Classics in human geography revisited

Progress in Human Geography

35(2) 264–270
Denis Cosgrove and Stephen ª The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission:
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Daniels (eds) (1988) The 10.1177/0309132510397462
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Iconography of Landscape:
Essays on the Symbolic
Representation, Design and Use
of Past Environments.
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Commentary 1 created, extended, altered, elaborated and, finally,

I first discovered Iconography of Landscape in obliterated by the merest touch of a button’ (p. 8)
1999, as an undergraduate student in Italy, where equally charming. I thought this sentence
the ‘cultural turn’ was just starting to reverberate. encapsulated the present and future of cultural
The book was enthusiastically presented as ‘a geography.
must’ for the aspiring ‘postmodern scholar’, A couple of years later I moved to Los
indeed as ‘the book’ on landscape in contempo- Angeles as a PhD student to find that what in
rary Anglophone geography. Unable to obtain it Italy I perceived as ‘revelations’ across the
from my local bookstore, I ordered a copy Atlantic were already ‘passé’ (or in the process
through amazon.com, which at that time also felt of becoming so). I found, for example, that maps
to me like an exciting postmodern novelty (‘excit- were more than mere instruments of power, and
ing’ except for the fact that I paid more for over- that deconstructionism was not the unproble-
seas shipping than for the book itself!). My first matic method suggested by Harley in the late
encounter with the collection was a quick one. 1980s. I also found that landscape was a concept
Disappointed that all the images were in black far more complex and contested among geogra-
and white and not particularly inspired by the phers than what I believed. I kept bumping into
19th-century paintings that seemed to dominate references to Iconography of Landscape in my
the collection, I jumped straight to the final chap- class readings at UCLA. While cultural geogra-
ter by Brian Harley, ‘Maps, knowledge and phy textbooks contrasted the iconographic
power’. As a young student interested in cartogra- approach inaugurated by the collection to
phy, I found the chapter revelatory. I felt decon- what I perceived as ‘boring’ traditional Sauerian
structionism sharpened my critical sense. And if geography, a heterogeneous phalanx attacked
not, it certainly changed my way of looking Cosgrove and Daniels from different fronts.
at maps. Flipping back to the introduction, Olwig (1996) accused the two British geogra-
I found Cosgrove and Daniels’ characterization phers of having ‘dematerialized’ landscape. Tim
of landscape as ‘a flickering text displayed on the Ingold (1993) criticized them for having obliter-
word-processor’s screen, whose meaning can be ated landscape’s everyday experiential aspect.
Classics in human geography revisited 265

Neo-Marxist geographers called for further whereas other chapters attempt more utopian,
emphasis on the material production of even spiritual projects (e.g. Davis’ religious
landscape (Mitchell, 1996). And so on. But then symbolism of trees, or Cosgrove’s Renaissance
there was another group of scholars that had con- landscapes of Veneto, ‘symbolizing an achieved
tinued to pursue the iconographic way seriously. harmony between human life and the hidden
I am thinking, for example, about the conspicu- order of creation’, p. 265). Focused primarily
ous body of writing on landscape, travel and on graphic and textual representations, the
imperialism epitomized by the work of historical collection as a whole perhaps never clearly
geographers like Felix Driver and James Ryan. fulfilled its postmodern promise to collapse the
Over the past few years, I have repeatedly distinction between representation and reality.
returned to Iconography of Landscape – and However, it opened landscape geography to
read the pages in between the introduction and the realms of imagination and creativity, with a
the last chapter. I have come to appreciate the critical eye that was absent from North American
book both as a collection containing some humanistic geography.
precious gems for the historical geographer To me Iconography of Landscape represents
(from the construction of Italian Renaissance also an interdisciplinary challenge. Theoreti-
landscapes to the political significance of forests cally, the editors took their point of departure
in Georgian England), and as a broader intellec- from art historian Erwin Panofsky’s ‘deep icono-
tual project. Today I use its introduction in my graphy’ and related it to then fashionable devel-
classes, as a key reading representative of a opments in anthropology (Clifford Geertz’s
decisive moment in the history of landscape ‘thick description’) and literary studies (Roland
studies and in our disciplinary history – indeed Barthes’ ‘postmodern’ instability of meaning).
as a key text that contributed to the shaping of Empirically, the collection brought together geo-
that moment, the ‘cultural turn’. graphers, cultural historians, a literary scholar,
To me, Cosgrove and Daniels’ introduction and a theologian. It helped geography find a place
reads like a manifesto. In the mid-1980s the two within the humanities by engaging a two-way
editors promoted a Marxist cultural approach to conversation with other disciplines. Intriguingly,
landscape which moved away from both the tra- the impact of the book has perhaps been even
ditional Sauerian approach (with its empirical greater in art history and architecture (where it
emphasis on ‘tangible landscape features’) and is still used as a course reading in many American
a humanistic geography disregardful of power PhD programs) than in geography itself. But early
(Cosgrove, 1985a; Daniels, 1985). The introduc- reviews outside our discipline also warned about
tion to Iconography of Landscape reaffirms the the limitations of the collection: most signifi-
need for a hermeneutic, interpretative cultural cantly, its reduction of landscape aesthetics to
geography. However, as Wylie observed in his mere ideology (Carlson, 1989: 198).
recent review book Landscape (2007: 69–72), Like any book, Iconography of Landscape
it presents landscape less as a deceitful veil to was a product of its time (as the famed ‘word-
be pierced ‘vertically’ (in order to uncover processor metaphor’ reminds us). It came about
power-structures) than a complex texture to be at the end of the Cold War at a time of intense
searched ‘horizontally’. The shift is nevertheless nationalistic revival in Britain (hence perhaps
far from complete and one can read tensions the predominance of 18th- and 19th-century
between the two approaches not only in the British iconic landscapes). The volume was also
introduction, but in the collection as a whole. a timely product. It appeared on the scene just
Most chapters focus on symbolic landscape and before the fall of the Berlin Wall, providing cul-
political ideology (e.g. Daniels’ and Harley’s), tural geographers (and then critical geopolitics)
266 Progress in Human Geography 35(2)

