FOR WANT OF WONDER: A practice based photographic investigation of posthuman enchantments in interstitial landscapes

Bence, Martin (2022) FOR WANT OF WONDER: A practice based photographic investigation of posthuman enchantments in interstitial landscapes. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This photographic practice-based research is an outworking of my interest as a photographer in creating landscape imagery. The final output of the work takes the form of large-scale prints and a written thesis with the viewer’s experience of the prints as the primary means by which the research aims are to be realised. My research employs scrutiny of the complex entanglements which occur in the landscape of my research through the qualities that come into being in the photographic print as an interpretation of the object world and as an object in it. This seeks to challenge a calculable and reductive interpretation of entities and, in doing so, inform a new or reoriented perception of familiar yet often unnoticed landscapes. The photographic work engages with practice as research through a methodology which employs digital photographic process, and critical reflection upon the technical and aesthetic outcomes of the imagery to develop and respond to a research question. This project asks: how might photography invoke an understanding of interstitial, or transitional landscapes as places of enchantment? What I mean by enchantment in this context is a transformative engagement with an entity which reorients both the observed and the observer. The question sits within the context of a growing interest in forms of enchantment offered through new post-human theories of matter and the agency of non-human entities alongside an emerging attention to landscapes that occurs in the intersection between urban and rural space. My research looks to contribute to the understanding of this landscape through advancing photographic imagery which identifies a novel examination of visual space using digital photographic techniques. The photographic methods I employ investigate visual space in a manner other than that of a conventional photographic exposure. Initially inspired by the 7 photographic methods employed in the Mars surface exploration vehicles designed by NASA, I use an on-site multiple image technique and digital manipulation in post-production to create an amplification of the photographed landscape through the detail and scale made possible by the process. In working with spaces that characterise contemporary socioeconomic systems and the challenges they present, this photographic project looks to engage with landscape as a type of contemporary pastoral. The physical manifestations of infrastructure present within the peripheral spaces around urban centres demonstrates an ongoing negotiation between nature and culture in a manner akin to historical depictions of the pastoral. The title For want of wonder is a provocation to seek out the extraordinary contained within material that is otherwise overlooked and to articulate, through photographic practice, a way of being in the world which can reorient awareness of unremarkable or unlikely settings as places redolent of awe and wonder. Or in other words, to be enchanted.