Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore how walking through a rural area of Victoria, Australia, is continuously characterised by encounters with light. Light solicits attention, usually unreflexively, in how it is deflected, absorbed or reflected, attuning bodies towards the close at hand or the distant

Paper long abstract:

Drawing upon my previous work in investigating This paper seeks to explore how walking through a rural area of Victoria, Australia, is continuously characterised by encounters with light. Light solicits attention, but this is usually unreflective. By deploying photography as a means to explore the distinctive ways in which light is reflected across water, is absorbed by dark rocks and holes in the ground, produces shadows of varying depth and density, dazzles the eyes, and tones the colours of the landscape at various scales. Walking cannot be conceived as a seamless progress but is sequentially typified by different modes of attention and attunement. In addition, the landscape may be identified by these myriad defects of light and the ways in which humans sensorially encounter space and make sense of what they see according to a plethora of cultural conventions. As a relative stranger to the Australian landscape, a landscape in which the luminescence and clarity of the defects of light are unfamiliar one accustomed to the toned down, murkier tones of the British countryside, such effects seem more prominent, revealing the situated ways in which we inhabit place and landscape.