Retracing Footsteps: An Exhibition of Landscape, Text and Image

Abstract

This article reflects on an interdisciplinary research project between a cultural geographer and practising artists in documenting the changing landscape of the mountain Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), Wales. The project draws on archival materials in the form of 19th-century visitors’ books housed in summit ‘hotel’ huts. The visitor books provide a point of departure for research which references the historic insights of the varying tourist encounters of the mountain landscape. By physically retracing the footsteps of 19th-century tourists, the team employed image-making practices to (re)imagine how the mountain is experienced today. This led to a curated exhibition that juxtaposed 19c. visitor book extracts and photographs to communicate the historical and contemporary social-spatial and environmental changes and tensions within the landscape. This paper critically reflects on the retrieval, selection and exhibition of text and image and argues how this process offers new geographical interpretations and forms of dissemination of past and present understandings of human encounters with landscapes.