The Dying Lake: Waikare and the Embodied Artist

Abstract

This article presents insights into the development of a practice-led PhD that has been progressing for 24 months. The PhD study is concerned with how lens-based recording might communicate an embodied connection to land. Situated at the heavily degraded Lake Waikare in the Waikato region of New Zealand, the study aims to contribute to considerations of land in the global context of the Anthropocene, suggesting that value might emerge from an intimate connection to a familiar location. This article reviews the approach to the research design and literature review used in the study so far. Employing a practice-led methodology, the research is directed toward discovery through artistic practice and reflection on this practice. Within such a study, the practice is the site of the research. The article presents a current literature review and methodological approach employed so far in the research and offers a reflection of what such a practice-led study might require from an embodied photographer as both a practitioner and researcher, offering thoughts on how these have contributed to a relationship to land so far.