Topography as a means of expression in art of contemporary photography

Landscape can be briefly defined as an art form where nature and external environments are visible. Throughout its historical process, landscape art has centered on nature. These depictions of nature are often subject to ideal, natural, or romantic representations. However, with human adaptation to industrial developments and production systems, increasing interventions in nature have also led to changes in the appearance of landscapes in art. The acceleration of this transformation, driven by similar industrial and production activities, has given rise to new visual forms. Due to these changing landscapes, environmental photography has become a primary field of study, guided by scientific purposes and the art's capacity to create awareness through its visible presence. The altered and newly formed topographic landscapes, whether transformed by human intervention or through natural processes, have simultaneously provided a foundation for a mode of artistic expression where emotions are conveyed metaphorically—much like the Impressionist movement, where artists projected their inner states onto nature. In this context, the new artistic methodology that emerged after the 1960s holds a significant place for this study. Utilizing the technical elements of photography to produce images from perspectives inaccessible to the senses has introduced a new sense of reality to the human-earth relationship. This study focuses on the representations of topographic landscapes, where nature altered and transformed by human intervention is approached as a problem. Within the scope of the topic, the ways in which nature has been addressed throughout the historical process of landscape art have been examined, the meaning of landscape for art and the artist has been investigated, and a synthesis has been reached by considering the socio-cultural factors that contributed to the emergence of landscape types. The influence of mediums enabled by technical possibilities in contemporary art practices on the creation of landscape images has also been explored. In this context, the historical processes of topographic landscapes have been discussed. Within the framework of nature-human relationships, this study is limited to the changing and transforming nature as a subject, and the works of contemporary topographic landscape artists have been analyzed using the artwork analysis technique. The practical part of the study consists of the artwork texts of 10 photographs presenting topographic landscapes as conceptual representations.