with the tools for exploring the role of symbolic at Loughborough University who opted for the
landscapes in the process of nation-making in ‘Landscape and Culture’ course taught by
the new states. One year after publication, a Denis Cosgrove. We were quick to realize that
reviewer for the Geographical Review wrote that Cosgrove’s pedagogic approach was novel:
‘if this collection is to be remembered twenty lectures took place in the dark. Blackout condi-
years from now, I predict that it will be less for tions allowed us to view, in highest definition,
its theoretical pretensions than for its several illustrated slides projected on screens to our left
examples of perceptive geographical interpreta- and right. Hesitant humanistic geographers, we
tion’ (McGreevy, 1989: 479). This has not were enlightened by studies of oil paintings,
proven to be the case. Most of its ‘empirical’ watercolours, woodcuts, panoramas, portraits,
chapters have gone largely forgotten amidst the maps, mosaics, charts, frescoes, building designs
multitude of writings on landscape, memory, and urban plans. We saw trees and transepts, vil-
and national identity the collection has inspired las and viaducts, darkness and light – differently.
over the past 20 years. The chapters that have Exercises in comparison and contrast were
been remembered and that are still at the centre designed to develop our visual literacy. Questions
of discussion are instead precisely the theoretical and conversation were geared at making us more
and methodological ones: Cosgrove and adept with a language of art, aesthetics and the
Daniels’ introduction and Harley’s final chapter. image. Throughout, Dr Cosgrove stood to
The former has become metonymic for the the rear, between the projectors, in chiaroscuro,
whole collection; the latter for the work of its pushing the right buttons, prompting talk.
author. Each has become in its own way a land- There were practical implications of imagina-
mark in the study of graphic spatial images. tive experiment in cultural inquiry. Writing in
Whether opposed to old Sauerian geographies, the gloaming was a scrawl and a strain. ‘Lights
or new emerging post-phenomenologies, Icono- up’ revealed lecture notes in knots. The limits
graphy of Landscape seems to me to have served on seeing placed an added premium on indepen-
as a ubiquitous term of comparison, as a bench- dent reading. Nevertheless, as a first-time reader
mark used to define past, current, and future of IoL, I struggled with the introductory editorial
trends. It has also inspired different generations essay, being as it concentrated on difficult
of geographers to look creatively beyond our theories of landscape. For the same reason – and
disciplinary boundaries – and perhaps this has this in spite of course requirements – there was
been its greatest contribution. but a brush with Peter Fuller’s contribution on
‘The geography of Mother Nature’. Found in
Veronica della Dora their stead were chapters by Trevor Pringle and
University of Bristol, UK Penelope Woolf whose geographies appealed
by seeming more homely, more substantive.
But, as is the beginning iconographer’s habit,
Commentary 2 I too slavishly attended to the observant argu-
How thoroughly is a Classic read? How was it ments of others, in the process cannibalizing
first understood, then subsequently judged? And their precise constructions. Pringle’s exposition
by whom? In respect of The Iconography of of Landseer’s regal art of the Highlands suffered
Landscape (hereafter IoL) the reflections sup- most from my attentions. A coursework essay
plied here are personal, partial and appropriately carbon-copied his interpretations of painted
provincial. A year after the appearance of this form, while seeing fit to brutally sever off a
co-edited collection, I was among a class of semiotic structure inspired by Barthes. Of
dozen or so second-year undergraduate students a ramshackle exam answer loosely based on
Classics in human geography revisited 267

