The sublime

Probably a bit late in the course to start thinking about the sublime, but my interest was piqued by the research I’ve done on Hatakeyama, and by chapter 6 of Martin Andrews’ Landscape and Western Art. I’ve added Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry to my Kindle for a later day.

My rather genteel piece of rural Cumbria is generally lacking in the sublime as covered by Burke – it does not, as a rule convey “power, obscurity, privation, vastness, infinity difficulty and magnificence.” (Andrews p134) although I am sure there are view in the Lake District itself which, even in this day and age, can convey many of these ideas. Central to this view of the sublime is the idea that we are unable to control the forces in play, coupled with the sense that in the face of this lack of control and the power present, we are still not in mortal danger. Like these perhaps - from Dettifoss in northern Iceland which I visited in 2009:

 

These three seem to me reminiscent of Phillipe de Loutherbourg’s Avalanche, which Andrews discusses in some depth. What they lack is the “horrified” onlookers. I can testify that this was a pretty dramatic spectacle, but as can be seen from these shots there were plenty of people willing to get very close. Personally I think the middle shot is the most “sublime” as the viewpoint is clearly quite close to the edge, and the irregular nature of the rocks and fractures they contain add to the sense of raw power. The mist also adds a sense of the unknown to the height of the falls which is lost in the first image, and to my mind less apparent in the third.

Another aspect of the sublime is loneliness – a sense of isolation in the face of immense force – and again Iceland comes to the rescue – this time Skogafoss.

This lacks the overwhelming loneliness we find in Friedrich’s “Monk by the Sea” but I think the inclusion of the small figure adds something other than just scale. They are alone against the power of nature – we sense their apparent risk from the comfort of our armchairs.

To be honest I’m not quite sure where this post is going, except that it’s helping me crystallise some thought about improvements to my Assignment 4 essay in response to my tutors comments and some subsequent research which has a bearing on the content.

Look 13–Liverpool Study Visit

Nothing to do with Landscape, but as I’m planning on doing Documentary next, the study visit to the Look 13 Festival in Liverpool seemed a worthwhile Saturday outing. Full details of the festival can be found on its website – which, if I’m honest, is not a paragon of navigability. The theme was “Who do you think you are?” but more on that later.

The formal visit was due to start at 11:00 at the Open Eye gallery which is down on the harbourside – and in a stunning location. I got there 40 mins early which was a bonus as I’ve not been to Liverpool previously (except for a conference 20 years ago where I saw nothing) and was very pleasantly surprised by how dramatic the harbour area is. A sunny day helped in this regard as well – the shots in this post taken from my phone capture the overall feel pretty well.

       

It soon became clear that many of the people loitering with intent were other OCA students, and once we’d coalesced into a group Keith (Roberts) our host for the visit handed out some info and led us into Open Eye for the first of the galleries on the visit schedule. There were two artists on display here Charles Freger and Eva Stenram. Both websites have a significant collection of work on them, but I think Freger’s work is better represented by the images on display at Open Eye than Stenram’s.

Freger’s work reminds me of a Becher/Sander-esque typology, although the poses are slightly less formal and consistent. Series that I found especially interesting were Legionnaires, Wilder Mann and Short School Haka. The first consisted of two rows of waist length portraits. The upper row were all relatively young recruits, bare chested and for the most part striking a pose. The bottom row were soldiers at the other end of their career, with medals beards and full dress uniform. The thing that struck me most was how tired they looked – their eyes suggesting that perhaps they’d seen too much – and the dramatic contrast with the new recruits.

Wilder Mann was a collection of folk-dance costumes from around Europe/Asia. They were all reassuringly crafty and primitive, but I can’t help wondering just what relevance they really have in the lives of the individuals that were wearing them. No such misgivings for Short School Haka though – a series of pictures of teenage boys in school uniform  and engaged in a Maori haka. No sign of self consciousness – the performance clearly meant something to them. Some really inspiring material here.

I was a bit less (but only a bit) convinced by Stenram, who’s series Drapes uses Photoshop to add curtains over the female bodies present in a number of found soft porn images. We had quite a good discussion about the impact of gender on our reactions. They were mildly amusing and reflect a theme which can be found on her website where she has a series in which she has removed the ‘actors’ from outdoor porn shoots leaving just vaguely disconcerting empty spaces.

             

Once we’d revealed more about ourselves than was truly comfortable we moved on to the Bluecoat Gallery for a collection of Sander/Weegee images from the Side Gallery – some of which I’d seen before at the Side – and Identity Documents by Adam Lee – which I somehow overlooked because there was a truly fascinating collection of images from Arabic photographers in the gallery as well. The more I see of Weegee’s work the more I think he has quite a lot to answer for. He may well have played a significant part in forming the way the USA sees itself but he may also have been the first paparazzo. I think there’s a fair chance he’d have been regularly assaulted if he had tried his characteristic approach in the current climate. Sitting at the interface between ‘public interest’ and ‘interesting to the public’ his shots are undoubtedly quite hard hitting slice of life (and death) photos, but at what cost to the subjects and ultimately the reputation of photography as a whole.

Sander I’m a lot more comfortable with – setting aside the somewhat archaic underlying idea that there are “types” of people. I find the images very revealing of a way of life now long gone, full of characters – some respectable – some villainous, and full of tiny historical details about haircuts, clothing, footwear and tools. I could look at them for hours.

I exist (in some way) was a selection of contemporary Middle Eastern photographers who explore issues of identity in the Arab world. In my book pride of place goes to Lamya Gargash with her series Though the Looking Glass, which consists of diptychs featuring individuals as we see them, and as they see themselves, with their self-perceived failures to achieve ideal standards of beauty enhanced by the use of prosthetics. As well as revealing something of the frailty of the subjects the images should lead us to question the ridiculous stereotypes we are fed by the advertising industry. I also admire the bravery of the subjects, and perhaps the persuasive powers of the photographer herself.

Other displays of note included Hijab Series by Boushra Almutawakel and Larissa Sansour’s Nation Estate.

I wish I’d not missed Adam Lee, as on the evidence of his website his work would have played to my prejudice that you can tell a lot about people from their bookshelves and music collections (although he doesn’t cover that last bit).

The final trip of the day was to the Walker art gallery to see Rankin’s “Alive: In the Face of Death”, a double header from Martin Parr and Tom Wood and a curated trip through the archive of commercial photographer Keith Medley. For me this was the least convincing part of the day overall. Starting with what I felt was the best bit, the Medley exhibition showed pairs of photos taken for passport or studio portraits, one of which was used and one of which was rejected. The result is a series which highlights the subtle changes in pose between shots – and very often the stilted similarity between them. It also leads to questions about how we, as viewers, make a choice of preferred shots since it was not always obvious why one might be preferred over another. So far, so good, but it felt a bit downhill from there.

