As a visual expression of the world we live in, landscapes and forests are central to a contemporary photography concerned with the manifestations of the Anthropocene. If the concept of solastalgia developed by Glenn Albrecht speaks of a sense of placelessness, despair and incomprehension induced by the many manifestations of climate change, I want to suggest that Lorraine Gilbert’s photographs of Canadian landscapes and forestscapes problematise our relationship with the planet by investigating the places we create for ourselves and the relationships we cultivate with other living organisms. I will suggest that Gilbert’s work, beyond its Anthropocenic expression, offers an aesthetic of relationality that seeks to evoke places of possibility rather than placelessness and loss. This paper will investigate the photographic forms which lead Gilbert to reclaim, remember, and reinvent non-exploitative relations to the land.
Gwendolyne Cressman (Mon,) studied this question.