4. Brief

Landscape and Identities

brief – submission – blog – feedback – rework

Write a 2,000-word essay (excluding any quotes) on one of the areas of landscape practice you have encountered during this course so far.

The critical review is an opportunity for you to gain a greater insight into an area, theme, debate or other issue relating to landscape photography that is of particular interest to you. You must choose a topic that’s relevant to your own practice in some way, in order to help you to contextualise your practice and to show that your understanding of landscape photography is informed by relevant practitioners. You should include an in-depth evaluation of the work of key practitioners that you reference in your essay. Where appropriate, also reference your own individual images, bodies of work and ongoing or forthcoming projects.

Your written work should clearly show that you have engaged with theoretical, historical and cultural debates around landscape practice within photography and visual culture, and demonstrate that you have developed academically as well as creatively.

To sum up, your critical review should demonstrate that you can:

  • Understand relevant topics and issues around landscape practice.
  • Use research skills competently.
  • Analyse appropriate resources.
  • Articulate your own, informed ideas at a level commensurate with HE5 level study.

Remember to include:

  • Correctly cited references and quotations (Harvard referencing system).
  • Referenced illustrations.
  • Word counts, both excluding and including quotations.

Finally, make sure that your essay is critical rather than narrative. This means that you should focus your efforts on evaluating, comparing, contrasting and questioning the work and theoretical ideas, and not on recounting biographical or historical information, unless it has a significant relation to practice. You’ll find guides to both academic essay writing and the Harvard referencing system on the OCA student site: http://oca-student.com/resources/key/study-guides

  • Send your critical review, as well as extracts from your learning log or link to your blog, to your tutor by the method you have agreed with them.

Submitting your work

If submitting files through this Assignment activity on OCA Learn, collate the relevant material and upload to this assignment. Be sure to Confirm your submission and accept the submission statement in order for it to be submitted.
If you use an online learning log for your assignments, please simply insert the URL for your learning log into the ‘Online Text’ box. If you use a typed or non web-based log or have an essay to submit, please do so via the document upload. 

If sending by post, put your name, student number and the part/exercise number on the back of all your prints and send them to your tutor together with relevant pages from your learning log or blog url. You must still submit through this online assignment with a note to your tutor in the provided text area indicating that you have sent your work physically.

You don’t need to wait for your tutor’s response before starting Part Five.

Landscape, Place & Environment, p.160