Photo/synthesis: Photography, pedagogy and place in a northern landscape

This study represents a personal currere, an autobiographical and pedagogical attentiveness to the experience of walking in the land of northern British Columbia, and to the process of writing and photography as ways to understand philosophically, ecologically and pedagogically what it means to experience a particular lived place in nature. The pre-Socratic principle of a spiritual exercise is, in this study, an exercise in attentiveness to sources of self in nature, applying specifically the philosopher, Roland Barthes' term, the punctum, for the phenomenon of an intense and personal experience viewing a photograph. A philosophical exploration of my northern landscape, focusing on my photographs, taken as I walk the trails of the Lakes District, is a spiritual exercise articulated as the relationship between energy and light, and represented metaphorically as photo/synthesis in three ways: As Remembrance of the northern winter landscape of my childhood; as Recognition of the resemblance among elements in nature and a synthesis of aspects of wildness and self in the experience of the photograph's punctum in the metonymy of a stone, a tree and a grizzly track; and as Recurrence, a return to the recurring cycles of water and the transformation of self in wild places in nature. A philosophy as a way of life in nature or photo/synthesis reveals the following pedagogical understandings: a) the potential for a deeper understanding of and relationship with nature through photography as a way to understand authentic relationships to nature or wild places in the geography of one's lived place, b) the pedagogical influences of place and geography on the formation of one's self and artistic identity, c) the need for the development of a philosophy of nature which values attentiveness to the land and encourages an artistic process to convey to others the teachings of nature, and d) the need for an integrated, interdisciplinary pedagogy of nature, using a personal and embodied process of writing inquiry and artistic expression for both teachers and students to reflect upon visits to nature, and which emphasizes the role of imagination, visual imagery and metaphor as ways of understanding and expressing one's sense of place in the community of nature.