The Landscape as oneself

• Main Author: Holliday, Peter
• Other Authors: Laakso, Harri, Taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, media, Pälviranta, Harri, Aalto University, Aalto-yliopisto
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: landscape; Sápmi; Lapland; phenomenology; photography; Scandinavia; Maurice; Giles; Paulus; Norrbotten
• Online Access: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/114860

This thesis, The Landscape as Oneself, considers the role that human embodiment plays in the constitution of the cycloramic phenomenon which surrounds man, and vice versa. With particular reference to the phenomenological ontologies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, I reflect on the meanings of embodied perception and what the landscape photograph can tell us about being human. This questioning is explored amidst man’s existential encounter with a world which is visible without artifice, and whose frontiers and boundaries remain out of sight but for the cultural and historical paths whereon it comes into view. The second chapter, A Path in the Snow, concerns my photographic series of the same title, and discusses the meaning of my pictures from Sápmi with reference to the historical legacy of Mikel Utsi, a Sámi man from Swedish Norrbotten who emigrated to the Scottish Highlands with his reindeer in 1952. As a Scot living living amidst the view of Fennoscandinavia, I use the history of Mikel Utsi as a touchstone to contextualise my inverse encounter with the Nordic landscape. With further respect to the photographs of Ellisif Wessel, Sophus Tromholt and Jorma Puranen; the paintings of Helmer Osslund, Harald Sohlberg and James Giles; and the poetry of Paulus Utsi, I consider the northerly setting my photographs from Sápmi occupy within the Northern European tradition of landscape representation. In addition to the textual component, this thesis includes a series of photographs, presented as an accompanying portfolio of 36 images in a 32x26.5cm photobook format.