The Rankin exhibition seemed to consist of several separate projects all on the theme of death. The images were, as far as I can tell, technically exquisite and in some ways that was their undoing for me. The treatment worked well for the series of masks made from various objects – which offered more than a nod to Hirst’s “For the love of God”. Attractive, but what did they tell us? Then there was a series of photos of casts of the faces of the rich and tedious– which seemed to say little about them except to foreground their vanity. The centrepiece was a series of “everyday people who know they are running out of time”. As a subject this has huge potential, but I felt the visual treatment left you looking at the picture rather than the person – very contrasty, commercial style lighting, monumental scale - I don’t know, perhaps I missed something – but I got no sense of the personal tragedies and triumph’s behind the images (with the exception of the image on the link above). Sometimes the spirit of the individual would creep out – and I have nothing but respect and sympathy for them – but as a viewer I felt the series suffered a dislocating mismatch between style and content.

I’ve left Tom Wood and Martin Parr until last because I genuinely don’t know what to say. The Tom Wood feature in the BJP a couple of months back was more interesting, and having read so much about Martin Parr perhaps I came to the exhibition with unreasonable expectations, but am I alone in thinking that they’re just well observed and moderately witty snaps of everyday life. Perhaps that’s all they’re intended to be, and context is everything, as they say. I’ve seen it suggested that Parr in particular was among the first to adopt this style for photos of us Brits – and that’s something I can go away and explore – but for the moment I just don’t get it.

At this point we split up – some went to the Exhibition Research Centre at Liverpool John Moore (it was shut I gathered from one of the group that I bumped into on the station), some went to the Victoria Gallery, but out of an odd sense of loyalty to my local city I tracked down a fringe exhibition by some students from the University of Cumbria who call themselves the 3+2=1 Collective. The work that stood out for me was “Peripheral Strangers” by Julie Dawn Dennis who has tracked down cropped out and enlarged portraits of those strangers who crop up in her family albums. We all have them, the people in the background of snaps taken at the seaside and at parties – and I thought the idea of bringing these to the foreground, almost as a memento of people we’ll never now was a really interesting idea.

It left me wondering what elevates some to the Walker Gallery and relegates others to a dank passageway in the back of a cafe bar. Time? Or Timing?

I’ve written far more about this than I expected. I must say thanks to tutor Keith for narrowing down the viewing opportunities for us, and spreading himself around as well as he could given that there were lots of us and only one of him. Thanks also to my fellow students for the debates and the good company. I have to say that up until this visit I was quite worried about the idea of embarking on the Documentary course, but there are now so many ideas running round that I’m almost looking forward to it.

Upfront Gallery

Upfront Gallery :

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I’ve driven past the Upfront gallery dozen of times and promised myself I would pay it a visit. Well today I actually did it – and now I wish I’d done it sooner. their website is/was advertising a “Mixed exhibition of photography, paintings and original lithographs” and that’s what I got.

Immediately I entered the door I was confronted with a large watercolour and ink painting on Chinese paper by Irene Sanderson showing the artist and some cyclists below Blencathra. It’s one of those paintings that looks better if you stand back a little – at which point you have to search quite hard for the people – which was a nice effect – and caught rather well the views you get from another hill of walkers on distant hills. Typically for ink paintings her work was broad brush and expressive – which worked very well for the most part. Although it’s a work in progress the images on her website give a good idea of her style. Her display extended into the cafe so there was plenty of opportunity to enjoy/study it while I was slurping my way through the rather excellent carrot and coriander soup.

Elsewhere in the main exhibition space there was a series of delightful lithographs by Alan Stones. Skein (vi) – a quite minimalist presentation of a skein of departing geese caught my eye – for hopefully obvious reasons – and I was not surprised that in his notes he said that he saw his nature images as being a metaphor for human travel and other activity.

Alongside Alan Stones were two photographers – Damian Reid – who was displaying a series of Lakeland/northern landscapes of the kind currently popular – all ethereal light etc. He clearly has a passion for his subject and I felt this shot – of a raven landing on a crag – was outstanding. Further on their was a series of shots of Egypt by Mike Shepherd. Looking at his website he has clearly had a larger exhibition at the gallery in the past – which sadly I missed. The images covered very similar ground – and to be honest a similar style – to some of the shots I took while on holiday there a couple of years back, but I specially like his close-up work of wall reliefs – which seemed to capture the actual feel of the sandstone in which they were generally carved.

One last artist I want to mention – Tommy Martin – in the upstairs gallery. Another photographer of Lakeland landscapes, but in a much different style. Where Reid’s landscapes are luminous and mystic, Martin’s are generally darker – with a sense of foreboding. In as much as I understand it, I think he is invoking the sublime in many of his images, woodlands full of mist, mountains in blue twilight, sunbeams breaking through dark clouds etc. He also has one series of four images  - 1 per season – as per the Portfolio exercise on display – which is something of a coincidence.There were a number of other images on display that give me some clues and thoughts as to how I might proceed with Assignment 5 when I get to it.

All in all I’m glad I made the effort – and thanks to the Study Guide on Looking at Artists and Photographers. The advice to “look at everything I can” is something I sometimes struggle with because I perceive that all the worthwhile galleries are 2 hours away. Upfront shows how wrong that idea was and I’m looking forward to their next exhibition already.

If you’re heading past Penrith on the M6 the gallery is only a couple of miles away at most - exit via Junction 41 and take the B5305 towards Wigton.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto:

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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.

Thinking about Assignment 4

Have received my feedback from Assignment 3 – more of which in another post – so time to start planning for Assignment 4, which requires me to write a critical review of around 2500 words on one of 5 photographers – or a different one if they meet the criteria. The criteria are that their work should be of major standing, be sufficiently accessible to research through the Net or the library and be influential.

An interesting set of criteria but what do these terms actually mean?

Major standing – presumably this means sufficiently well-known among photographers that most would have heard of them as I doubt that the average individual could name any of the suggested photographers. In fact – there was one photographer on their list who I had not heard of – in spite of many years subscriptions to various photo hobby mags, so major standing is obviously a bit flexible.

Sufficiently accessible – to my mind this requires a lot more than just plenty of shots on Google Image search. To meaningfully review a photographers work I am going to need to reference their background and hopefully produce some direct source evidence (interview transcripts, video, writing) of their intent and influences. In truth this is the easy criteria. If i can’t find sufficient material on a given photographer they’re off the list.

Influential – again this seems a bit of a vague term. Do they mean helped steer photography in a new direction (and what if the direction was ultimately a bit of a dead end)? Or inspired lots of imitators? Or somewhere in between? How influential? And how do we measure influence?

