Adams, Mark ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-7952-3877 (2015) Work in progress. Mark Adams. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This mutli-component output asks how photography can reveal the significance of urban
planning and infrastructure for pedestrian experiences of the landscape in an era of
climate change. Situated in California and Texas in 2015, this research draws on the
difficulty of accessing and traversing locations in environments whose have been shaped
by America’s continued reliance on cars and fossil fuels. It combines a walking led
methodology that acknowledges social and storytelling dimensions discussed by Tim
Ingold. The anthropological aspects of negotiating spaces are explored here in relation to
my photographic practice, which investigate the embodied, lived experience of these
spaces and projects on the ground.

The making, and curation of the sequential images is a process of investigation that locates
American landscapes within a geopolitical context - specifically political motivations
towards expansion and regeneration leading to air pollution and environmental damage in
American cities such as Houston Texas. This is developed through a methodology of
walking as a generative strategy and a form of sequential narration recorded using
saturated medium format colour film.

This body of work has developed in dialogue with the New Topographic photographer’s
from the 1970’s who explore the growing consequences of urban development and its
related impact on the environment. New critical insights are formed which challenge Marc
Auge’s (1992) notions of ‘non-place’s to suggest another kind of space which questions the
binary place / non-place dichotomy that Auge discusses.

The positioning of photographs on billboards on the streets of Belfast extends the
discourse to an audience of 400,000 commuters and provides a dialogue between the ‘non
places’ depicted and the traditional ‘anthropological’ ‘places’ that Auge discusses.
The project’s dissemination in the form of a solo exhibition at PS Mirabel and international
group exhibitions in Fuse Art Space, Bradford and Belfast, underscores its research
imperatives that respond to COP21 climate change conference, and related environmental
concerns caused by greenhouse gas emissions and its affect on infrastructure.

Item Type:	Other
Status:	Unpublished
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR T Technology > TR Photography > TR624-835 Applied photography (including artistic, commerical)
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/4607

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