Photographing Nature

In her essay ‘The Image-World’ Susan Sontag suggests that, unlike a painting, a photograph is ‘not only like its subject, a homage to the subject. It is part of, an extension of that subject; and a potent means of acquiring it, of gaining control over it.’ The photograph becomes a surrogate for the photographed, but also the means by which we experience or re-experience the moment captured. The viewer is the consumer, and our knowledge is increasingly acquired through photographs, through the vast catalogue of images constantly available to refer to, and which, in turn, influences the way we will experience the next. It is not that images are so faithfully representational of reality, but that reality seems to confirm what we have seen in pictures. Landscapes, in their geographical specificity, are homogenised by photography. Our expectation of a place is often defined by images of other places, and our persistence to photograph the places we have seen affirms our perceived authority as consumers, owners, and in control of our environments and nature.

Berlin-based photographer Conor Clarke considers our relationship with nature, and the ways in which