There is also another, unspoken criteria implicit in the notes, which emerges from Assignment 5, which requires me to take 12 shots in the style of my chosen photographer. So they have to interest me sufficiently to want to engage fully with that assignment as well.

Anyway – the course notes suggest five photographers:

• Ansel Adams: seems to hit all three criteria squarely on the head, but producing images in an Adams style seems something of a cliché, not least because his style is so intimately linked with a particular approach to landscape.
• Robert Adams: again hits all three listed criteria, although he is clearly less well known outside of the photo-art community than his namesake above.His photo series seem interesting and provocative – investigating Man’s connectedness with, and impact on, his environment, which is something that interests me.
• Fay Godwin: the only British photographer on the list. I’ve borrowed the two book under her name on the reading list. I feel she has elements of fukei in her work. I didn’t initially take to her work – in particular I felt that Forbidden Land was marked by naive politicising, but the more I think about the pictures (rather than the philosophy) the more I enjoy them. There is a sense of time flowing – fukei – in her images  Beyond saying it was square format B&W of rural scenes in the UK I am currently struggling to define her style, but if I can overcome that barrier there is plenty of potential material within easy reach for Assignment 5.
• Edward Weston: Unlike the others not a “pure” landscaper. I have the Aperture monograph from the reading list and I can see that much of his work was quite exploratory and radical at the time – especially in his use of landscapes and cloudscapes as semi-abstracts. I can’t help feeling however that the theme of his work was simply photography which feels a little introverted.
• Galen Rowell: “Who?”was my first question! His photos are undoubtedly beautiful in their use of light and colour, but I’m at a loss as to why he was included and not, say, Joe Cornish. His influence is seen in photo magazines all over the world with their encouragement to take long exposure, highly saturated,  strangely colour balanced landscapes. I’m not immune to evening and morning light, but it holds no special interest for me and I can’t imagine wanting to do a whole portfolio in that style.

I can’t help the observation that all bar one of these is dead. I find this a little odd – obviously not that they’re dead, but that there are no genuinely contemporary photographers in this list. I understand that it is important to engage with the history of photography – it feeds back to Joshua Reynolds point about understanding what has gone before to avoid  following the on old trail in the accidental belief that you’re going somewhere new. However, the tutors on the private forums regularly encourage us not to repeat the works of past masters – no matter how great. With this in mind I have identified another five  photographers that interest me enough to be considered for the assignment.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto: not truly a landscaper – at least in the classic sense. His seascapes use landscape photography to investigate some quite deep philosophical points about time and his presentation sometimes draws on Buddhist metaphysics, which interests me. However I have followed my thoughts on this aspect of his work through assignment 3, and I’m not sure it is wise to become to fixated at this stage. I have also struggled to find much which talks about his photographic style beyond the inevitable exhibition catalogues, which all basically say the same thing. He remains a firm favourite photographer, but I’m going to try someone else.
• Richard Misrach: On an initial reading Misrach seems, to me at least, to tread some of the same ground as Robert Adams – he is clearly concerned about the impact of man on nature. His work is more classically beautiful than Adams’, and I suspect that in some quarters it would be sneered at as “gallery photography” although he is clearly no friend of the industrial complex. He chooses to group his works in to “Cantos” which has a significance I don’t fully understand
• Naoya Hatakeyama: like Robert Adams, Hatakeyama appears interested in the interaction between man and his environment. Among other things his Lime Works series presents the idea of the cities of Japan being the positive from the negative hole in the ground left by limestone extraction. This seems to offer opportunities for investigation through the relic mines of the Lake District. there is also a good range of research material available. The only question would be his current level of influence – although, on the basis of several exhibition in high profile galleries (SFMoMA for example) and being nominated in the Prix Pictet, he is clearly being taken seriously by the photo community.
• Michael Kenna: I need to do a little more research on Kenna. He clearly has a reputation for exquisite printing technique, and is clearly quite popular/influential in the Landscape scene. My initial reaction however that his photos could be challenged in the same way as AA - that they are beautiful and sterile. His black and whites of Japan look remarkably like ink paintings – not clear if that was his intent or not at this stage. Whatever, I think they fall short of the beauty and insight of such works because they are too crafted and perfect.
• Stephen Shore: suggested by my tutor in light of my interest in road images. This has waned a bit recently as I’ve been chasing up rather more abstract concepts such as time and perspective. As a result I’ve not really followed up on this lead beyond purchasing and reading The Nature of Photographs – I don’t imagine I’m the first to be a bit surprised to find that most of the photos are not by Shore

Where is all this leading?  Well in the first instance I think I’ve narrowed my choice to one of three – Hatakeyama, Robert Adams and Misrach, with Godwin as a possible outlier. So – time for some more research.

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.

Study Day: Futureland Now (Laing Art Gallery) and Jim Shaw (Baltic Mill)

Tutors: Gerald Deslandes and Emma Drye

This was a study day in two parts – the first to visit Futureland Now at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. Having attended the seminar which accompanied the exhibition, and in truth learning very little about the artwork itself (lots about the politics of the artists) I was quite looking forward to hearing some informed comment on the images themselves and I’m happy to report that’s what I got. I think this is the first time I have been exposed to a proper analysis of an image and it was quite a revelation to hear a formal discussion of the individual elements of an image in the way that Gerald set them out. I’m not going to dwell on any particular image as it was the method that interested me most – but something I found particularly helpful was the discussion of the sublime, and how elements of it had been incorporated into many of the images – something I had struggled with on my previous visit. I think I have a better idea of what it is now – perhaps even how to incorporate it into my own work – although I do think that the viewer has to bring their own sense of awe to the party. the other thing that struck me was quite how regional the works were – once you understood where the pictures were of, and a little of the history they began to make even more sense. So score one for the OCA over the rather academic approach of the seminar.

After lunch we wandered downhill and across the Tyne to part two of the day at the Baltic Mill, Gateshead. Explaining Jim Shaw is a bit of a challenge – one that Emma gamely accepted. The exhibition was over two floors – the first being largely dedicated to artwork inspired by Shaw’s self-invented religion Oism. Much of it seemed to be the product of a little two much 60s/70s psychedelia with Star Trek kitsch and comic book imagery everywhere. Inevitably the discussion wandered into whether Shaw was actually having a big joke or whether he had a serious point to make about American culture. The second floor was dedicated to a series of huge canvases which reminded me of Roger Dean artwork for a Yes album – so continuing the pyschedelic theme. All I can truly say is that they made me smile – on a wet afternoon in Newcastle that’s no bad thing, and maybe that’s all Shaw intended. To quote the Guardian’s Gerald Searle “A giant octopus floats by, head down, dangling like a testicle. There's a lot to be getting on with in Shaw's copious oeuvre, but only so much I can take in a single visit.”

