Cultural geographers have long argued that landscape is a text, but they
have progressed from the assumption that the task at hand is to produce
the authorized expert reading. Arguably, landscapes are best ‘read’ by
groups of people, rather than individuals, and this can form the basis of
topics for small exercises in the context of fieldwork. The landscape is
never read without awareness of other texts: the influence of years of
school geography books is not easily set aside, but neither are memories of
previously experienced places, images in films, documentaries, news broadcasts,
travel guides, advertisements, all of which transmit their own particular
message. Each person will generate multilayered meanings of a
landscape; the real interest comes when these complex meanings are put
together by a communicating group of people.
Source - p.91
Which landscapes are you going to be experiencing for the first time this half term, and which ones for the hundredth time ?
What difference does 'experience' make ?
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