Woolf’s careful cultural contextualization of the seven-and-a-half pages allocated to their

construction of the Paris Opera House, the less introductory remarks. Cosgrove and Daniels’
said the better. Formative lessons learnt, revisit- short essay – an anatomy of iconography – has
ing the pair is rather like being reacquainted with come to encapsulate a recognizably influential
old friends; might it be that intense efforts at episode of geographical endeavour, one stretch-
duplication make for especially lasting memories? ing back to encompass earlier statements on
Read in the company of the other 12 essays landscape theory (Cosgrove, 1985b), and that
that comprise the main body of the book, they presages influential theoretical arguments then
serve well to remind that, when originally yet to appear in print (Daniels, 1989). By differ-
conceived, this was an intellectual exercise ent accounts, IoL ushers in: a more critical vein
grounded in historical geography. The book’s of geographical humanism; a Marxian analytic
subtitle makes plain the fact: ‘Essays on the for landscape studies; an unprecedentedly
symbolic representation, design and use of past refined positioning of geographical knowledge
environments’. Concise and explanatory, the amid existing theories of visual culture from art
editors’ words were well chosen, accurately history, social anthropology and cultural studies;
reflecting the historical approach taken by the a new interpretive emphasis on a symbolism
majority of chapter authors in empirical studies understood to imbue cultural texts; and a too-
of built, painted and natural forms, variously settled system of cultural signification that
represented in word and image. By these mea- does not admit in enough of the life of landscape.
sures alone, essays by Hugh Prince and John As introductions go, the essay has been credited,
Lucas continue to shine brightly. Similarly, it and freighted, with responsibility for a great deal
is notable that the collection originated with a indeed. Without it, geography’s further adven-
conference organized under the auspices of the tures in landscape would doubtless have panned
Historical Geography Research Group (of the out differently, and much less colourfully. Peter
IBG), and eventually appeared in the Cambridge Fuller’s essay (criminally skipped over in the
University Press book series ‘Cambridge Studies past) today reads like a companion piece, a
in Historical Geography’. These snippets of languid extension of the editors’ shared enthusi-
disciplinary context demand notice since the asm for John Ruskin’s aesthetics, and an eloquent
historical orientation of the book has tended to appeal for new registers of political, ethical and
be overlooked in the many subsequent commen- environmental attention in landscape studies.
taries that speak first of IoL’s conceptual impact Illustratively, if the darkness of certain image
in cultural geography, and then its wider lega- reproductions in IoL can underwhelm the
cies among scholars in the arts and humanities. elegance of observation in print, there are fine
Likely enough, there continue to be readers who, details to enjoy too – of a kind that must have
like my younger self, find sustenance first in required arm-twisting at the publishing house.
the rich, directed detail of the book’s historical Cosgrove’s contribution shows the 16th-century
scholarship and the adroit cultural interpretation Veneto resplendent with figures arranged
of texts in their context. landscape-style across the full breadth of opposite
But of course, as well we know, this is not the and facing pages.
only story of the book’s reception. Indeed, it is In key respects, my early exposure to IoL was
not the story. For this narrative we can turn to unusually privileged. Knowing academic
critical reviews and textbook histories of authors face-to-face as teachers can make a
intellectual change in the discipline. Hereabouts, striking and telling difference to the experience
IoL has come to stand for so much more than the of learning. Undergraduate encounters with co-
editors could ever conceivably cover in the editor Stephen Daniels were few, but remarkable
268 Progress in Human Geography 35(2)