But – it’s amazing what you pick up – one of the highlights of this part of the day for me was a short discussion with Emma about what makes good and bad "Abstract Expressionism” and in many ways it was this chance to meet like minded people and ask questions/share ideas that made the day. It’s the part of distance learning I find most difficult, and living so far from London means the opportunities are relatively few and far between. My thanks to Gerald and Emma, and the merry band of students for making it a genuinely worthwhile day. Perhaps I should make a belated resolution to try to identify a worthwhile visit in Cumbria.

Crisis of the Real: Andy Grundberg

Borrowed this one from the library some time back. It's essentially a selection/compilation of critical essays looking at a range of photographers and issues in modern photography and was recommended by Simon, my tutor, to help me start thinking about some of the recommended photographers.

I found most of it a very interesting and thought provoking read, although I would have to admit to dipping in and out rather than attempting to read everything. For the record it was the first thing I have read that openly questioned the work of Ansel Adams suggesting that he reduced the majestic to simple scenery. In some quarters this would be seen as heresy.

By contrast his essay on Robert Adams was considerably more positive, suggesting that by including signs of humanity his images were at once both more convincing and more disturbing.

Sadly, I had to return this book before I really had a chance to get my teeth into it, but another reference that stuck in my mind, and needs further investigation, is the idea that it is no longer enough for a photo to be of something – it has to be something, it has to be an object, to succeed in the art world.

Thoughts on Landscape

Not taken many photos recently as I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research, and the Christmas break has given me plenty of time for reflection. The first line of thought was spurred by a forum discussion on what constitutes a “Landscape” photograph.
The European term “Landscape” appears to derive from a word meaning to a system of man-defined spaces in the environment, whether individual fields or tribal lands. Then it is suggested that it fell into disuse, before being revived by 15th century Dutch painters who appear to have used it as a term for pictures of scenery – which were just beginning to be seen as artworks in their own right. It was then some years before it started to be applied to the actual scene in addition to the picture itself. Wikipedia seems reasonably well referenced on this particular subject, and there is also a potted history here.
In this context – to my mind at least – Landscape carries connotations of ownership. I’ve seen it suggested, although I can no longer find the source, that the original Dutch landscape paintings were made to help land owners or sellers show off property. The, frequently ornate, frames I associate with classical landscape paintings also imply some form of containment and limitation. By painting and framing the image the landscape has been captured, controlled and preserved. This ethos seems to me to carry forward into photography – the early pioneer photographers in the American West were capturing the landscape in bite-sized chunks for presentation to the middle classes who could enjoy a snatch of the sublime in their living rooms (see extended discussion in Land Matters: Liz Wells). At this point I start to struggle because I’ve been a long time admirer of Ansel Adams, a more recent master of the genre. But much as I admire the beauty of his images (not to mention his stunning command of the medium) it has been argued e.g by Grundberg in Crisis of the Real (and I tend to agree) they are undoubtedly of a static, unchanging landscape and devoid of human life.

This seems to be another theme of western landscape images – their permanence. For a more recent example the works of Cornish or Rowell seem more about the transience of light and its impact on the landscape rather than the changing nature of the environment itself. Even the New Topographic photographers seem to me more concerned with the impact of man on the environment than with the evolution of the environment or its impact on man. While this undoubtedly opens the door to the use of landscape as documentary photography – a key theme at the “Futurelands Now” seminar I attended – it effectively continues the idea of the environment as something we own/partition/manipulate – perhaps even victimise.
The history of landscape art in Japan seems at first glance to have followed a similar trajectory, initially starting off as a mere incidental in religious imagery before breaking out to become an art form in its own right. But on reflection I think that there are some key differences – at least up to the point of westernisation and probably beyond. One is the absorption of popular religious themes into the images – in particular Shinto ideas of the importance of the natural world and the seasonal cycle and Buddhist ideas of impermanence. This gives rise to the production of idealised landscapes featuring elements of one or more seasons and the inclusion of birds and animals – often as seasonal symbols. In other words a much more fluid concept of a landscape painting.

This approach was dramatically impacted by the introduction of western cultural ideas in the late 18th Century and beyond, since which time the preferred approach of Japanese artists and photographers appears to have shifted back and forward between ‘realist’ western approaches and more traditional Japanese ideas. This has been equally true of photography, which has been through pictorial phases which sought to make images that appeared like tradition Japanese ink-paintings for example, through western influenced works such as Moriyama and more recently a desire to produce ‘Japanese’ works.
Another difference which I perceive – which is not to say it is inarguable – is the manner in which Japanese paintings at least have been produced and presented. Wood block printers made careful use of the colour of the background material (contrary to modern photo wisdom which appears to argue for no ‘pure white’ except in specular highlights for example) and the images were frequently produced and displayed ‘full bleed’ or in relatively light weight forms such as hanging scrolls, emphasising the frailty of landscape and removing the separation between image and surroundings produced by a frame. These are landscapes which change, and in which we participate.
Even the words for landscape carry subtly different meanings to the European versions. There are two common synonyms in use - “keikan”  carries overtones of objectivity and physicality – a bit similar to the German word ‘Landschaft’ which is where I started this ramble. The other word is Fukei – which is more subjective and carries with it a sense of atmosphere and place. In Setting Sun, Anne Wilkes Tucker deconstructs the original pictograms for Fukei as follows:
The first symbol ‘fu’ in the original Chinese means a flow or wind, the second symbol – found also in keikan – means a view. Hence landscape is not considered static, but transient and ephemeral. Ueda Shoji takes this one stage further and by engaging in (effectively) word play with the symbol for light evokes light flowing through the scenery.
A related temporality is found in Sugimoto Hiroshi’s Seascapes photos which he has explicitly stated are about “time’s arrow” and which he has deliberately reconnected to the religious origins of Japanese landscapes by presenting them in a modernised stupa or reliquary.
How much this temporality is reflected in other Japanese landscape practise I have yet to discover, but for now I think it captures something of the essence of what I am trying to portray in my seasonal photos, and I can only hope that perhaps others will see something of the same when I have the final portfolio assembled in a few months time. The same is true of my use of images of nature, as discussed in this post Geese - it matters if they're coming or going.

Moriyama and Klein at the Tate Modern

This was the primary reason for the trip to London that saw me take in Light from the Middle East and Seduced by Art (and in deference to my wife Hollywood Costumes at the V&A and Billy Elliott). And I still don’t really know what to say about it. I came for Moriyama, so Klein was an added bonus, and as his exhibition was first in the layout I’ll start there.

