The last post

This is the final post on this blog – I got my results, and it’s fair to say I’m very happy with them a first for the module certainly exceeded my expectations by some measure. I would like to record a public vote of thanks to my tutor Simon – without whom I’d still be floundering around in the dark. I’d also like to thank everyone else who has taken the time to comment on any of these posts – although it may not always seem like it I have valued your contribution and the reassurance that I am not always talking to myself.

If you’d like to keep up with my continuing journey I’m now approaching the first assignment of the Documentary module – and recording my thoughts here.

Re-worked supporting text for Assignment 2

The text below is the re-worked text supporting Assignment 2 which was previously posted in on the page 2: One Acre – Final (see Tab at the top of the page) Not quite sure what’s happened but I suddenly feel I understand what I’m supposed to be doing a lot more clearly. In particular it has dawned on me that I’m doing an art degree – not simply a photography qualification.

 

I’ve not reworked the original supporting text for Assignments 3 and 5 because I’m now incorporating my response to my tutors comments in this blog and incorporating it in the pages above distracts from the final outcome. I feel the final outcome of Assignment 2 deserves similar space.

 

Why not Assignment 1? Simply because as I noted in a previous post I made a bit of a leap forward between 1 and 2 and don’t think Assignment 1 says anything that could easily stand alone.

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Contents
Introduction – Display – Images – Lessons Learned – Assessment Criteria - Links

Introduction
On the face of it this is a very simple assignment – take a dozen photographs of a small area of land exhibiting as great a variety as possible of landscape imagery.
Living on the edge of the Lake District it would be relatively easy to find an acre that offered any permutation of mountains as a backdrop, lakes, waterfalls, woodland and meadows – perhaps even all of them. Too easy in fact – and too impersonal. Instead I have chosen a patch of land much closer to home – a small ‘nature area’ in the Community Gardens next to my home – a patch of land I regularly visit for a bit of peace and quiet, or to feel alone with the world.
It is almost exactly 1 acre, in a shallow valley surrounded by hedgerow on three sides and some recently developed wildflower areas on the other. It includes a large(-ish) and two small man-made ponds and at the time I originally started this assignment was extremely wet underfoot. Vegetation is largely sedges, grass and the usual collection of nettles and thistles. It is visible as the left hand portion of the central field in the Google maps image below. A ground level panorama taken in early spring is also attached.

The aerial appears to have been taken a couple of years ago so that the ponds are no longer as clearly defined.

As patches of countryside go it is pretty unremarkable and that, to me, is its attraction. As we have become a more urban population we are led more and more to see the countryside as a spectacle – somewhere to go at the weekend – which means that we need to be entertained while we’re there. Visiting lakes, collecting Wainwrights, cruises, set viewpoints – all seem to me to be symptoms of a separation from the environment around us – and so I want, in this project, to capture something of the reality of my local countryside and why I find this piece of land worth visiting.
In reworking this assignment, and as discussed on my Learning Log,  I have tried to focussed on using collage to construct a ‘place memory’ – an idea I started to investigate in People and Place. Building on a suggestion from my tutor the final collage incorporates images taken at different times as well as from different locations and perspectives
I took well over two hundred images ranging from multi-shot panoramic views of the site to close-ups of small flowers over a period of several months. The final 12 have been chosen to meet the stated aim of the Assignment (variety of imagery) while allowing me to crop as necessary to develop the final collage.
Display
As suggested in the feedback for Assignment 1 I have given some thought to how I might choose to display these images. This has impacted on my choice of images in accordance with my aim to investigate perspective and space memory.
The artist David Hockney has done a lot of work exploring memory and perspective – his joiners are an example of multi-point perspective, and his recent multi-camera work attempts to produce a moving image which is more representative of the way we see.
I made a simple exploration of this, and my understanding of the way memory works in my People and Place blog referenced above. My intent here is to build on this. I envisage the images being displayed either as a single large collage as here, or as individual cropped and mounted images suspended in a 3-D array so that from a distance they appear as the collage image, but closer viewing means the relationship between them varies with viewing position and the individual images are capable of slight movement on the end of their suspension cables. This would give a closer reflection of the way I see my memory of this area working, and would also allow for the overall “memory” to be augmented with new shots.
By contrast with the simple black/orange monotone of my PnP blog post this Assignment requires a greater diversity of images, introducing a broader range of colours and details that have to be selected and assembled to create that ‘place memory’. By displaying them as a large collage the eye is forced to move from place to place and assimilate different scenes and levels of detail so that the brain slowly builds a picture of the overall area in a process which is akin to the way I perceive my memory works.



