Active Landscape Photography: Theoretical Groundwork for Landscape Architecture

Photographs play a hugely influential but largely unexamined role in the practice of landscape architecture and design. Through a diverse set of essays and case studies, this seminal text unpacks the complex relationship between landscape architecture and photography. It explores the influence of photographic seeing on the design process by presenting theoretical concepts from photography and cultural theory through the lens of landscape architecture practice to create a rigorous, open discussion.

Beautifully illustrated in full color throughout, with over 200 images, subjects covered include the diversity of everyday photographic practices for design decision making, the perception of landscape architecture through photography, transcending the objective and subjective with photography, and deploying multiplicity in photographic representation as a means to better represent the complexity of the discipline. Rather than solving problems and providing tidy solutions to the ubiquitous relationship between photography and landscape architecture, this book aims to invigorate a wider dialogue about photography's influence on how landscapes are understood, valued and designed. Active photographic practices are presented throughout for professionals, academics, students and researchers.

Anne C. Godfrey's research examines the relationship between photography and landscape architecture. As a photographer and writer, she engages in multidisciplinary critical inquiries into landscape, representation and experience. She is an award-winning professor of landscape architecture in both teaching and research, supporting students' successes in international fellowships and design competitions. Godfrey is an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.