Photo Essays for Interpreting Landscape in an Instructor-Led International Field Course

This lesson plan describes the application of a photo essay technique for landscape interpretation in an interdisciplinary instructor-led international field course. In the scholarly tradition of geography, which embraces visual rhetoric and documentation as a methodological approach (Crang 2010), the photo essay is a format that allows for creative interpretation in an academic context (e.g., American Geographical Society’s Focus on Geography). Yet, photo essays are also very interdisciplinary. Rodrigues notes that the method’s origin is “strongly associated” with the use of classic photographic essays during the 1960s and 1970s in the field of visual anthropology (2018, 58). Increasingly, with improved ease of use, access, and image management associated with digital photography using mobile phones, the technique has been utilized in teaching across a wide range of disciplines including sociology and environmental education (Stock, Darby, and Meyer 2018), tourism (Rodrigues 2018), and urban studies (Van Melik and Ernste 2019). As presented here, this lesson is, in practice, a field-based exercise or learning activity that asks students to engage in three foundational approaches to place-based landscape reading: observation/documentation, interpretation, and analysis. By situating the photo essay as a scholarly product, we move students beyond the position of tourist or visitor in a new landscape, particularly in a study abroad context, and engage them as scholarly participant-observers whose photo essays document not only the physical environment but also their interpretation and reading of that location as a complex landscape. Utilizing the photo essay as a way in to place-based field work creates an accessible strategy for engaging students in the grounded practices and methods of cultural geography, interpretive environmental studies, and critical analysis. This exercise was designed and implemented in a 21-day undergraduate and graduate field course in southeast Queensland, Australia. Exploring Queensland’s Human and Physical Landscapes brings University of Wyoming graduate and undergraduate students to the heart of the complex physical environments and cultural landscapes of Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Fraser Island, and Lady Elliot Island. Co-taught by faculty with backgrounds in geographical science and environmental studies, the students engaged in high-impact practices in field-based and international education, including experiential, place-based and relational learning in unique environments; field journaling; individualized research topics and student-led discussions; interaction with local experts and residents; exploration of students’ perceptions and biases; and critical analysis through photo essays. The audience for this lesson is primarily postsecondary learners, but it could be adapted to an instructor-led field course at the high school level.