Q&A with Eugenie Shinkle, Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster
Eugenie will be in conversation with one of The Mosaic Rooms current exhibiting artist’s, Corinne Silva, for our upcoming event New Visual Languages: Landscape, Politics & the Lens.
Q1/ Please can you briefly introduce yourself and explain what your main area of research is?
I originally trained as a civil engineer, then went on to study photography, art history, and critical theory, obtaining my doctorate from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2003. I am currently Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster.
My academic research encompasses both visual and scholarly practice, and reflects interests which have developed over a 20-year period. I write on a variety of subjects including fashion photography, landscape photography, and visual technologies. My most recent publications include the edited volume Emerging Landscapes: Between Production and Representation (2014), to which I contributed a chapter entitled Prelude to a future: global risk and environmental apocalypse in contemporary landscape photography.
My research into landscape photography – while drawing from disciplines such as architectural theory, human geography and political theory – also focuses on ways that the perception of landscape images is shaped and informed by embodied experience. In addition to my more theory-driven work, for the past three years I have also been working on a large-scale research project examining the recent (post-1970) history of landscape photography in the UK.
Q2/ In relation to the above, what do you find interesting about The Mosaic Rooms new exhibition My Sister Who Travels?
The history and practice of landscape photography has, for a long time, been shaped by a somewhat exclusive set of conventions and discourses. I’m interested in the way that the work in the exhibition challenges and extends these, exploring landscape as an embodied, gendered practice.
Corinne Silva, Imported Landscapes, 2010
Q3/You must have come across some interesting landscape photographers as part of your research, do you have any favourites – why?
I’ve got too many favourites to list them all here! I’ve recently discovered the work of Irish photographer Mary McIntyre. Her photographs draw on traditional landscape painting, but they aren’t about visual spectacle. Instead, they explore the kind of fascination with detail that emerges when one knows a location very well.
Mary McIntyre, The Dream II, 2009
Join Eugenie Shinkle at The Mosaic Rooms’ event New Visual Languages: Landscape, Politics & the Lens, 7pm, 24.07.14. Entry FREE. rsvp@mosaicrooms.org