Defining A Pictorial Terrain:
Recomposing the Shire

I examined the Shire as a pictorial terrain, a place made as a series of composed views, and a garden held in place against the forces that are eroding and changing it. The objective was to alter the place using photographs to suggest holding a landscape in place. I photographed the Shire in ways that exclude depth texture and form, but instead sets it up as a series of flat shapes and interchanges of light and dark, reinforcing the compositional structure of the garden. I used a HOLGA camera (intentionally blurry, dark and endless depth of field). The final photographs are 36” x 42”. They are creased from folding and use, like maps.