Geodiversity photographed: An exploratory and iconographic study of geoheritage in protected areas

Abstract

This paper is part of the scope of cultural geodiversity and mobilizes photography in order to understand the role it has played in the knowledge of geodiversity and in the recognition of geoheritage. To carry out this research, four books written and directed by specialists in the photographic medium were used. They allowed us to constitute a corpus of 88 photographs, 48 of which present a geodiversity now included within the limits of a protected area. They were taken between 1853 and 1999. These photographs were specifically analyzed according to three criteria: (1) the geological and geomorphological features that were the subjects of the images; (2) the location of the protected areas represented by these photographs; (3) the place and role of the photographs in the history of this medium (techniques and/or specialties). Three main results emerged from this exploratory study: The first concerned the nature of the elements photographed (typology of forms) and the “proto-geopatrimonialization” of this geodiversity (redundancy of photographs via the constitution of photographic series); the second specifically identified the links between protected areas and geodiversity via geological surveys, West Americans in particular, artistic views of abiotic nature and archaeological explorations; the third result showed the importance of geodiversity in the history of photography, and vice versa.