Making sense of my portfolio submission and assignments 3 and 5

Not unusually I have been having a bit of a crisis as assessment submission time approaches. This particular version of the landscape course effectively commits you to a course of action early in the proceedings – which can be a bit challenging if you feel you’ve developed in the interim and the work you started with may no longer feel “true” – even if you acknowledge its benefit in moving you towards something that does. A warning – this post is going to be long and rambling because I am trying something unusual for me – putting my thinking down in words.

After a somewhat hare-brained start – spurred on by the general enthusiasm for the Olympics – I rapidly picked up on my interests in perspective and memory that I was starting to develop in People and Place. From early on I picked an interest in perspectives that led me to think about Japanese paintings, and that in turn led me to thinking about seasonal symbolism in classical Japanese art and literature. This seemed a solid starting point – here was something I could use my camera to investigate, and that might form an interesting structure for later assignments. I struggled however, to find a clear path from those classical images to modern photographic practise. Reading around Japanese photography it became clear that there was actually a gap in that path.

While I was reading around Japanese photography trying to find a bridge I also did something I’ve not done properly in my previous course – acquire and digest some of the recommended books. In the process I discovered Sugimoto and Hatakeyama – the first attracted me for his philosophical approach, the second for his measured investigation. Both make extensive use of very similar images taken in series either to make a point or investigate a subject. My course for Assignments 3 and 5 was set.

In parallel however I continued with my explorations of fukei – landscape images with a hint of time passing through – based on symbols from early Japanese literature. And now we come to the crunch – I have three strands of work to present for assessment – in a format that only really admits two (portfolio and four seasonal images from same location) – and preferably one. If there’s something I’ve learned in the last few months its that presenting multiple ideas in a single piece of work is likely to lead to confusion and dilute whatever it is I’m trying to explain or explore.

Seasonal symbolism

I’m undoubtedly quite pleased with some of these shots – it’s still a subject that interests me but it poses a genuine difficulty which I’ve touched on previously. Without the background it looks like a collection of pictures of flowers, leaves and other figurative material without any obvious cohesion. It may have meant something to the mediaeval Japanese courts but for me it’s become more of an academic exercise which helps me better understood the poetry and art, rather than a subject in itself. I did consider producing the images on Japanese paper, but I feel this risks descending into simple pictorialism – which would be OK if that were my intent, but doesn’t feel convincing if it’s a desperate attempt to shout “Japanese”.

Cereal Field

I started this in response to the exercise which required me to shoot from the same location once during each season, but over the year it has developed into more than that. In an interview for SeeSaw magazine Jem Southam describes his working strategy as follows: “Once fixed on a site, I revisit it regularly, and gradually assemble a body of work that is a response to a slow absorption of the site …” He then adds some references to other research and discussions with people at the site which are less relevant to my experience here, but the initial sentence captures quite a lot of what I feel about this group of photos. In an artistic sense this is my field...I’ve watched it change and grow, I’ve recorded it’s development over the course of the year – and in some ways it’s like a clock marking of the passage of the year (and the seasons of course) with its subtle changes and differences. What would be a more fitting way to represent the four seasons in my portfolio?

Four seasons photo

This developed out of my interest in Japanese art, and my discovery of a genre of Japanese paintings which show  all four seasons in a single image – sometimes a pair of images across two folding screens. Over the course of the year I have assembled sufficient images from exactly the same location – I recorded the position of my tripod using the joins in my patio slabs - to spread the seasonal changes across a single image which can also be read as a simple allegory of the progress of life. This feels like an ideal way of presenting the “four images from exercise 15” even if it is a somewhat creative iteration of the precise brief.

So far so good – but what of the assignments – do they support this development?

Both assignments consist of series of similar shots which could be considered typologies in the Becher mould – given the similarities of presentation and content. I do not see them in quite that way. As I understand it the Becher typologies are about similarities and often reflect the modernist idea of form following function.

Wave studies

These are very consciously about difference. I was using photography to explore – challenge even – the ideas I picked up from Sugimoto’s work about the constancy of the sea and its link to the past. There are not intended as a typology in the Becher sense, because I would maintain that they demonstrate continuous variability, rather than consistency – and in any case waves have no function, so in one sense the form is of little relevance. In another sense the form is everything, as without the variation in form at the intersection of land and sea these photos would all be identical.

Triple point

I struggled a little for a subject for Assignment 5, but found myself drawn back to the coast.The “triple point” of the title , the visual point where land sea and sky meets represents in some way the limit of man’s environment. Sometimes this limit is totally natural, sometimes it has had structure or function forced on it. Again I would see the series as a study of the differences in form that can be found around the limit.

Where is this going?

I believe I have talked myself in to a position where I can say with some certainty that the work I have produced in the latter half of this course has been focused on difference – differences in wave forms, differences in land forms and differences in nature brought about by time and sometimes the action of man. Interestingly, from this end of the road I think I can understand how I got here. The two series for assignments 3 and 5 seem to fit quite well with the cereal field series – even the 4 seasons image can be seen as an extension which merges the individual differences into a single image.

