Exploring the Culture of Nature
Straight Lines is the culmination of a 12 month photographic case study of the bioregion of the Northwest Cape of Western Australia. It is a comprehensive photographic exploration of the Cape Range bioregion’s major landscapes, from the Cape Range National Park and World Heritage listed Ningaloo Reef Marine Park, to the human inhabited landscapes of the town of Exmouth, and the region’s military wastelands of the Harold E. Holt Communications Base. Ultimately this study offers a complete photographic picture of a place of human inhabitation, and illustrates how Australians interact with their bioregions.
In Australia, as with much of the world, landscape photography has played a significant role in raising awareness of the human impact on environments. For the most part this awareness centres around questions of conserving and preserving the natural world.
Commonly, landscape photography depicts environmental issues in one of two ways: the damaging effects of humanity’s mastery over the environment; or the sublime wonder of nature. In effect, these messages are restrictively singular, describing either nature, or culture.
But landscape photography can focus on a more complete depiction of the environment, one that approaches the topic from a perspective of bioregion. With the intention of developing more sustainable viewpoints of human relationships with the environment, bioregional photography equates to visual encompassing all major landscapes of a particular region.
Essentially, this is a call for a shift in focus toward the culture and the nature within a bioregion, both the developed and undeveloped, the pristine and ruined,
List your exhibition or photography event on our site to reach out to the Australian photographic community.
Are you ready to share your vision with the world? Head On Foundation offers a platform for photographers from all backgrounds.