I’ll be honest - my mind ended up swimming a bit from the sheer quantity of work on display so some of these recollection may be a bit vague. My handwritten note as I entered the first room says everything about my initial reaction: “It’s huge! Really Huge” – and it was. The opening room, and the entrance wall contained montages of some of his more famous prints – some produced very large indeed – think 8-10 feet high.  Coming from a country that doesn’t have a gun culture I’ve always found the ‘kid with the gun to his head’ a bit shocking, even though I know it’s a toy, but blown up bigger than life-size, and coupled with a number of other shots on a similar theme that shock is really driven home.

On the opposite wall are montages of smaller images, some of which were familiar – some less so – and this theme was repeated in the next room  - banks of images in his familiar, in your face style. A couple of things jump out here – this was a man who was comfortable in a city, who thrived in a city and just wanted to capture its spirit – and in the process he shows how much cities depend on kids for their atmosphere – a point which struck me again  and again after the exhibition. What would the underground be like without the groups of teenagers? The side streets without kids playing? We’ll probably know in 20 years, because the other thing that struck me was that you’d be vigorously duffed up by someone if you took as many photos of kids in a modern British city – which means our photographic legacy risks being childless.

When you see these photos all pulled together like this it really emphasises why it doesn’t matter that the horizons are wonky, the photos are sometimes blurred and the composition is not classical. It’s about vitality, verve and the sheer joy of taking photos.

Improbably I don’t recall seeing the ”models on the zebra crossing” before – but what a great idea – which he seems to have partially replicated in a film showing further on in the exhibition with a Christ like figure standing on the street corner in what I assume to be New York, and unlike the models (if the notes are to be believed) being soundly ignored by all the passers-by. Unfortunately I didn’t get a name for the film – but I suspect it may be The Messiah as it was fairly closely followed by a  police choir singing part of The Messiah.

The next room was dedicated to his city portraits New York, Moscow, Rome and Tokyo. Again his love of the vitality of cities comes through – although I had to conclude that actually cities are more similar than they are different. A particularly impactful section was the Japanese action painter who  as the notes accurately say, looked like he was splattering blood across a huge piece of paper by punching it until his knuckles were raw. It was only close inspection that revealed it was paint. Unsurprisingly Klein reveals in the notes and the accompanying interview clips that he couldn’t find a publisher for his New York book – my gut reaction is it was far too vivid and real, and had too many home truths, for the times.

Rooms 4 and 5 I found a bit less interesting – one was full of wooden panel featuring some of his early abstracts and another largely given over to some abstract photograms – although the Holland=Mondrian 1954 series was a playful take on Mondrian’s abstracts using the lines of barn walls and windows to replicate the grids of the artist.

Moving on we were treated  to excerpts from some of Klein’s movies – Muhammed Ali meeting the Beatles was a wonderful period piece and the craziness of Mr Freedom makes even the Simpsons look sane. Finally as far as Klein goes there was a room with some of his contact sheets blown up very large and painted on. I’d like to pretend that I understood the purpose of this activity – but I’m not sure i do. I can see it as a fusion of his early abstractions with his photographic works, and looking at the notes it was clearly something of a personal expression of joy and freedom for Klein. It also moves photographs out of the realm of being something simply representational and into an object – an idea that one or two of the artists in Light from the Middle East explored, but that only feels like part of it.

There was sufficient work on show in the Klein section for a whole separate exhibition – but my poor saturated brain now had to cope with Moriyama.

“My approach is very simple – there is no artistry. I just shoot freely.”  says Moriyama – and if you were to take individual images from the huge body of work on display you might be tempted to agree, but taken as a whole there is clearly something going on which makes you question what he means by artistry. Does he mean aesthetics? I tempted to say not, because he comes over in is writing and interviews that I’ve found on the web as very well able to express himself, but that just leaves me wondering – which may well be the point.

Moriyama’s strong point is photo books and so most of the images in the 6 rooms were presented as montages or sequences, and seen like this they begin to make some kind of wild sense.  Hunter 1972  is a case in point – billed as a view of Japan through a car window. I can see, doing a lot of driving, how that works. Snatches of people here, an overhead light there, lingering in the memory in an unformed mash-up of all the images you’ve ever seen through your windscreen. As Simon Baker says in one of the essays in the Moriyama catalogue (for some reason the artists didn’t want to share a catalogue) “In these works the photographic image loses its indexical grip on the journey, giving itself over to a delirious revelling in the strangeness of automotive visions: speed, motion, night-time headlights, rain swept windscreens and the world receding in the rear-view mirror.”

Moriyama’s cities are different from Klein’s. They have fewer people to start with – and sometimes the people aren't real, they’re mannequins in shop windows, or wall posters. Sometimes it’s clear which, sometimes it isn’t.  Klein's patch is the busy daytime street – Moriyami’s is the night-time - when the underbelly is even more exposed. You could imagine the pictures displayed as a slide show with the words of Pink Floyd playing in the background – “Moving in silently, down wind and out of sight, you’ve got to strike when the moment is right, without thinking.” Where he does shoot people, they seem to be as individuals or in pairs – with the exception of Accident 10: Sombre Sunday – which is a claustrophobic series of images of a packed beach done in his characteristic near abstract high contrast, so that it reminds me of his supermarket shelves in Provoke.

One down side of this vast range of subject matter and treatments is that it’s very difficult to analyse – even remember – individual images – and those that I do remember are often a result of having see them before so I’ve been looking out for them. But what does stick in your mind is the simply bizarre – the close ups of lips (hoarding or reality?), the woman with the piercings, the headless body (or was it?) the car accidents and shipwreck.

I was interested to see Farewell Photography and after (yet again) having to admit to myself that I didn’t really understand what the collection of print's from water damaged, scratched and torn negatives was really about it was quite a relief to discover that Moriyama has described the book as “pure sensations without meaning”.

And yet – amid all this chaos, in Room 4 we find that Moriyama can be studied and reflective as well. Light and Shadow 1981 and How to Create A Beautiful Picture 1987 are extended studies in light and form, finding beauty in the mundane by the simple expedients of contrasting light and dark and composition. “No artistry”? I’m still not convinced. And further on, in room 5, we find a slide show of photos taken during his time in Hokkaido, the run down surroundings capturing a melancholy feel as he was apparently going through a personal crisis at the time. Nearby was one of my favourites. Over a period of several days he photographed the entire inside of his studio with a polaroid camera, and re-assembled it as a 3-D room-sized mosaic on all four walls to provide an image of his studio which captures time as well as physicality. The change in pace between these later rooms and the earlier stuff was very marked, and left a significant impression on me.

But, lest we think that the hunter is going soft, we finish off with “Stray Dog” – his signature photograph – printed in several different ways and at various sizes. There is undoubtedly something about the dog that makes it unforgettable. Is it dangerous? Is it slavering? Or is it simply beaten down by the city? I guess we’ll never know – but it is clear that Moriyama has been reasonably comfortable to be identified with it to the point where he called his autobiography “Memories of a Dog”.

