Photographic observatories of landscapes in writing workshops : aesthetic and social dimensions in representations of ordinary landscapes. ; Les Observatoires photographiques des paysages en atelier d'écriture : la dimension esthétique et sociale des représentations de paysages ordinaires

The Photographic Observatories of Landscapes (OPP) appeared in the 1990s in the wake of the Photographic Mission of the DATAR, going against the landscape clichés (a rural France made of beautiful landscapes),to continue to give to see a french land that has been profoundly transformed after the economic growth during a period known as the "Thirty Glorious years". The OPP are reactivated after the signing of the European Landscape Convention (2000), which gives a central role to the perception of the populations, and argues in favor of taking into account not only everyday landscapes but also degraded ones rather than only remarquable ones. The photographies of many Observatories, some of which are newly created, are put online on dedicated Internet pages, to be widely consulted and often paired with a call to participation.Yet, these photographies, and even the device itself don't engage the public's interest, even if they seem thought out to develop an attention to the landscape as a common good. We wanted to explore weither one way to remedy this, was to conceive an active and subjective approach to these photographies of ordinary lanscapes. Thus, we put into action a writing workshop based on the photographies of two Observatories, developped respectively by the CAUE (Council on Architecture, Urbanism and Environment) of the Savoie and Haute-Savoie regions, involving students living in these regions. We were particularly inspired by the workshops lead by the writer François Bon, numerous texts of whom we also used as incitement during our own workshop.We also tried to show how, in spite of (or in virtue of) a double mediatization (writing from a photographed landscape) a new relationship with the landscape is established for protagonists involved in an active experience of observation, transposition, transformation through writing, linked to their own experience of inhabiting the land. Leaping off the observation that the photographic image doesn't always suffice to make people see, and especially the ...