Using photographs to collect and study citizens’ perceptions of landscape degradation: a regional case in Italy

ABSTRACT

People’s perceptions play a key role in defining landscape, which is much more than the combination of visually distinctive features. In fact, as recognized by the European Landscape Convention, the character of a landscape is the result of the action and interaction of not only its natural features, but also human ones. What can we learn about landscape degradation from the way locals look at the landscapes around them? We argue that respondent-produced photographs offer an opportunity to transmit to others one’s personal view of what degradation is, and to promote critical reflection on the present state of local landscapes. This work illustrates the implementation and outcomes of a photography competition, which allowed photography lovers to capture, in a picture, not only the beauty of natural landscapes in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region (Italy), but also the aspects of everyday surroundings which were perceived to be degraded. The photography competition, complemented by photo-elicitation interviews, made the co-production of geographical knowledge possible. The photographs revealed the presence of varying, sometimes unexpected sites considered to be degraded, and the conduction of photo-elicitation interviews stimulated the collection of values and meanings attributed by informers to the landscapes selected in their pictures.

KEYWORDS:

• Landscape degradation
• participatory visual methods
• photo-interviewing
• collaborative knowledge production
• citizens’ perception

Acknowledgements

This contribution is the result of the work carried out for the departmental project PARIDE “The Landscapes of Risk and Degradation: from perception, to representation and to territorialisation. Interdisciplinary knowledge and awareness in support of local government policies”, conducted at the University of Udine, Italy. A special thank you to our research partners S. Amaduzzi, M. Pascolini and G. P. Zaccomer. We would like to also thank L. Cadez for managing the project’s web pages where pictures are showcased. We are grateful to the participants who contributed to the photography competition and those who took part in the photo-interviewing phase. Some preliminary results from this research were presented at AAG Annual Meeting 2019, Washington D.C., U.S.A., 4–7 April 2019.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The study of the regional landscape is an established theme of scientific investigation at the University of Udine, within which also this project was developed. Guaran and Pascolini (2019) gathers various contributions authored by several local scholars involved in the drafting of the regional landscape plan, approved in 2018.

2 The photographs received in the photographic context were geocoded for the purpose of the project. Thanks to the presence in the survey of an open-ended question asking participants to describe the site portrayed in the photograph textually, coordinates were attributed to all those images whose position was identifiable, in exact or approximate form. This operation was carried out using Google My Maps. Subsequently, the conduction of the interviews helped us refining the position of the pictures. The interaction with the photographers during the interviews made it possible to verify the accuracy of the position of the photographs taken by them in the cartography and, in the case of inaccuracy, to correct their position. Some photographs are not included in the geodatabase (around 20) as it was not possible to identify the location of all pictures.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giorgia Bressan

Giorgia Bressan is a fixed-term researcher in geography at the Department of History, Humanities and Society, Universityof Rome "Tor Vergata". She was awarded a Ph.D. in Economic Geography in 2013 and since then she has worked in research-related tasks for many universities in her home country and for foreign academic institutions. Her research interests include global geographies of manufacturing, regional development, borderland economies and communities, and landscape research. Her professional experience at the Italian National Institute of Statistics and at Eurostat has strongly influenced her commitment to applying better methods in geography. She has held various positions as a teaching assistant for geographical and economic disciplines and her current teaching interests deal with tourism, events and territory. She is interested in providing research-informed teaching that integrates innovative methods and applications, as well as promoting meaningful reflections on the interplay between the environment, economy and society. Her varied publication record reflects her participation in diverse research projects and ability to work across the breadth of the field and from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. She is member of the Association of Italian Geographers (A.Ge.I), where her contribution is mainly in GIS-related initiatives.

Andrea Guaran

Andrea Guaran is an associate professor of geography at the Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society, University of Udine (Italy). Currently he teaches geographical disciplines at the courses of Primary Teacher Education and Humanities. Over the years he has taken part in several research projects in the geographical domain, focusing on the following fields of study: the geography of water resources, mainly on the study of the relationship between tourism development and water resource, the aspects of regional geography, especially in relation on the geography of the population. On the territory, landscape and identity aspects, he took part in the interdepartmental working group that contributed to the elaboration of the Landscape Plan of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Moreover, he has a special interest for the didactic translation of many geographic themes. At this purpose, he has conducted research on various aspects related to the teaching of geography, in particular paying attention to strategies and tools to promote learning processes. At a national level, he is an active member of the Association of Italian Geographers (A.Ge.I.), by participating in the working groups of “Territorial Identities” and “Landscape Studies”, where his contribution mainly concerns participatory and educational processes.