And so it ends. I could never have guessed from the few individual shots I’ve seen in books that Moriyama’s real interest appears to be memory and time – perhaps that’s what has attracted me to his work and I shall look forward to the next opportunity to see it. Klein was fascinating – but for me at least Moriyama was enthralling and stole the show.

“I think that the most important thing that photography can do is to relate both the photographer and the viewer’s memories.” Daido Moriyama

Seduced by Art: National Gallery

The third of 3 major exhibitions I visited on my recent trip to London. I had originally planned to visit Tim Flach at the Osborne Samuel gallery, but a web preview of the exhibition suggested that very few of the shots that interested me most were actually on display so I plumped for the National instead. I was a bit spoiled for choice as there were also exhibitions by Ansel Adams and Cartier-Bresson also available.

Anyway – Seduced by Art it was. No-one could deny the ambition of the show – which according to their website set out to show “how photographers use fine art traditions,including Old Master painting, to explore and justify the possibilities of their art. [1]

It’s worth a brief pause to examine this statement as it rather coloured my view of the exhibition – not a terribly rational reaction, but true nonetheless. In particular I am irritated by the idea that a photographer needs to “justify the possibilities of their art”. To whom? The curators of the National Gallery?

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re simply being provocative not least because the opening exhibition, which sets a copy of Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus alongside Wall’s Destroyed Room and Hunter’s Death of Coltelli shows clear similarities and the Wall at least appears to be widely recognised as being influenced by the Delacroix.[2]

From this point on however I feel the exhibition begins to try too hard. For example, the comparison of Julia Margaret Cameron’s work with pencil sketches from her mentor lack conviction. Surely the similarity in tonality referenced is as much a function of the low-contrast albumen print as deliberate intent on her part, and she was working in an era when to be accepted as art a photo had to at least look like a painting, or refer to painterly subjects – so perhaps it could equally be argued that she was in a strait-jacket rather than under the influence. Ditto “Two ways of Life” by Rejlander.

While I was looking at Dijkstra’s Girl in a Bathing Costume I was treated to another visitor earnestly explaining to her colleagues that it was no coincidence the the girl’s pose mimicked that of Boticelli’s Venus – a claim repeated in at least one review I have read [3]. Unfortunately for this theory both the girl and Dijkstra have confirmed that the pose was a coincidence, with the similarity only being realised later.[4] This removes neither the beauty of the Boticelli nor the impact of the Dijkstra, and I’m at a loss to understand why this suggestion needs to be made in the face of direct evidence to the contrary – unless there is a suggestion that the Venus archetype is so ingrained in American culture that shy teenagers automatically pose like a Boticelli Venus when faced with a camera.

Elsewhere in the portrait section there was a Gainsborough compared with a Martin Parr and another painting (I forgot to note which) compared with a Tina Barney painting of a rather aristocratic gentleman in his dining room. While these do share similar characteristics it’s difficult to argue anything beyond vague pictorial similarities, which given the limited permutations available for portraits is not entirely surprising – it is a well established practice drawing on hundreds of years of history, just as it was when the old masters did their paintings.[5]

As I was a little pressed for time, I did not have the opportunity to look as closely at some of the images as I would have liked but it would be difficult to forget the impact of the next room, which featured a Struth photo of visitors to a gallery huge on one wall (questioning the reality of what we are looking at – a question I still haven’t resolved) and equally large a Luc Delahaye photo of the aftermath of a bombing raid in Afghanistan juxtaposed with Vernet’s Battle of Jemappes. Again these latter two come under the heading of trying to hard for my tastes. Battlefields have smoke, so it’s no great surprise that there are some similarities in terms of the smoke rising from the fields, but there any obvious “influence” ends. Indeed the exhibition notes quote Delahaye as saying  that there was no direct reference, similarities are a result of “shared pictorial and cultural references”. I would interpret this as meaning that those similarities are as much part of the viewer as the artist. I was more struck by the difference – the 1821 battle is all about people, the Afghan battle is devoid of humans – it’s a remote war.It says something for the mind set that the exhibition had given me by this point that initially I thought the photo was a tableau.

And this for me is the nub of it. Each of the objects on display was interesting in its own right – the paintings and the photographs – but I couldn’t help feeling that photography was somehow being patronised. Both Delahaye and Vernet have something meaningful to say about warfare, and attitudes to warfare, in their periods. Ditto Parr and Gainsborough, Boticelli and Dijkstra in their respective fields. One does not need to be justified or reinvigorated by the other.

I can’t sign off without mentioning Broadhead and Cole’s “Ode to Hill and Adamson” – a time lapse photo series in which a portrait of a woman is created “in the flesh”.. The final images are sufficiently close to the real thing that you would be hard pressed to claim that one was more “true” than the other. As we watch things more and more frequently on screens and mediated through other sources we really do need to take care with what we choose to believe.

 

[1] http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/seduced-by-art-photography-past-and-present – retrieved 10/12/2012

[2] Photographs: Jeff Wall (Pub: National Gallery of Victoria)

[3] http://londonist.com/2012/11/art-review-seduced-by-art-photography-national-gallery.php – retrieved 10/12/2012

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/arts/design/rineke-dijkstra-photographer-has-first-retrospective.html?pagewanted=all – retrieved 10/12/2012

[5] http://fabulousnoble.com/a-brief-history-of-portraiture/ – retrieved 10/12/2012

Futureland Now – Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Futureland was a 1987 exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne to mark 150 years since the beginning of photography. It featured the photographic work of two visual artists, John Kippen and Chris Wainwright. If the blurb is to be believed it was apparently quite influential – sufficiently so that the gallery felt it was worth a re-run, as Futureland Now. There’s a very good review in the Newcastle Journal which features quite an in-depth interview with the two artists. To accompany the exhibition there was a Symposium to investigate “how recent photographers negotiate the aesthetics and politics of place”. The symposium included a structured conversation between the two artists, and presentations from a half-dozen academics and practising landscapers including Liz Wells and Jem Southam. It was this that had persuaded me, and fellow student Michael to give up our Friday evening and Saturday for our studies.

First up – on Friday evening – was the conversation between the two artists, catalysed/chaired by David Chandler (who like Liz Wells is a Prof at the University of Plymouth). The conversation was quite wide ranging and provided a fascinating insight into the way photography was developing as an art form in the 80’s. There was much talk about the way photo galleries provided a working space between commercial photography and art galleries, and some gnashing of teeth that that ground had been lost as a result of funding cuts – leaving photography largely to art galleries who were equally stretched.

It was clear that both artists saw there work as a response to the political realities of the time, and what they saw as the unravelling of social structures, and this, as it runed out, set the tone for some of the discussions the following day. In particular one of the key themes was the idea that Landscape could be as much a political comment as Social Documentary photography, particularly if you took on board the idea of being able to re-photograph the archive to highlight environmental and social change.

