THE LANDSCAPE INTERTWINED

Laura Hackney

Meeting Place
Ireland is a place of both beautiful landscapes and blue oceans, a place where ocean and land are both central to the definition of nature, and indeed the place between them one of the most crucial points of all. Taken on a walk along Howth Head north of Dublin, Meeting Place depicts a transition from the hills of Ireland to its surrounding waters, the slope of the hill leading down into the ocean while the lichen covered rock points the viewers eye out to sea. One flows continuously into the other and back again as the gulls, birds which live upon land, but thrive at sea, swoop back towards the coastal cliffs in a gentle arc, symbolizing the relationship of the nature at this place between land and sea. The gentle, almost pastel colors and soft lighting help unify the piece in an odd way; one the one hand the yellows of the hills contrast sharply against the desaturated blue-green of the waves, yet all at once the soft colors seem to fit together perfectly. This unity in difference seems to well define the importance of Irelands coastline, for both the land and the sea become nourishing and intertwined in this moment to create a cultural ground critical to the Irish history and life.

Vigilant
The Cliffs of Moher seem to rise from the waves like great watchtowers or a huge stone wall, guarding Ireland from the west and looking out across the Atlantic to the worlds beyond. This everwatchful landscape helps shape the western coast of the island, protecting it for miles, and indeed is one of the most well-known features of Irelands landscape. In this shot, the mighty cliffs seem to tower over the raging sea, withstanding its attempts to pull the Cliffs down or split them asunder. The white foamy line of an oncoming tide combining with the small corner of rock in the bottom right hand corner, and the natural perspective on the cliffs creates a triangle to point directly at the middle most cliff, pulling a viewers attention directly to that center point and the way it rises from the sea. It places importance on these Cliffs and they are further made to seem mighty by their contrastthey stand out with their greens and greys against the blues of the ocean and the sky, and seemingly only to connect to the water by the white foam along their base. They seem to rise this way, to stand, and to protect, separate and withstanding against the crushing forces beyond them, as they become almost reminiscent of a great fortress wall, intertwining the Irish people and their buildings into the very landscape they almost seem to mimic.

Watch Post
What perhaps is amazing about the grounds of Blarney Castle is the way the entire castle seems to meld perfectly with the surrounding grounds and landscape, from the cliff that runs directly beneath the castle walls and the cliff that supports them, to this old guard tower that still stands watchfully over the grounds. The old watch post seems to emerge from the earth like an old tree trunk, long since having lost its greatest height and splendor, but still there as a reminder and a story-teller of the past. They grey of the stone separates it from the vibrant greens and golden light that spills across the grass, but all at once the lighting simultaneously returns it as being a part of the landscape. The grey-brown dirt path that draws the eye across the picture plane to the ancient tower and the branches of the tree that seem to stretch to touch it remind us that it is now as much a part of the landscape as the trees themselves. Indeed, the old, greying tree trunk hidden away on the left side of the photograph seems almost to mimic the tower, or perhaps the tower mimics it. This strange parallel seems to signifying the way that this tower, this human construction, and the nature around it all connect and interweave to form an integral part of the cultural and lifestyle in Ireland.

Golden Fields
The thought of Irish landscapes tends to be of rolling green hills or sparse grasses amongst the rocky Connacht hills. Fields full of wild flowers seems more for France or the Netherlands than Ireland, and yet wild flowers and herbs grow everywhere along the Irish landscape. In an old forgotten field on the grounds of Blarney Castle, these flowers have spread and reclaimed what was once controlled by man. The old fence posts still surround the field and keep them from spreading, and next to the field of gold stands a green pasture, still controlled, and still being used for horses, yet this field has been given over to the flowers that grew emerged within it.. The grounds of a still inhabited mansion might spread out just on the other side of a fence, but here golden and white flowers reign and surround an old solitary fence post that still stands near the tree, but yet they do not consume it. Similarly, human beings have allowed this natural landscape to exist in peace, giving it its very own space in which to flourish. This landscape then, with its vibrant greens, golds, and blues, stands then as a reminder of the relationship between even the most controlled areas of human development and the natural landscape about it, as the two exist in harmony