Component Images
Figure 1: Blue Sky:  These high level clouds, taken in October 2012, feel ideal for the top of the collage: 1/400 @ f/8; ISO 200; 33mm. Slight overexposure to lighten cloud.

Figure 2: Blue sky with autumn leaves: Taken in November 2012. I wanted to introduce some obvious autumn colour, and my original shot suffered from blur, so I have replaced it with this one. 1/500 @ f/9; ISO 400; 50mm – 2/3 stop underexposed to saturate the sky and hold the colour in the birch leaves.

Figure 3: View to western boundary. Included to give and edge to the field in the collage. 1/1250 @ f/5: ISO 200; 23mm

Figure 4: Rush Seed Head. The bulrush heads disintegrate over the winter period so that by early April they looked like this. Again I had focussing issues – more accurately depth of field issues - with image on the left hand edge of the original  collage, so I have replaced it with this one. In any case, this is a more accurate component of the way I visualise the area. 1/2000 @ f/3.5: ISO 100: 54mm. Aperture deliberately chosen to isolate the subject from the similar colours of the background.

Figure 5: Backlit rush and sedges. I felt that a vertical crop of this image would make a good edge shot and the backlighting would add to the variety. 1/100 @ f/9: ISO 100; 50mm


Figure 6: Grass seedlings. These grass seedlings are already starting to die back as the weather cools down. As with the bulrush seed head shot I used a deliberately small aperture to isolate them from the background. 1/500 @ f/2.8: ISO 200: 50mm

Figure 7: View over rushes. Any attempt to capture this patch of ground needs to emphasise water and marsh plants so rushes are inevitably a central feature of the collage. 1/160 @ f8: ISO 200; 14mm


Figure 8: Partially submerged marsh plants. These are actually the same plants as Figure 11, but taken after a spell of prolonged rain a few days later. The reflection of the sky helps to link the various parts of the collage together. The ponds are central to the area and this shot is central to the collage. 1/8 @ f/16; ISO 100: 50mm. 1 stop overexposed to brighten clouds.


Figure 9: Marsh Marigold A sure sign of late spring early summer in my neck of the woods and one of the reasons this patch of land is special. I make a point of wandering down to see these in flower every year. 1/100 @ f/10: ISO 200: 37mm. Slight underexposure to maintain colour in the backlit flowers

 
Figure 10: Raindrops on grass. A close-up aiming to capture the raindrops and add to the sense of wetness. This image has bee cropped and rotated for inclusion in the final collage. 1/160 @ f/8; ISO 200; 54mm


Figure 11: Dew on marsh plants. Again an attempt to add to the overall feeling of wetness, and to provide a nice damp base to the collage. 1/160 @ f/8; ISO200; 54mm. Slight underexposure to avoid burn out in droplets.

Figure 12: Frost on marsh plants Included to highlight another seasonal aspect. 1/25 @ f/8: ISO 100: 17mm

  



Lessons learned
Concept: This was quite a challenging exercise once I moved past the simple ‘take some photos of somewhere pretty’ reaction which I think is almost conditioned by the course text. What did I want to do? There were, and are, two lines of research that interest me – one about perspective, space and memory and the other about portrayal of time and seasonal symbolism. Initially I found it hard to resolve which of these to focus on, so initially I simply took some photos to see what emerged. This is perhaps the key lesson for me – sometimes you have to take photos to help clarify what you are trying to achieve. Does this contradict the lesson of Assignment 1? I don’t think so as I still started shooting with an idea of what I was trying to achieve – it was just not firmly tied down.
The resolution presented in my initial submission was in major part down to the fact that the landscape is so simple that it is almost devoid of seasonal symbolism which, coupled with the time frame for submission, meant an exploration of the portrayal of time was not really feasible in this location. This revised version has the benefit of having been completed over a longer period, so that elements of both time and space have been incorporated into the final presentation.
The other lesson I have learned is that 12 photos is a relatively small selection – it is better to focus them on a single task, rather than trying to portray or explore too may ideas.
Planning: This was the least difficult part of this assignment – at least as far as shooting went. I have continuous easy access to the site. The owners are used to seeing me so, demands of work permitting, I can choose when and what to photograph. Assembling the final collection was somewhat more difficult as I had to sift through the images with an eye to the potential crops I would need for particular parts of the collage. The key lesson here is that by having an idea of how I wished to present the images I could ensure I had enough options for the final output.
Research: In my blog I have recorded some of the results of my research into studying perspective (albeit in the context of Japanese art in some cases), and into seasonal symbolism in a culture which I perceived – perhaps incorrectly in the light of more recent reading – to be more connected to the seasons than our own. However it is certainly the case that classical Japanese art demonstrates that connection, and the ideas in that art continue to affect the way I look at the world. Some of that may be apparent in this fiunal assignment submission, and will hopefully be apparent in my final portfolio.
On a different note, reading Fox & Caruana during this assignment opened my eyes to the idea that photography itself can be research and this is one of the first times (if not the first) that I have consciously used it in that way.

