Phenomenological Experiences in Nature

In this paper I discuss my ongoing photographic work, The Orchard. In making this work, my interest centred on ways in which we perceive, interact with, and represent nature. Is it ever possible to have a unique and meaningful encounter or relationship with the natural world or are we destined to be alienated from it in our increasingly urban and technological Western societies? If this possibility exists, then can it be conveyed through representation and, in particular, photography, the tool of enlightenment vision. Human geographers previously have failed to “come to grips with the theoretical problem of nature” (Fitzsimmons 1989: 107), ignoring it in discussions of space and exhibiting an urban bias in radical concerns. However, recently there has been a reawakening of the debate on ‘the question of nature’, trespassing on the territories of natural science. Whatmore points to two opposing strands of social theory: ‘social constructionism’ (‘postmodern’, socially constructed nature of scientific enquiry or technological enterprise. “Nature is the always already crafted product of human interpretation.” Critical analysis of this inescapably mediated Nature becomes fixed on the social hierarchies and discursive conventions and devices of Nature’s inscription by (and in) landscape paintings, TV nature programmes, computer models and so on) and ‘natural realism’, where nature is ontologically separate from its social representation and exists in a real, objective world. These opposing approaches echo the binary opposition of ‘the natural’ and ‘the social’. The challenge is to break out of these binaries of nature/culture, but this is more easily said than done.