Comments on: The poetic and the labyrinth https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-poetic-and-the-labyrinth/ Gardenvisit.com Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:20:44 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 By: Christine https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-poetic-and-the-labyrinth/#comment-359 Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:20:44 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=715#comment-359 Thankyou. I wasn’t aware of Bruce Chatwin’s book. I look forward to reading it! One of my friend’s has her travel writings published…and being a writer is the pursuit of her soul…so I don’t suppose her work would be pretentious. [But then I haven’t read her work either.]

Reading travel writing is a new genre for me.

Living in a place and travelling through or to a place are also different experiences which give different perspectives.

]]> By: Tom Turner https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-poetic-and-the-labyrinth/#comment-358 Sat, 03 Jan 2009 06:26:54 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=715#comment-358 Steve Parish’s photographs are beautiful and led me to try a Flickr search:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=australia+outback&ss=2&page=5
This is often a good way of discovering how visitors experience a place, though it tells more about what they expect to see than what the place is really like.
The account of the Outback which interested me the most was Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines. I like ‘travel writing’, though it seems a pretentious activity.

]]> By: Christine https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-poetic-and-the-labyrinth/#comment-357 Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:02:04 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=715#comment-357 It is exceptionally difficult to photograph because of the particular qualities it has…The Outback is a place you need to experience. Perhaps only experience gives you the ability to observe and photograph it. Steve Parish is a very well known Australian wildlife photographer. He captures something of the aesthetic beauty (but notice the viewpoints are not that of the ordinary observer).

1. OUTBACK [http://www.steveparish.com.au/shop?cat=1025]
2. RED CENTRE[http://www.steveparish.com.au/shop?cat=1014]
3. TOP END [http://www.steveparish.com.au/shop?cat=1020]

And in many ways (if you are not from Australia) it would be an advantage to have a local guide to prepare the experience for you or you for the experience!

For example,’the road trip’ is an particularly American and Australian type of experience. Much of the way the Outback needs to be experienced (by car, train and plane) is very unfamiliar to Europeans. It is possible to get trapped beside flooding creeks for days….or not to see another human being or evidence of their existence for long periods at a time. It is about travelling through what seem to be large empty spaces and experiencing extremes of arid climate. It is about appreciating the beauty of an endless horizon, silence, night noises and huge starry skies.

And beneath the local experience of landscape is yet another more ancient layer of indigenous experiences and insights…I don’t know that it is possible to be a tourist in this landscape…

]]> By: Tom Turner https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-poetic-and-the-labyrinth/#comment-356 Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:57:53 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=715#comment-356 In some ways ephemeral art is more spiritual than the eternal masterpieces which clog up art galleries: it is done for the joy of creation – and not so much for fame or power or wealth. Andy Wharhol and Damien Hirst have produced art with little spiritual quality and much material value. Sand artists, pavement artists and lonely shepherds work for different values.

I am sure I would like the Outback if I ever got there – but with a few exceptions the photographs I have seen do not attract me the least!

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