Colour in landscape

Marion sent me a link to some of her pictures from last week's Newhaven visit. The bleach colour style is effective, giving a means of interpreting the scene a little, rather than just recording what you see. It does remind me of a cross processing technique that we used to employ with film. If you process colour slide film in colour negative chemistry you can end up with punchy vibrant colours. If you you process negatives in slide chemistry, you get bleached, slightly cyan colour, giving a bit of a queasy, dystopian feel. This is an example of how you might use a technique to match your mood or point of view.
The titles of the pictures here suggest a slightly ironic point of view, and the drained and slightly off-colour matches this.
There is a temptation, if you shoot colour, to go for as much saturation and intensity as possible. This s a habit that John Fowles in his intro to Fay Godwin's 'Land' described as "making the landscape perform." For a long time colour was not considered a suitable medium for serious photography.
It was photographers like Paul Graham who changed that perception with subtle, understated and often symbolic use of low saturated colour in projects like 'Troubled Land' and 'A1-Great North Road.' 
Another very interesting colour photographer of disturbing landscapes is Simon Norfolk, whose 'Bosnia-Bleed' series is very topical still, and perhaps always should be, but is not especially easy viewing. Richard Misrach works in a similar vein, and it should be noted that many of these pictures are produced with large cameras and reproduced as large prints in books and gallery walls. The incredible descriptive power and detail produced can make even low saturated pictures of relatively mundane subjects seem quite hypnotic; and the context provided by titles and captions can jolt and disturb you.