Saturday morning began with a historical overview from Eugenie Shinkle of Westminster University. She set out the development of the predominant aesthetic of the time ‘New Topographics’ and then came to the rather unexpected (for me) conclusion that this exhibition did not fit into that context. Her argument for this was that the UK relationship with landscape was very different from that of the US, where New Topographics had developed, and as a consequence these two artists had developed a very different response to the same questions: What should a documentary photograph do? What stance should the photographer take? and What should the output look like?.

Mike Crang – a geography related Prof from the University of Durham – followed this with a discussion that was billed as a look at the cultural geographies of the NE region, but was actually an attempt to show that such distinctions were becoming hard to make as a result of a growing internationalism and connectedness. He sought to provide some answers to the questions “Where is here?” and “When is now?” His highlighting of the internationalism of trade used two examples- shipbuilding/breaking and clothes recycling.

Noting the irony that the NE now broke ships rather than built them he highlighted the environmental and social impact of ship breaking in Bangladesh, referring to some of Burtynsky’s photographic work in this area. He also highlighted how most clothes recycled in the UK found their way to the far east for re-weaving.

Finally he made the point that because of this degree of entanglement any suggestion of an internal NE identity was a falsehood – he picked out Beamish as an example of this type of faux nostalgia and punctured the popular myth that Newcastle was about ship-building and coal mining. The reality is/was that Newcastle has always been a consumption centre and the largest employment sector in the city has always been mercantile and retail.

This was followed by Liz Wells (another Plymouth Prof) who compared and contrasted Burtinsky’s Oil with Sekula’s Fish Story. She made the case that Burtinsky’s use of the sublime and pictorial approach overwhelmed the message of the images – it was art for the gallery wall, rather than as a social critique. “Stunning and predictable” was one critical quote she used to describe it.

By contrast she found the work of Sekula more interesting and valuable for it’s complexity. The work was not easy – and that was the point, because it dealt with difficult issues. This really was photography as a social practise.

The morning session concluded with a tour of the exhibition and plenty of opportunities to talk to the various speakers and the artists themselves. I have to confess to be ready for the break – my head was full of new and interesting ideas to take on board. As an aside I was also glad of a break from the occasionally trite and always irritating political throw-aways – the digs at supermarkets and energy producers and the ill disguised hatred of corporate culture. I began to wonder at one stage if someone was about to suggest that the role of photographers was to paint “Four legs good, two legs bad” on the wall of the corporate barn.

After lunch Martin Newth from Chelsea College of the Arts took us on a stroll through a range of aesthetic strategies, illustrated by his own work and the work of a number of other artists including Sarah Dobai, Jem Finer and others. The formal proceedings concluded with a talk by Jem Southam (another Plymouth Prof!) who talked about the background to some of his photographic series.  He felt his practise  was essentially about walking through the landscape in a historic sense, capturing the changes that have been wrought by man and nature. He thought this mode of working was the British equivalent of the American road trip.

The day concluded with a discussion which opened with the question – does taking a photo change anything? I’m not sure we got an answer beyond the faintly optimistic “We hope so – or what’s the point?”

Overall this was an excellent day and a bit. I have a raft of new leads to chase down, a couple of new ideas for projects and a growing conviction that there is vastly more to Landscape photography than is hinted at by the course notes. My challenge now is to go and put some of it into action.

John Pfahl - Altered Landscapes

John Pfahl - Altered Landscapes:
Came across this photographer while dipping into Andy Grundberg’s Crisis of the Real – suggested to me by my tutor. Sadly it was a fraction too late for me to reference in my 2nd Assignment, but such is life. Pfahl’s work seems to overlap with some of my interests quite heavily – I never believed for a moment that I would be the first. In the example, and gallery, linked he is playing tricks with perspective by using cleverly placed man-made objects to deceive the eye of the viewer. The dotted lines which appear at first glance to be on the surface of the photo, can on closer inspection be seen to be attached to the pillars themselves.

Blue Right Angle Image Courtesy of John Pfahl Copyright John Pfahl

Elsewhere the waves in the foreground turn out to strips of lace, what appears to be a reflection of the moon is in fact a pie plate, and golf balls, oranges and sticky tape play havoc with perspective. In doing so he toys not just with our ideas of perspective, but also our understanding of what a photo is. He draws attention to the fact that we are looking at a photo by the absurdity of the perspective.
Elsewhere on his website he offers some interesting takes on industrial smoke stacks, worries about descending into pictorialism and the sublime in Power Places, and uses digital techniques to create ‘scrolls’ (sadly no artists statement available for this one) and investigate the dynamics of geology. Plenty to think about here.

More Raymond Moore

Went along to the main library in Carlisle to have a look at two of the books listed as authored by Moore in the link from my previous post on this photographer. Typically I managed to forget a pen/notebook/phone/camera so what follows is my recollection of two rather enjoyable collections of images – Murmurs at Every Turn and Every So Often. They are both slim volumes – and he library clearly values them as they aren’t available for loan and had to be retrieved from a special collection somewhere in the bowels of the building.

Examples of his images can be found here and here and they seem fairly typical of his work. There is also a video about the guy available through YouTube – a self-consciously arty documentary in typical 80s BBC fashion.

At first sight his images could easily be taken as photos of nothing much – muddy puddles, stray dogs, iffy caravans, essentially soulless stretches of road – but as you flick through the pages of the books they build in your mind something of a picture of the everyday. His images – although of specific times and places - surround us all the time. They are the visual treats that we scarcely recognise as we go about our daily business In some ways they feel almost like the output of a photo-a-day project. He seemed to feel that his role was to capture those fleeting moments and memories that the rest of us walk past – in the hope perhaps that it would encourage the rest of us to be more observant and value those things more.

If there is an issue I could raise it is the idea which is introduced in the video/supporting texts that he ‘turned his back’ on the beauty of the Lake District and by fairly hefty implication come to find something of interest on the dodgy West Coast of Cumbria. Unfortunately that overlooks the fact the the west coast has an attractive coastal strip – Mr Moore chose to concentrate on the coastal towns and villages – which were indeed pretty run down at the time.

So yes, these photos are interesting, and Raymond Moore has an eye for finding visually stimulating images in unlikely places but as is so often the case the stuff that’s out of the frame is in may ways as interesting as the stuff we can see.

It’s the nature of the area that very little development has taken place outside of the towns, so I think it might be instructive to se if I can retake some of these images as they are today – anticipating Project 29 by a fair margin.

Where am I going?

