I define landscape as the state of being, or the reality, of area or region. I could call it “areaship,” or “regionship,” with which incidentally, both landscape and Landschaft are related etymologically. It is the quality or character of the region as a unity, the specific impression of the whole areal situation. In this sense it is in geography what Gestalt is in psychology. Landscape is the totality of aspect of a given area just as in Gestalt psychology a melody is the totality of a series of tones, not the sum or separate tones.
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The landscape is one, an entity in itself; it is the unity of physical and cultural phenomena. There is no physical or natural landscape, unless man and his works are and always have been entirely absent; then the landscape consists exclusively of physical or natural elements. There can be no cultural landscape, because nowhere are man and his works completely separated from physical phenomena of some kind.
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A region tells the story of its own transformations, of the changes of geographic phenomena within it. The story of a region is not the history of its individual parts considered separately, but rather the history of the relationships between them. The beginning of the story is as far back in time as it is necessary to go to locate the roots of present-day phenomena, or whatever “aspect” of area may be of interest to a geographer.
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The present-day landscape of a region is thus as much a product of its time relations as of its space relations. The forms, patterns, and associations of the geography of a region are the tangible results of dynamic processes. Physical elements may have become what they are through geologic time; cultural elements through historic time. The two are merged in the present, giving to a region its landscape, its quality of being.
Douglas Crary, “A geographer looks at the landscape,” Landscape 9 (no. 1, Autumn 1959): 22–25.
http://viewshed.matinic.us/2015/08/06/905/