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“Taking photographs is above all restoring a sense of wonder – like observing the world through an adolescent eye – since in fact ‘there is nothing old under the sun’.”
In search of my own definition of landscape, I cannot find the right words to describe these photographs, taken on the volcanic rocks of Antiparos in 2019. Perhaps they represent for me the essence of photography, that of being free of the need to be accompanied by words. Instead, I looked for an explanation in the texts of my favourite photographer, whose writings resonate with my perception more than anything else. In his essay ‘There Is Nothing Old Under The Sun (2)’, published in 1988, Luigi Ghirri writes:
“The great American photographer Ansel Adams held that landscape is a dirty word; landscape is where nature ends. These ideas seem to summarise all the problems about the representation of the landscape that have accompanied photography in recent years. They are words that mark the difference between one way of seeing and another, between the utopian dream of a pure, natural world and the need to construct stories about the landscape of the world as it actually is. But these words also touch on the never-assuaged rift between nature and artifice, and the end of sentiment about discovery and the fascination of revelation. […] Seeing a landscape as if for the first time and last time determines a feeling of belonging to every landscape in the world.”
Source: Ghirri, L. (2016). “For an Idea of Landscape”. In The Complete Essays 1973-1991. Mack Books.
Dafni Riga 