Liz Wells: Sense of Place: European Landscape Photography

The book is in landscape format and interestingly and despite its subject matter many books aren't.

This lends itself very well to the landscape images it contains which appear to be from well known and also unknown artists with images from around 30 countries.

I've not read this book start to finish but dived in an out and also flicked through images allowing them to be absorbed and pondered over. Unlike the picturesque style of landscape images, the content appears to be focused on allowing the viewer to get a "sense of place" from the images at the locations they are taken in.

The book groups images of the artists some large and some small with accompanying text. What I find strange is that its aimed at people reading both English and German since text is shared in both languages. Whilst I see the commercial reasons for this, reasons I personally find said, the result means that it results in either a larger book, smaller font size, less text explanation or a combination of them all.

What I've enjoyed most about the book, and I haven't read it all is that the photographers share their deep insights into the images and why they have taken them. I think this are in fact artists statements and I enjoyed these very much.The images alone with the untrained / uneducated eye (My eyes are likely at the level of school reception class) vary between being striking, interesting and unusual though in the most part interesting and created within me a desire to know more about the location and to read the accompanying text.

There is variation between the artists in terms of the framing, exposure, and subject matter. Its the latter I find particularly interesting because as I mention above the artists and some more so than others do definitely generate a sense of the location they are in. I tend to think of this as being a landscape reportage style of photography. That said Elina Brotherus produces a set of images that takes the landscape genre into another direction, landscape self portraiture

This is a book I can pick-up and study, pud down and pick-up again and I always find something new either in images I originally did not truly see or words that a re-reading allow discovery of something else.

A few strong themes I've taken from this book are:

• do not over think images, trust your instinct / growing instinct
• experiment with different framing, exposure and lighting
• simple can also be complex. Gursky's Rhine II image a good example
• the presentation of the image (exposure, lighting, framing and even processing) can enhance the feel of the location that perhaps the artist wants to express to the viewer

Of the many books I viewed and read this has been one of my favorites in terms showing me a wide selection of styles and techniques and suggests that I should trust my instincts more