Simon Schama- Landscape and Memory

Originally published in 1995 Simon Schama released one of his popular books titled 'Landscape and Memory'. It was deemed to be an unconventional history book that helped provide evidence in an argument by Schama formed together using poetic stories and impressions which gave it the contextual detail that any great novel would have. 

'Landscape and Memory' examines our own relationship to the landscape around us which includes: rivers, mountains and forests and how each one of them has had an impact on cultures and people's perspectives/ imaginations. We begin to then start alternating these connections and ideas about the landscapes to fit our current need. For example, if a forest was to have been set on fire by someone and it spread some people would look at the facts and say that someone started the fire where as someone else may say that global warming played a part. Then we begin to create a divide in our ideas and Simon's aim was to create a book to challenge these views and make us understand our connection to the land without causing any misconceptions.

For me i read a small segment of the book from a friend of mine and found that the level of language he uses really gets you to stop, think and truly questions my opinion as to how we connect with these surroundings. I feel as though for my own work i wanted to study Simon's to see how he was able to draw people into this idea in the simplest way possible without over complicating anything. I have decided that for my own work i will decide on my concept and idea and share it but at the same time not allow my synopsis to anchor the idea to the images but just provide some small context.

Overall, i did find some of his work quite confusing and technical but was able to get an idea on what Simon was trying to achieve. I am going to read more in depth into his work over time as i feel he will inspire a lot of my future pieces due to the way he thinks about the connections between us and landscape.