The middle of nowhere: the photographic search for an unknown landscape

This thesis and the accompanying photographic research explores the idea and experience of the “middle of nowhere”. It asks several questions including: Where is the “middle of nowhere” and what does it mean to arrive there? How is being in nowhere possible? Can we exist in space and time unrelated to place? What is the role of photography in helping us form a connection to an unknown landscape? Our modern world is explored, mapped, and imaged in its entirety. With the aid of satellites, global positioning systems, the Internet, closed circuit television, tourists with cameras, and mobile camera phones, there is no landscape left undocumented. Advances in transportation and technology make it possible to travel everywhere, anytime. In today’s world “nowhere” as an untouched and undiscovered landscape, cannot exist. Despite this fact, the search for “nowhere” continues through literature, advertising, tourism and the adventure travel industry, personal journeys, and photography. Through analysis of the historical conventions of landscape photography and contemporary visual culture, the “middle of nowhere” reveals itself as a visual metaphor for escape and environmental utopia. “Nowhere” is a journey for the unknown, and the recognition of presence felt in absence when faced with the unfamiliar (that presence being our own). It is a state of mind in which we glimpse the possibility of another world; one in which we can start over with the planet and ourselves. This thesis discusses our modern relationship to the landscape and resulting twenty-first century utopian ideals. My own search for “nowhere” in the landscapes of Canada and Australia, is documented in the accompanying photographic research.

Grantor dc:publisher

UNSW, Sydney

Year dc:date

2010

Author dc:creator

• Dahrouge, Brandy

• Landscape theory
• Photography
• Landscape
• Climate change
• Utopia
• Adventure tourism
• Travel photography
• Advertising

Statement dc:rights

• open access
• CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
• free_to_read

Licence

• https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/

Language dc:language

EN

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/23552

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:unsworks.library.unsw.edu.au:1959.4/50387