Greenscapes

Golf courses are highly produced landscapes— we might imagine that the game of golf takes place in the “the great outdoors”, because the building blocks consist of grass, plants, soil and flowers. However, this seemingly innocuous playground has been engineered just as much, if not more than a series of freshly developed apartments. This project is an exploration of the definition of nature and the way in which culture has framed and distorted nature’s complexity. Each golf course presents a unique set of issues in its own right but also maintains a consistent relationship with cultural constructs of the landscape based in art history, landscape architecture, environmentalism and politics. My pictures serve to highlight the charged elements of such a complex space, and this means that the visuals must acknowledge the beautiful and the grotesque. The physical and spiritual atmosphere becomes sublime.

My work confronts the function of landscape on a course and the way in which we interact with this space. How does our ability to engage with and even tailor the natural influence our idea of what nature is? In my photographs, I illustrate specific aspects of the course that highlight its constructed elements. The game of golf is dependent upon vistas, viewpoints and lines of sight. The visuals of a course and its design lead the player through his game on the course. Although each course lends itself to a unique visual experience and epitomizes the style of the specific designer, region or historic period in which it was constructed, the inherent repetition of forms becomes important to recognize and depict. Visual expectations based on the picturesque engage with the golf environment on every level. My intention is to investigate why courses are expected to look the way they do? Further, what does it require to perpetuate this aesthetic? And, which other horticultural and architectural possibilities have been and should be explored?

A paradox ensues when we can recognize how time consuming and expensive (environmentally and financially) golf courses are. And, if this is all in the service of intentionally experiencing nature, our cultural dilemma is unavoidable. Perhaps, though, solutions prevail that allow us to appreciate these spaces and determine the means to sustain them in a responsible and interesting manner. Ultimately, I see the golf course as a metaphor for contemporary development. Like the public park, the video arcade, the movie theatre, the nuclear power plant and urban sprawl, a relationship between nature and culture continues to complicate the world and the people that inhabit it. If we can embrace the similarities of such environments in lieu of the differences, the possibilities are infinite.