Photography as Exercise of Memory in Order to Reassess, Recompose and Revive Landscapes

The article outlines the main features of landscape photography, as tool for discovering landscape change additionally to cultural and perceptive transformations of the context. The main problems addressed by the article, in relation with photography as interpretation tool, are the temporal evolution of landscape, specificity of place, constitutive elements of landscape, and the way in which photography can modify the perception of a landscape. In accordance, photography can be interpreted as a descriptive image of constitutive (structural) elements of a landscape. A known landscape, without suffering any transformation, can modify its image due to lack of structural representation elements perceived by a viewer. In last years, we face increased interest for using photography as tool to identify and interpret landscape change. We use photography as representation and description of a landscape, as testimony for its evolution, identity and features. From this perspective, decoding a photo can reveal specific elements, features of a landscape or can lead to discover a new landscape, modified by cultural, sociological and perceptive factors; in landscape, study becomes important the way in which photography is used and understood as interpretation and representation tool.