful and
  picturesque landscapes (Ballantyne, 1997; Barrell,
  1980). Relationships between the landscape and
  the viewer are thus doubly distanciated, first by

the physical distances between observation point

and surface, and second by the separation of eye

(body) and imagination (mind). This distancia-

tion however also yields a power relationship

privileging viewer over viewed. The authority

offered to the viewer of landscape may be actual

and material, as in the case of those English

landowners of the eighteenth century who

reorganized the fields, hedgerows, coppices and

buildings on their estates to correspond to

aesthetic conventions of landscape: ‘pleasing

prospects’ (Daniels, 1999; Muir, 1999). More

often today it is exercised over the choice of

landscapes we experience and the judgements we

make of them as tourists, hikers, photographers,

moviegoers or visitors to galleries: ‘enjoying

landscape’.

Landscape thus denotes primarily geography

as it is seen, imaged and imagined. This does not

imply that landscape is intellectually superficial

or insignificant as an object of geographical

study and reflection, although vision obviously

privileges surface and form over depth and

process. But sight and action are intimately con-

nected. A dramatic example is the designation,

bounding and management of geographical areas

as ‘national parks’. This began in the United

States at the turn of the twentieth century when

certain visually dramatic, forested areas of the

Rocky Mountains and western sierras caught the

attention of dedicated naturalists. Many of these

were initially drawn to these areas by their ren-

dering in paintings, dioramas and photographs

and were able to access them comfortably by

means of newly built railroads (Morin, 1998;

Novak, 1980). Today, such protected landscapes

have been designated within almost every

nation-state and the principal has been applied to

the entire continent of Antarctica. Although con-

cern for the continued existence of their flora and

fauna has always been a powerful motivating

force in the selection and designation of these

areas, it is their visual appearance as landscape

that has conventionally sustained their public

appeal. Such areas have become sites of complex

relations and sometimes contestation between

scientific, social and aesthetic concerns sur-

rounding issues of managing ‘nature’, accessing

space and coding performance (Cosgrove, 1995;

Grove, 1995; Neumann, 1995; 1998). Political

implications are signalled in the designation of

such zones as ‘parks’, a term whose entire history

denotes the aesthetic appropriation of natural

spaces: for hunting, recreation, pleasure. A

majority of citizens may never have visited these

landscapes, but know and treasure them through

pictorial images. The American national park,

for example, is known to many through the

254 LANDSCAPE

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