Rising Wave
It become strange how much the landscape of Ireland and its oceans meld together, and yet in images such as this it becomes apparent just how much the two can interweave. Rising Wave, taken on the small island connected to the mainland by the carrick-a-rede rope bridge on coast of Northern Ireland, is an image of mimicry. The grass seems to the viewer like a wave swept along by the winds over the tides, the long grasses like the evershifting waters of an ocean, and rises up above like a wave about the crest over the sand. The brown grasses spread amongst the lush greens seems like white foam carried inland by the sea on the waves, and the gentle flow the hill mimics further the soothing motions of the ocean. In this strange interweaving of landscape and ocean, the land itself seems ready to flow gently over itself and swirl about the viewers feet. Suddenly, the line between land and sea becomes blurred and, if only for an instant, falls away completely.

Cityscape
The strange, geometrical rocks of Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland create an odd, almost reminiscent image that is both natural and familiar, yet alien and uncanny all at once. The rocks seems almost placed on purpose and constructed by hand, not naturally occurring, and indeed seem in color and form to resemble our cities. Their grey color reminds one of paved roads, and then the Causeway is transformed again, changed by its uneven nature to become the cobblestones of our older cities like Dublin or parts of London, or the brick roads of old Boston and New York. Meanwhile, the stones in the foreground, with their strange speckling of yellow-gold and white mimic both the colors found in the markings of our roads and graffiti on the sides of buildings, jutting up away from the ground. They become traces, small works of art, left behind by the many years they have stood there and by the many feet that have climbed over them, just as we tend to scratch little marks in the sides of trees and on the stalls of bathrooms, or leave flourishing murals in the middle of the night on tunnel walls. Giants Causeway becomes a little city, with small streets and alleys, and broad roads that run along towering skyscrapers and little homes, each bearing the marks and evidence of the memories of many years, and all that have come amongst this natural city. One has to wonder then, did we mimic the landscape before us when we made our cities, or is the landscape altered by our constructions? Or perhaps, just perhaps, both are integrated together, continuously flowing together to form one image.

Reclaim
We may build walls, build great castles and homes, construct great stone monastic cities, but in the end the land always finds a way to reclaim what was taken. The old monastic city in the Wicklow Mountains still stands quietly, a silent record of what once was, the peaceful stone structures and foundations still present, though exposed, but the lush green of the landscape has begun to return to the grey stone. This wall, stacked with care, the rocks selected by hand, is still in perfect condition, but lichen, moss, and small ferns have begun to grow within its cracks and crevices, intertwining the human-made boundary with the wild mountains it stands in. The wall itself, as it moves out of focus and retreats away towards the right of the picture-plane, almost looks like the incline of the mountain seen in the background, further tying the land and building together, and indeed, the mountain seems almost to rise off the out-of-focus sector of the wall, as if the two continue as two parts of one whole. This relationship is further enforced by the color: the green of the vegetation ties the wall back into the landscape of the green mountain, and the grey of the stones pulls the wall into a relationship with the cloudy sky, binding the image together in its continuous cycle.

The Maze Hills

Looking out over the island of Inisheer to the west of Galway provides a strange view, as if you stand almost looking back in time at a place that seems both completely natural and yet constructed. Inisheer is covered in a maze of short stone walls that delineate roads and territories as old as the village itself, the stone structures winding and snaking over and around the hills as if they have always been there, risen from the very earth itself. The lines of the walls lead back into the picture plane, and then become scattered and almost random, a strange image of planning, so that it mimics the random, yet carefully perfected lines found in the natural world. In their complete enveloping of the island, and with their rough stacked appearance, the walls seems almost a natural part of the island itself, as bushes and vegetation entangle and grow alongside the stone walls, but do not quite cross the boundaries they set. There exists almost an agreement between the two; the landscape will accept the walls that have been constructed and flourish off them, but it will respect the walls all at once and honor the borders they set. The result presents itself as an intertwining of land and human construction in a checkered landscape, a landscape quilt that spreads out as far as the eye