Cresswell uses political geographer John Agnew’s definition of place as the basis for his own definition and work. He says that places are spaces that people have made meaningful or have attached to in some way. Every place includes three things; location, locale, and sense of place. Location is the actual location of the place (think coordinates). Locale refers to the physical shape of a place – the walls of a room, the buildings in a city. And sense of place is the attachment that people have to space, fulfilling place’s necessity “to have some relationship to humans and the human capacity to produce and consume meaning.” Sense of place is the most important of the three because it gives us a way of understanding the world. Places come in many forms and can cause certain negative effects (racism), but they are what allow us to contextualize our world and make it ours. Cresswell then discusses space and landscape and their relationships to place. First it is important to acknowledge that space is just as important as place, because in a way, it is place. It is everything that is in between our places. To Cresswell, landscape is not place because we are not in it, or apart of it. We give landscape meaning and attach to it, but we are not actually apart of it and interacting with it.
Land and Landscape
Mitchell’s views in “Imperial Landscape” reminded me of the different landscapes that were discussed in Meinig’s “Beholding the Eye,” specifically landscape as wealth and landscape as aesthetic. I found these crossovers to be the strongest and most interesting in the last section of the paper “The Sacred Silent Language,” which begins with an excerpt from Emerson’s Nature. The excerpt simply says that the best part of a farmer’s land is the landscape that it is a part of, yet the farmer does not own the landscape. The landscape is owned by the poet, who is able to put all the parts in front of him together without physically altering it. It is his poetic property.
Mitchell looks deeper into the distinction between land and landscape with the comparison of a mountain filled with gold and the Grand Canyon. The mountain filled with gold is valuable only while gold still exists; once it ha been all mined and dug out, the mountain is worthless. Yet the value of the Grand Canyon as a landscape is invaluable. The amount of postcards, paintings, and artistic work that the Grand Canyon has been the subject for or has inspired in countless. In this sense, landscape as aesthetic and landscape as wealth are one in the same. The wealth is a product of the aesthetic landscape and the feelings that come from it. These feelings can be the simple awe from appreciating the natural beauty, but as Mitchell would argue, these feelings are typically wrapped up in the cultural forces that shape our perception. The Grand Canyon is a geological wonder, but also symbol of the American Frontier ands its sense of adventure and opportunity.
Betsy’s Island
Peter Ralston’s article “Betsy Wyeth’s World is an Island in Maine” and Paul Theroux’s essay “Art Notebook: On Allen Island” both focused on Betsy Wyeth and how she made her vision for Allen Island a reality. Paired with the readings from Daniels and Cosgrove, it made me think about our discussions over the semester about place, time, spacetime, and authenticity. Allen Island was definitely a space before Betsy bought it in 1989, but was it a place? For the two fishing families that Ralston mentions, yes it was, but only during certain months of the year. The island would come alive during the summer months when the summer school was in session, but lay dormant during the rest of the year. The question I struggled with is if Betsy improved this place or if she made it her own – a completely different place. Ralston says, “Betsy’s vision was that of resurrection, of reestablishing a community at sea.” In this sense, yes she changed it. However, she did so with a gentle hand that made sure to not disrupt the sacred feel of the island; the elusiveness and isolation that the island radiates. This is evident in her use of the the sail loft as the museum of the island. The building holds the artwork and history of the island within its walls, while holding the history of the surrounding area in the wood and bricks of the building itself. Betsy did put her own stamp on the island but did so carefully, trying to maintain authenticity she feels of the island. Just as the canvas was Andrew Wyeth’s mode of artwork, the island itself is Betsy’s.
Mapping more than meets the eye
Reading J.B. Harley’s “Deconstructing the Map,” my first thought was back to our first Conkling reading “Intro.” Conkling says that there are over three thousand islands off of Mid-Coast Maine, but that the exact number was unsure. Today, with satellite imaging, it would be assumed that there is a completely accurate count of the islands, but this depends on what is “accurate.” Could a local lobsterman give a more accurate description of the islands than an image could? He would have an understanding of the tides and the ins and outs of the islands, which is far outside the reach of an accurate satellite image.
This highlights the subjective effects of cartography that Harvey talks about. Cartography is rarely considered a form of art in today’s world but why? Does Google maps make a map like the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Camden insignificant? Harvey says, “The objective is to suggest that an alternative epistemology, rooted in social theory rather than in scientific positivism, is more appropriate to the history of cartography. It will be shown that even ‘scientific’ maps are a product not only of the rules of the order of geometry and reason but also of the ‘norms and values of the order of social … tradition.'” It is important to consider the history of cartography to fully appreciate it as an art form. A map is more that just a picture of an area. It tells the story of the area; who lived there in the past and who lives there now, how these people have shaped the land both deliberately and unintentionally, and how it connects and works with the places around it.
In Class Response “The Reach”
For Stella Flanders, Goat Island is not simply an island. It is the place she grew up and the place she grew old, but also everything that has happened in between and everything that is still happening in her limited time left. The space of Goat Island and the time she has spent on Goat Island are inseparable and interwoven; one cannot be without the other. Stella has lost many of her close friends and family over the years, but they remain with her spiritually and for her, physically. As she is crossing the reach, moving into the unknown, her dead husband gives her his hat, a physical and real object, which is found on her frozen body. This shows that Goat Island is independent of time. Although Stella has have passed, she will remain on Goat Island.
Three People, Three Landscapes
In D.W. Meinig’s The Beholding Eye, Meinig says “Any landscape is composed not only of what lies before our eyes but what lies within our heads.” From this, I started thinking about the different people we’ve read and talked about in class and the different versions of landscape that they would see.
First, the lobsterman, looking out at a stretch of Mid-Maine coast, would see the landscape in front of him as a combination of system and wealth. If it is his own lobstering territory, then he knows the area well; how the tide swells, the direction of the current, and the influence of the weather. On top of this, he contextualizes the landscape in front of him in terms of wealth. Meinig’s explanation of landscape as wealth is more focused on the monetary values that the views of a place can have, but for the lobster fisherman, the landscape he is looking at contains very physical and very concrete wealth, submerged and crawling around in the waters below.
For an artist, like Eric Hudson, this same landscape means something completely different. He is likely to see it in many ways; nature, habitat, maybe ideology, but most importantly he sees the landscape as aesthetic. If he finds it beautiful and meaningful, he would begin to think about how he could conceptualize and present the scene in front of him onto a canvas or photo. He would think about what the art would tell viewers and the emotions that it would evoke.
Lastly, to someone like William Cronon, talked about in Cresswell’s Genealogy of Place, the landscape in front of him would mainly be seen through the lens ideology and place. He focuses less on the physical aspects of the view in front of him, and more on the underlying factors that have shaped it. His understanding is driven by the complex interactions of people, cultures, and the environment.