All this seems to talk to the ideas expressed by Liz Wells among others at the seminar I attended in Newcastle months ago, about landscape as a documentary practise. How I take these ideas forward into the documentary course I have yet to work out.

Re-shooting assignment 3

“Stone and sea are deep in life. Two unalterable symbols of the world. Permanence at rest. And permanence in motion. Participants in the power that remains.”

I’ve just re-shot assignment 3. In doing so I realise that I never wrote up a response to my tutors feedback – although I have annotated it on OneNote – which is my preferred method of catching my immediate thoughts. There is a reason for this failure – it was clear to me from Simon’s comments that yet again I had over-thought my supporting material and so confused the message I was hoping to portray in the images. And yet – I couldn’t get clear in my own mind how to say what I wanted in words. This in itself was quite distressing as I’m usually pretty good at coming up with words for my thoughts. Anyway, it was resolved by a blog post from my brother which quoted Stephen Donaldson, from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and which I reproduce above.

Much as I admire Sugimoto’s seascapes, and find the philosophical approach he brings to them fascinating and involving I disagree with his premise in one fundamental way – the view is not the same as it was thousands of years ago – it is different in virtually every respect. The same is true for the sea and the sky the second before and the second after I press the shutter. The problem I had was I could find no way of expressing it succinctly – until “Permanence in motion” came to the rescue. Handily, there are rocks, and distant hill in some of my images – so “Permanence at rest” comes into play as well.

Simon also raised a couple of technical issues and I did not have the images to replace the technically less effective ones. In particular the shooting conditions resulted in the “permanence at rest” being rather blurred. I could simply have re-shot those images at an appropriate time on a separate tidal cycle, but that felt to me to damage the integrity of the series. How? Well the sea has two (at least) motions – the waves and the tide – and I did want to capture both of those in the same series. What I did not want to do was introduce long and un-necessary timescales. So complete reshoot it was.

I used Simon’s idea of having a very low tripod – I actually used a gorillapod to avoid inundating my ‘proper’ tripod in salt water and sand. I suspect I didn’t really need it as this weekend – when I did the reshoot – was much brighter than my original shooting date, but I thought I’d try it anyway. I was surprised at the difference in shooting experience.  The first series – without the tripod was all dash in, grab some shots, get out before the water sloshed over the camera. The use of the tripod made it a much more contemplative experience. Move 3-4 feet back from the current tide-line, level the tripod and wait for the water and the waves to come to me. Keep shooting until inundation becomes a possibility, pick up the tripod, move back and repeat the experience. No less immersive, but much more meditative – I can see a place for both.

So, in reworking the Assignment I’ll be replacing all the images and considerably tightening the text. I’ll also be making one further change – the title. The more I think about it the more I think that simply re-using Sugimoto’s title is a cheat. I’m really questioning his idea, rather than developing it, so I’m going to go with “Permanence" as the title.

As I’ve written rather a lot I thought I’d finish with an image from the re-shoot that I wont be using in the Assignment – the stranded dogfish I rescued on the day.

According to some internet sources, in the mythology of the Haida people of British Columbia the dogfish symbolises persistence and strength. And so perhaps here we have, in a single image, my opening quote.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto:

'via Blog this'

This post has been long in the making. It underscores my reasons for the approach I took to Assignment 3, and yet I neither wrote nor posted it then. Why not? Because it is in many ways too intensely personal, and too close to baring my soul. Prior to completing the assignment I did not feel ready to publish these thoughts – now that my Assignment is out there, and commented on by my tutor, that feels like a significant omission. I cannot prove that this was a step on the way to developing Assignment 3 nor do I feel a need to, but I do think that having these underlying thoughts on record will be useful in sharpening up the text and explaining more effectively why I chose the route I did.

I have an interest in Japan, as a result of my other (inanimate) passion – karate – and my regular contact with Japanese visitors and culture in a previous job. I also have an interest – perhaps more than an interest – in Buddhism, so it is perhaps unsurprising that I would find myself attracted to the works of Sugimoto. His seascapes in particular seem infused with a deep spirituality – a meditative simplicity that I find hard to resist. His inclusion of these seascapes into a modern representation of a stupa in “Five Elements” as explained in this video makes his intentions very clear.

Sugimoto is on record as saying that the subject of his seascapes is “Times Arrow”. He argues that they are views which are essentially unchanged since they were first seen and that they can thus be seen as materialising a direct link between ourselves and those distant peoples. I can see that this is true on a macro scale – but the sea is always changing – it is never the same on a second look. If we continue the spiritual analysis, impermanence is manifest in any image of the sea – as in the Buddhist view of life. This feels like it may be worth exploring further.

Change is implicit in the changelessness that Sugimoto presents. Standing by the sea it is impossible not to be aware of this. The waves come in and out – never the same twice. The tide goes in and out – changing the shape of the beach as it goes. And yet – amongst all this change we are as sure as we can be that the tide will come in tomorrow and next year, next century, or next millennium.

