The ponderous title of Daniel de Chenu's show at the Gallery of Photography, Causality and Contingency, does an injustice to the photographer. De Chenu's exhibition has none of the cumbersomeness the title might suggest. It is, instead, a spry collection of work which always seems more likely to pose its questions through jokes than deadly inquisitions.
De Chenu's idea seems to be to look at framing, in several senses of the word. As well as his own large C-type colour prints, in chic "bare wood" frames, he hangs a reproduction of an "ideal landscape" painting in a gilt frame, an image by John Hinde and some 19th-century monochromes credited to Robert French.
By hanging his own photographs alongside work from previous eras he is able to underline their position in the historical context of landscape painting and photography. But, more importantly, the historical work begins to give some purchase on de Chenu's photographs, offering evidence of their careful subjectivity.
At the seaside, a portacabin and an empty car park grip on to a sweep of beach; the forms of Giant's Causeway, seen from above, are crushed beneath the elbow of a road. In an anonymous pasture, a stagnant pond seems to have sprouted a rusty fence. The careful gouges of golf bunkers dot a snowscape, while on another golf course even the landscapers are thwarted when a manhole bursts through next to a putting green.
None of this, of course, would hold the attention if the photographer were simply chronicling eco-crisis, if the side effects of human settlement were posited as an aberration. De Chenu's photo graphs are smart enough not to offer platitudes about the scars modernisation has left on the landscape, smart enough not to go hunting down the sublime in slag heaps, and perhaps smart enough even to offer moments when visitors can catch themselves seeing.
Until November 8th.