Rephotographying mining landscapes to analyze change: The case of the mining settlement of Lota in the south of Chile

Abstract

Since the 1990s different authors have been advocating for the recognition of mining legacy as a particular type of industrial heritage. However, little progress has been made in its systematic analysis from the point of view of the generated landscape. Focusing on the mining settlement of Lota, in southern Chile, the article analyzes the importance of mining activity (during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century) in the construction of the urban landscape and proposes a methodology aiming at the identification of both its visual qualities and processes of urban change. The main tools of the method are the following: Firstly, to compare the historical and contemporary landscape through rephotography and image processing using Photoshop. Secondly, to link this visual approach to a Geographic Information System (GIS). Initial results indicate that the method is a powerful tool to recover what Van der Valk calls the ‘landscape’s biography’ (2014). The proposal moves from a distant, two-dimensional approach based on mapping or satellite views to another one which incorporates the landscape’s visual perception. Finally, the method is especially useful to study post-mining territories which have undergone important processes of change and urban decay.

Keywords: mining landscape, rephotography, visual analysis.