nonetheless. At Cosgrove’s invitation, he travelled In the mid-1980s, when the book was being
from neighbouring University of Nottingham to prepared, word-processing was a new, cutting-
deliver guest lectures on the final-year compul- edge process of text production. Some younger
sory course exploring the history of geographical readers may not know that the ‘word-processor’
thought. Charismatic presences, C-and-D seemed referred to in the introductory chapter’s closing
very much the matching pair. There were fedora passage as a model of postmodern meaning was
hats, long woollen coats (dog-tooth check), lapel not one of the many programme applications, in
badges and overheard talk, punctuated with con- many media, now installed on their portable
spiratorial cackles. ‘Interchangeable’, we smirked. computer, but (as Wikipedia says) ‘a stand-
‘Straight off the set of a Cold War thriller.’ But, alone office machine, combining the keyboard
apart from the whispered asides, there was further text-entry and printing functions of an electric
exemplary instruction on the arts of iconographic typewriter with a dedicated computer for the edit-
interpretation. And, though we had no ken of it, ing of text’. The book’s contributors submitted
there was already prospering an East Midlands their texts on hard-copy typewritten manuscripts,
tradition of landscape study with signature which Denis Cosgrove and I then photocopied
style. That mode of cultural study endures, in and copy-edited to be typeset for proof-making.
searches for the meaning of the world, in places The final text of the book’s introduction,
which make a world of difference. ‘Iconography and Landscape’, which was then
and has remained one of the most widely cited
Hayden Lorimer chapters, was word-processed, co-written and
University of Glasgow, UK co-edited in one process. This made the work of
co-authorship both materially easier and more
protracted, in exchanging and altering passages,
to achieve a seamless-sounding single voice, or
Author’s response at least a harmonious counterpoint, and also more
In revisiting their encounters with The Iconogra- challenging, for it smoothed over the kind of
phy of Landscape as they occurred in contrasting differences in authorial position on imagery
periods and places, Veronica della Dora and which della Dora identifies in our individual
Hayden Lorimer raise a series of issues about the chapter contributions, and of course left no mate-
historical-geographies of reading books which rial trace on the text of the various developments
have acquired the status of classic texts, including and authorial exchanges.
the ways those encounters are recollected. And for As all new technologies do, word-processing
me, as the book’s co-editor, they also raise issues enhanced the material resistances, and reality
of the historical-geographies of writing, and its effect, of the outmoded technology, of the other
wider world of authorship, and how that world is chapters with their sometimes manually typed
revisited, reconstructed from the perspective of pages, incised lettering, encrusted correcting fluid,
the present. Recent work in human geography has and our waxy blue pencil editing, all destined for
drawn attention to the technological spaces which the ‘hot metal’ of CUP’s printing presses. Such
subtend the production and performance of pages took on an older aura, of the palimpsest, the
culture. As well as the closely bound material and overwritten manuscript, which was the presiding
textual processes of book production, the making metaphor of deep landscape reading, notably in
of the Iconography of Landscape was also shaped W.G. Hoskins’ influential work The Making of the
at a theoretical and pedagogical level by two English Landscape. Word-processing in contrast
technologies which these commentaries highlight: seemed to us a metaphor for the no less alluring
word-processing and slide projection. mutability of meaning, and bricolage imagery of
Classics in human geography revisited 269

‘postmodernism’, a phrase which seemed to by comparing finely resolved details on paintings