Capturing this thought felt – and still feels – like a worthwhile pursuit.

Horizons

Unless we are surrounded by trees or tall buildings, or we deliberately point our lens groundwards, horizons are an inevitable part of landscape photos. Given this it seem that the number of photographers who have deliberately used the horizon as the primary design element in their photos is relatively few. Of course, there are plenty of professionals who understand how to use the horizon as part of a broader scheme – after all it defines the lower limit of the sky, and therefore directly impacts on the balance of the image – but few of them simply use the horizon as a subject.

Suguimoto is one – graphically they are really the only element in many of his seascapes. By placing them in the centre he adds to the sense of stability – the sense that the view is unchanging – and by so doing enhances the idea that the sea is unchanging and always with us

A rather different approach is followed by Lynn Silvermann who uses pairs of photos – each pair containing a shot taken directly at her feet, and another of the distant horizon – to represent her travels through the Australian outback. Her use of very low horizons invokes the sublime to emphasise the emptiness and loneliness of the outback, while the pairing conveys the idea of movement and travelling to the horizon.

Even lower horizons are used in the cityscapes of Jugnet and Clairet – who feature just the tops of the roofs in their series Louis Bleriot. I have struggled to find any commentary on this series, so I can only surmise their intent from my reading of the images, but I feel that the too are invoking the sublime – and illustrating the effect that the sky must have had on early pioneers of flight – with just big, blue emptiness all around and the safety of the ground insignificant below.

Finally, Elina Brotherus has produced a whole series on Horizons- with varying placements categorised as Horizons, Low Horizons and Very Low Horizons. On her website she says she enjoys the formal simplicity of a few horizontal lines. In at least one example she has managed to use cloud in front of a mountain to almost reverse the idea of horizon by placing it in the middle ground, and other examples of her work are quite Sugimoto-like in their meditative simplicity.

Danish photographer Per Bak Jensen also features predominantly horizon pictures in his contribution to Vanishing Landscapes and I plan to add some thoughts on those when I have had a chance to research him further.

One thing that strikes me about many of the photos I have referenced is that they have a sense of loneliness, or of something completely out of reach and forever unreachable. Yet at the same time there is a constancy and sameness about the views – especially in those with a central placement Is this something to do with the sublime? I’m not totally sure, but it does reflect the feelings I get when standing on the seashore with the waves at my feet, and is another thread that I’ve taken into Assignment 3.

Waves

I guess that very few of us have not at some time or another stood on a headland, or at the edge of a beach, and simply watched waves going in and out. Their cyclic rhythm seem to hold a fascination that catches us at some sub-conscious level, even the noise is relaxing. So perhaps it’s not surprising that waves and by implication the sea and its tides have featured in art for almost as long as art has been used to tell stories or convey feelings.

Homer uses the familiar tidal metaphor to describe the “the tide of the battle” turning in the Iliad – a bit surprising as the Mediterranean is not really tidal – and Horace refers to tides regularly – although you have to be a bit careful with translations as the words tide and waves seem interchangeable in some cases. Closer to home Shakespeare has Brutus referring to a tide in the affairs of men, and a little earlier an R Green noted that “Tyde nor time tarrieth no man.” which may be the earliest reference to time and tide waiting for no man. And of course, at the turn of the 20th century, John Masefield declared:

“I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;”

On the far side of the world, and 250 years earlier, in Japan Basho was writing:

Autumn full moon,  
the tides slosh and foam  
coming in.

..which does as good a job as any photo of capturing the experience of watching waves breaking on a shoreline.

On the musical front my knowledge isn’t good enough to identify early examples although Smetana used music to represent the sound of the Vlatava, and more recently Einaudi’s minimalist composition “Le Onde” (Waves) is clearly inspired by the ebb and flow of waves and tides. Even more recently still a Styx song catches an idea that many of us will have felt when watching the sea in “Sailing Away”:

“I look to the sea, reflections in the waves spark my memory;
Some happy, some sad, I think of childhood friends
And the dreams we had,”

Moving on to the visual arts waves have been a prominent feature of paintings down the years, both in the western world and in the Far East, where Hokusai’s “Great Wave” has become perhaps the most famous example of a Japanese woodblock print. In photography Adams produced a series of waves coming in on a beach in San Mateo County which are considered by some to be highly influential. As with the Smetana and Einaudi music, the representation of the ebb and flow is significant in this work.

Bringing us right up to date, Sugimoto’s seascapes do not reference ebb and flow or continuous movement, but they do point to the idea of the seas as a constant presence in the life of the human race.

Since I first came across these Seascapes in Barth’s Vanishing Landscapes I have found myself re-visiting them time and again (like the waves going in and out perhaps). I particularly like the idea that they are effectively a direct link to our ancestors, who will have seen exactly the same views back at the dawn of time – and yet while this is true on the scale of Sugimoto’s seascapes, at the waters edge the picture is always different. Which brings me part way to Assignment 3.