Linda Connor, Coptic Monastery, Egypt, 1989

Today we talked about photographic methods of relating to the borderlands, and the border shared by scientific and artistic approaches to photography.

On the scientific side, there is the excellent multimedia site “Third View/Second Sights,” which allows access to photographs of the same sites across the West as seen in the early 1900s, the 1970s, and the present day. This comparative visual method is a powerful way of representing change over time in both cultural and natural terms.

On the artistic side, there is photographer Linda Connor’s “Odyssey” project, which represents spiritual landscapes through a vocabulary of illumination and thick darkness. The blog “On the Seawall” displays outstanding examples from the collection.

I recommend both approaches heartily as alternatives to a text-only environmental scholarship.