disappear as suddenly as it dazzled the academic with those on maps, both of which would appear
world, rather like the images it described, as formally equivalent images on the screen,
‘obliterated by the merest touch of a button’(some- speaking to each other. The conversational space
times I think at the last minute from academic of interpretation was further articulated by the
texts). The metaphor was never intended (as some performative triangle of screen, lecturer and
critics assumed, and the reference to the machine audience, which (when skilfully manipulated)
should have made clear) to dematerialize land- encouraged everyone in the room, under the
scape, nor to imply that landscapes were only cloak of semi-darkness, to venture hesitant and
looked at, not lived in; rather it was to emphasize speculative remarks which would (on good days)
the imaginative complication and instability in the develop into a coherent interpretation (Nelson,
making and meaning of landscape. The erosion of 2000). If the cultural geography class seemed
traditional worlds in the moneyed, consumer more séance than seminar at times, this was
culture of the 1980s recalled the same process in because it worked a tradition of theatrical, trans-
other periods and places. We were describing a formative pedagogy. This included traditions of
recurring, historical process in which representa- observational and dialogical fieldwork in geo-
tion is ingredient to reality, in which surface graphy, which Cosgrove and I saw as no less
matters as much as depth, and in which the theatrical for being more conspicuously physi-
pleasures and pains of estrangement in landscape cal, a field of vision where the plane of double
apprehension are no less significant than the pieties projection in the classroom, which cut through
of dwelling. the shape and scale of things, intersected with
While word-processing has been extended transects through the morphology of landscape
and elaborated as the dominant medium of (Cosgrove and Daniels, 1989).
writing and now publishing, slide projectors are Double projection could stand as a metaphor of
of course now obsolete as teaching aids, replaced the co-editing of the Iconography of Landscape
by the digital imaging technology of data projec- and the wider collaborations and conversations
tors. They may seem clunky now, but in the which informed it. Della Dora rightly identifies
1980s fully automated slide projectors, with long a contrast in chapter contributions between those
leads and buttons for advancing images and focusing deconstructively on the ideology of
focusing, and carousels which could be fully landscape imagery and those delineating more
sequenced, were state-of-the-art teaching aids visionary and utopian projects. It is a dual
that not only illustrated lectures but effectively perspective which informs the chapter which
shaped them. As Lorimer notes, the difference Lorimer singles out as ‘criminally disregarded’,
with the cultural geography teaching Cosgrove Peter Fuller’s ‘Geography of Mother Nature’,
and I did at Loughborough and Nottingham was which upon re-reading I found more compelling
the use of two slide projectors (wow!) to compare than most with a currency for recent geographical
and contrast images. This was a conventional interest in questions of nature and aesthetics.
teaching technique in art history, a key discipline Fuller was the most prominent art critic in
for the book’s editorial perspective. As Robert 1980s Britain (he was killed in a car crash in
Nelson has shown, double slide projection deci- 1990) and the essay found him in an (unresolved)
sively shaped art history as an interpretive field, transition from iconoclastic materialism to a
particularly an iconographic approach which spiritual utopianism, cleaving to a kind of High
compared works in different media (paintings Church Marxism informed by the work of John
with architecture) and could reveal correspon- Ruskin, grounding theory in a regard for the
dences across received cultural hierarchies, say details of the physical world. The book’s editorial
270 Progress in Human Geography 35(2)

line also held together two different perspectives Cosgrove D (1985a) Social Formation and Symbolic
on the geographical imagination which are Landscape. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble.
evident in the editors’ respective single-authored, Cosgrove D (1985b) Prospect, perspective and the
substantive chapters: Cosgrove’s focused on evolution of the landscape idea. Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers 10: 45–62.
ideal forms and cosmic visioning, Daniels’ on
Cosgrove D and Daniels S (1989) Fieldwork as theatre:
ideological images and narratives of nature.
A week’s performance in Venice and its region. Journal
If The Iconography of Landscape is now a of Geography in Higher Education 13(2): 169–182.
‘classic in human geography’, we might figure Daniels S (1985) Arguments for a humanistic geography.
these positions in classical pose and drapery as In: Johnston R (ed.) The Future of Geography. London:
Ptolemaic and Herodotan, or in revisiting the Methuen, 143–158.
book as a contemporary text we might robe Daniels S (1989) Marxism, culture and the duplicity of land-
the editorial figures in those retro-chic long scape. In: Peet R and Thrift N (eds) New Models in
coats and fedoras and describe their perspec- Geography, Volume II. London: Unwin Hyman, 196–220.
tives in media studies style, as two different Ingold T (1993) The temporality of landscape. World
but corresponding projections, one a slide of Archaeology 25: 152–171.
Renaissance Venice, the other of Georgian McGreevy P (1989) The Iconography of Landscape (book
review). Geographical Review 79(4): 477–479.
England.
Mitchell D (1996) The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers
and the California Landscape. Minneapolis, MN:
Stephen Daniels
University of Minnesota Press.
University of Nottingham, UK Nelson R (2000) The slide lecture, or the work of art
‘history’ in the age of mechanical reproduction. Critical
Inquiry 26(3): 414–434.
References Olwig K (1996) Recovering the substantive nature of
Carlson A (1989) The Iconography of Landscape (book landscape. Annals of the Association of American
review). The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Geographers 86: 630–653.
47(2): 196–198. Wylie J (2007) Landscape. Abingdon: Routledge.
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