Landscape and memory

Abstract

Landscape and memory are intertwined in the cultural geographies of being human. For Simon Schama (1995: 10) ‘it is our shaping perception that makes the difference between raw matter and landscape’. Thus by situating memory as a force of perception shaping our constructions of landscape, this chapter outlines the complexities of the connections between landscape and memory and figures these complexities through an account of the Nurturing Ecologies research project run with landscape artist Graham Lowe in the English Lake District between 2003 and 2009. In the first part of this chapter my focus will be on the concepts of, and relationship between landscape and memory. Here, I will follow this relationship through from landscape iconography, emotional/affective landscapes, nostalgia and material memories. In the second part of the chapter, I will exemplify how these conceptual accounts of landscape memory have figured in my research fieldwork, in practice.