This exercise reviews an extract from John Taylor’s Landscape for Everyone, itself an extract from Dream of England (Taylor, 1994).

Taylor begins by discussing that landscapes are often used to illustrate the way we perceive the past, done by describing how changes to the landscape are moving it away from its more traditional past.  Regularly this is done to highlight the perception that industry is destroying the landscape.   On a personal note, this is exactly what I did for my third assignment in which I was highlighting the impact of wind turbines to the Cornish countryside.  In a way it is ironic as many of the things we might use to illustrate what the past looked like are industry in themselves.  In my case, it was the change of Tin Mines from industry into tourist attraction that prompted my assignment.  From the course text, the “save our countryside” front page of the daily mail shows sheep and farmers fields marking out the land, the irony being that these are both industry elements in their own right and not what an untouched landscape would look like. 

Taylor’s passage though is more concerned with the op act to the countryside of the Second World War in the 1940s.  Taylor cites the journalist Henry Warren who wrote about the destruction caused by mechanised armies rolling over, and crushing, the fields and villages.   These fields and villages were thought of as being an essence of Britain itself and therefore to lose them would be to lose Britain.  Paradoxically, to protect the countryside from invaders, it was “rendered illegible to strangers”.  Direction signs were removed and commercial signage identifying locations was also removed.  Fields and spaces were obstructed by concrete blocks.   Leisure travel ceased.  

With this loss, it became important to remember what had gone before and this led to the re-publication of topographic books from the 1930s.  With all of this material being viewed at the same time, it highlighted the differences to the land in different areas of Britain and therefore debate as to which scene, if any represented it, or in fact that it was the variety that illustrated the differences.  

How to reconcile these, now aged, scenes with what was before the country now became a challenge.  This led to writers and photographers putting their efforts into showing elements that did remain in a documentary fashion.  Returning to that way of life became the “promise of victory” in the war.  

Meanwhile, images attempted to bridge the gap between the memory, the promise, and what was available now.  This was done using images that combined the two.  A purely aesthetic image of the Lake District would now be turned down in favour of a similar scene bit one which included, perhaps, children who had been evacuated there from an industrial areas (and which was therefore under threat of being bombed).

Picture Post and The Ministry of Information before the war, had used images to bridge social gaps.  For example showing the battles between ramblers and land owners in land rights protests.  The land itself becoming a symbol of the British way of life and the land being open to all.  The Post always portraying the working class, and their pursuits in the countryside in a positive manner.  

During the war, Picture Post took a similar approach to contrast the British way of life, perhaps with an idyllic countryside scene with a German scene of marching soldiers.  From my point of view, this is clear manipulation as the two images could easily have been shown the other way around, we had ranks of marching (young) soldiers and Germany has plenty of beautiful countryside.  

Further images were displayed over the war making similar contrasts; always seeking to portray peaceful countryside scenes for England and a population under the control of Hitler in the German scenes.  

Reflection

I found it interesting how our perception of what the landscape is supposed to look like is driven by what it looked like when we first became aware of it.  Ruin of the land seems to be driven by what we see as the change taking place in the present time and we do not necessarily reflect on wether or not the original state we knew was actually the original state in the first.   For example, Cornish Tin mines are now part of Cornwall’s identity and destroying them would be seen as destroying the landscape.  But they are only there because of industry in the first place.  By extension, today’s industrial landscape may be tomorrow’s landscape to be preserved.  

What is most commonly perceived as England’s true state for its countryside is farmer’s fields, but this too is industry. 

The technique of showing old and new somehow in the same image, to link the two is a technique that I had not thought of and is a technique I could consider using given that this topic is something that I have become very interested in.

I also found the technique of showing two contrasting images next to each other in order to highlight the difference between the two images a useful approach.  I think this could be an opportunity for creativity in terms of imagining what could be contrasted with what.  This is a technique worth considering further.  

Bibliography

Taylor, J., 1994. Dream of England. Manchester University Press.