A while back I did a mind map to capture the things that interested me, and that I might study or feature in a course on Landscape photography. As time has moved on a bit since the I thought I’d revisit it, tweak it to reflect my current views/interests and perhaps compare and contrast. Here’s the latest version:

It’s a bit on the small side for reading directly – but a bigger version is available through Flickr if anyone is interested. The key difference for me are:

• the large selection of ‘things’ I listed is now gone – with the exception of ‘roads’, which has moved to being a potential linking theme for Assignment 3, alongside ‘time’;
• I have a much extended list of photographers of interest either for themselves as as an exemplar of some area that interests me

As a consequence of this, the graphic is now much more concept based. Whether this is reflected in my photography is another issue,, and perhaps it’s a little early to tell yet. I am certainly finding that photographing ‘things’ for the sake of it is getting less interesting. It’s not really clear to me though if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Mikkel McAlinden

Mikkel McAlinden:

'via Blog this'

Not specifically a Landscape photographer - although it certainly features in his work - but Mikkel McAlinden has produced an interesting approach to portraying a 3-d space in shots 13-16 of his gallery. The portrayal of the space was not his primary aim, which he sets out quite well in a short essay associated with the images, but it does offer an interesting approach which I've been wondering about weaving into Assignment 2.

Jeff Wall: Photographs - The Art Gallery of W.A.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia Website:

There are lots of positive things to say about Australia - not least of which is that they have a range of excellent museums and art galleries in their major cities. For the second week of my hols I was in Perth, and as luck would have it the Art Gallery of Western Australia was showing Photographs by Jeff Wall, a selection of 26 of his major works.This post is an initial reaction only  as I've not yet had a chance to really study the images in the catalog - other than to note that its production values seem extremely high.

For those not familiar with his originals (which included myself before the visit) Jeff Wall produces very large transparencies which he displays in light boxes. This gives them enormous visual impact. In a related vein many also exhibit a very different viewing experience close up compared with when viewed from further back. Subsequent reading indicates that this is deliberate - Wall uses a large format camera to allow for just such an effect. In some cases it would be possible to view areas of the image as separate photos - which reflects the manner in which at least some were made - A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai) - for example.

I was surprised at the lack of landscape images as Liz Well's had made specific mention on Wall in Land Matters. The only example was a piece called 'Coastal Motif' which seemed difficult to relate to the other images in the show. And there is my only real criticism - there was a bit of a shortage on interpretive material which made it difficult to work out what was happening. Sure I can, and did, use my own brain, and I've subsequently discovered a quote from Wall as follows:

"I'm aware that the subjects I choose do have meaning, but over the years I've found that understanding these meanings is less important for me. My burning issue is how to make the next picture good."

But for all that I find the images easier to fit together now I've had a chance to research their background. I still have some more to do in this area - showing in a side room wasan artists talk from when the photos were shown at the Tate - it's over an hour long so I guess a glass of red and a quiet evening are required.

I'll finish this post with my favourite - several shots stick in my memory - not least the previously mentioned  After Hokusai, but I think the first shot I saw - "The Door Pusher" - has the edge, simply because I wasn't visually prepared for the scale and colours of the presentation. The review in that link says:

"The next room turns to panoramic landscapes, and we look for an obscure detail that might give us a clue to a hidden meaning but wind up with the familiar feeling that there is something we are missing."

and this seems to capture my lasting reaction very well. And maybe it's the feeling that I'm missing something that will keep me coming back for more.

Footnote: Am mildly disturbed that the guy in the last review describes the subject of "The Door Pusher" as a deviant. It could have been me many years ago!!

The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia, Melbourne Museum – 22 August 2012

Living in the country you need to take every opportunity to see decent museums and galleries. Last time I visited my brother there was an Impressionist exhibition in the National Gallery of Victoria. This time around the Melbourne Museum had borrowed a superb range of Mesopotamian artefacts from the British Museum.

The displays that struck me most were the wall carvings. I’ve seen similar before in pictures but never really thought about them in great detail – they often seemed like random collections of images – a kind of early ‘Where’s Wally?”designed to make the commissioner feel good about themselves. However the interpretive displays brought them to life – in particular they way they act almost like a comic strip to tell a story.

Two stick in my mind – the first is a lion hunt which is (if my memory serves) a series of four panels arranged one above the other with a primary image at each end (so about 8 primary images in total) which tells the story of the hunt and the death of the lion from beginning to end. As with Chinese scrolls there is no central viewpoint and so no use of perspective.

This lack of perspective is carried into the very large wall panel featuring the battle of Til-Tuba which is – to the untrained eye – very confusing. The original artist has made life easier for his viewers by providing little captions around the image to help them pick out the key incidents. Although it lacks ‘realism’ in the modern western sense, the lack of perspective gives a very good impression of the confusion and carnage which must have reigned on the battlefield at the time.

So what does this have to do with photography? I’m not quite sure but I’m developing a growing suspicion that the single-viewpoint nature of photography is a significant challenge to telling a story.

Landscape - what am I going to do with it?

Well I did my usual thing of deciding I understood everything and charging in, as a result of which I’m halfway through the projects leading to the first assignment before deciding what I’m trying to do .

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had a useful introductory chat with my tutor who reminded me that at this level I need to think beyond technique to communication of ideas, or exploration. One of the things that concerns me most is that I look at other people’s blogs, and it’s clear that they have reasonably clear ideas about what they are trying to explore or achieve.

In truth, I don't feel particularly driven to communicate my personal views  - I’m not terribly political and I rather loathe single issue protest groups and campaigning organisations because of their inability to see more than one side of an argument – but there are undoubtedly subjects that interest – perhaps even irritate me – and ideas I’d like to explore in more detail. At my tutors suggestion I have spent a couple of hours jotting and doing a bit of mind-mapping to get some of these things into a usable form that I can pick from and relate to each other and to the course work. I’ve broadly sub-divided the ideas into two chunks Concepts – in which I’ve included the ideas I’d like to explore, and Examples – which covers the subject areas that I’m currently photographing or tempted to photograph. I added in the Assignments for good measure, and my first pass is here:

The connections are a bit weak at the moment, but I plan to come back to it from time to time to test where I’m going and to work up further ideas.

Overall I’m quite take with this approach – it adds some structure. Rather than going out to take random stuff I can start relating it to some key themes. Some of these are practical – how do I create ‘space’ in a photo for example, some are a bit more philosophical – how do all these images relate to my memory of place perhaps and some are simply practical – shoot some old farm buildings, but by linking them together  feel I have a reasonable chance of setting in motion the processes that lead to a meaningful block of study. Without something like this to guide me I’ll get to the end of the course with nothing more than a set of unrelated assignments. At the same tie, it has to be live. If my initial brainstorm missed something that subsequently seems important, or I lose interest in an area, it should simply be a case of nudging the map to  ensure that I stay on my new path.

We shall see – as my sensei says: There is no try – only do.