Northern Light

... with the editors

1. Why a book on this subject?

In recent years there has been a proliferation of interest in visual tropes of the north – from the often icy and austere places that provide the locations for stories set against remote northern landscapes, to the continuing appeal of high-end contemporary landscape photography, and the omnipresence of applied and commercial landscape imagery. Through all kinds of visual culture, therefore, remote places of the north are brought into closer reach.

2. What relevance does this subject have in the current research debates?

The essays in this book help us to understand the role that northern landscape plays in contemporary western culture: as an artistic genre and as a site for leisure, imagination and dreams. The collection explores why notions of wilderness have relevance in contemporary, globally connected western culture, and what functions are performed by the pursuit of the pristine landscape, which appears to persist even against the backdrop of an obviously polluting ever-expanding industrial economy.

3. What new perspectives does your book open up?

The book brings together photographers and academics, to offer fresh approaches to considering the northern landscape. Essays investigate the photography of Axel Hütte and its relationship to the sublime and the work of Olaf Otto Becker in the context of globalization and climate change. Several chapters discuss the ›walking arts‹ as a strategy for renewing the experience of apparently `familiar' northern places, whilst others question the capacity of established modes of observation to provide knowledge of landscapes.

4. Your book in only one sentence:

Artists and academics explore the many ways in which the north is represented and understood through contemporary landscape photography.