Landprints
Reflections on Place and Landscape

From one of Australia's foremost thinkers, a uniquely broad-ranging 1997 collection of essays on landscape.

George Seddon (Author), Gustav Nossal (Foreword by)

9780521659994, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 September 1998

290 pages
24.4 x 17 x 1.5 cm, 0.47 kg

'Landprints is a delightful book … it deserves as wide an audience as possible.' Intercultural Studies

This is an extraordinary 1997 collection of essays about landscape. With a lively and engaging style, George Seddon considers everything from creating a garden in Freemantle, to locating ancient plants while wandering in a far North Queensland rainforest to analysing the geological features on either side of the tram tracks in Collingwood. Yet while the book celebrates Australia, and covers many topics that seem familiar and everyday, it is challenging and provocative. Seddon is acutely aware of the moral and environmental aspects of history and is able to present local and regional history on a grand scale. Landprints reflects a lifetime devoted to questions about landscape: the ways we use and abuse the land, how Australian landscapes are different from European landscapes and how this land makes those who live on it uniquely, if ambiguously, Australian.

Prelude
Fugue for six voices
Part I. Talking: The Language of Landscape: 1. The nature of nature
2. Words and weeds
3. Journeys through a landscape
4. On the road to Botany Bay
5. A Snowy River reader
Part II. Perceiving: The Eyes and the Mind: 6. The evolution of perceptual attitudes
7. Eurocentrism and Australian science, some examples
8. Figures in the landscape
9. Dreaming up a rainforest
10. Home thoughts from abroad
Part III. Locating: The Sense of Place: 11. Sense of place
12. The genius loci and the Australian landscape
13. Cuddlepie and other surrogates
14. Jet-set and parish pump
15. Placing the debate
Part IV. Making: Creating Gardens and the Evolution of Styles: 16. The suburban garden in Australia
17. The Australian backyard
18. Gardening across Australia
19. The garden as paradise
Part V. Analysing: Ideologies and Attitudes: 20. The rhetoric and ethics of the environmental protest movement
21. The perfectibility of Nature
Part VI. Sharing and Caring: Ecological Frameworks: 22. Biological pollution
23. The lie of the land
24. Eating the future
25. Felling the 'Groves of Life'
Coda: learning to be at home: 'and then came Venice'.

Subject Areas: The environment [RN], Cultural studies [JFC], Landscape art & architecture [AMV]