Assessment criteria
Technical and Visual Skills: Once again I find this difficult to assess. I think I have produced a range of images from close-up to distant landscape, of a range of subject matter, in a technically competent way. I made much more use of a tripod in these images and I believe these samples show that I can produce technically sound images. I’m still not sure I fully understand what is meant by visual skills but I believe I have avoided a simple pictorial approach – I have tried to be honest about the area itself – and I belive that in developing a collage for final assessment I have demonstrated that I an see beyond the edge of a single image.
Quality of Outcome: Given that the aim of the assignment (beyond the stated one) was to explore memory – the recollection and portrayal of space and time - I believe this is a good start in an area of study which I expect to revisit in the future.
Creativity: In looking beyond traditional flat presentation of a set of images I believe I have taken a creative approach to addressing one of the limitations (in a purely physical sense) of photography in producing a sense of place. It is certainly the first time that I have considered displaying photographs as an installation that allows physical interaction with the viewer.
Context: I have tried to place this assignment into the context of some current thoughts on portrayal of perspective and the workings of memory. In doing so I have gone outside simple photographic literature by picking up on the work of David Hockney alongside more conventional photographic practice. I have also drawn on Japanese landscape tradition and their inclusion of multiple seasons in single images.

Links and references
Land Matters: Liz Wells – recommended course text which emphasises the potential of Landscape to convey messages.
A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney: Martin Gayford – a series of interviews/recollections of conversation with David Hockney
Behind the Image: Anna Fox and Natasha Caruana – recommended course text on research in photography
World Kigo Database – a database of seasonal words for Haiku writers that provides a lot of inspiration for seasonal imagery.
Japan Season by Season: Sandrine Bailey

Catching up

I’ve been neglecting my blog at a vital time – which i guess is one of the “joys” of part time study. Since my last real post I’ve had two weeks holiday without internet access, packed my youngest off to university, picked up my new role as OCASA rep for the Photography courses and tried to get my portfolio and assessment material in order.

Thankfully it’s coming together at last. I think the last big hurdle was getting everything printed. I’ve decided to go quite large – A2 – to ensure that my panoramas are actually tall enough to view. I’ve also decided that Assignment 1 will be digital only – it doesn’t fit with the rest of my prints and will simply distract from the impact of the others if I include it in hard copy. I feel justified in this approach because I think I made quite a leap forward in understanding what these courses are about between Assignments1 and 2.

So what I have now is:

• A single collage featuring all 12 images from Assignment 2;
• Assignments 3 and 5 are printed 8 and 12 up respectively on single A2 sheets – in the manner of a Becher typology as discussed previously;
• The four-shots-from-one-location part of the portfolio (Exercise 15) is covered by my 4 seasons image; and,
• For the twelve shots representing my response to the four seasons I am  providing 12 shots of the cereal field opposite my house, printed 3 to an A2 sheet in seasonal order. As the group is essentially about the cycle of the seasons this presentation means they can be ordered to start the year at any particular season you wish – I started the cycle at the beginning of autumn – but if someone prefers to view them spring first that’s their choice.

Presented in this way I hope a number of interlocking themes emerge and I’m capturing these thoughts here in the hope that it will help me with a unifying  “artists statement” for the whole collection:

• an interest in time and capturing or signifying its effects in an image – as in the collage and the portfolio submissions
• an interest in the sea shore and the boundaries between land, sea and sky as in Assignments 3 and 5. Man’s action at this interface is something I hope to work on in Documentary – subject to the Assignment specs being sufficiently broad.
• a preference for panoramic formats. I’ve pondered this one long and hard – it is clearly a preference I was developing during People and Place and in the final analysis I think it’s down to the idea that it feels closer to the way we actually see and, particularly in the extreme ratios used in my portfolio, it requires us to move through the picture as we would if it were a ‘real’ view.
• an idea of using the camera to explore rather than explain or expound. My tutor has regularly asked – “What am I trying to say?” – and sometimes I know, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes all I can say is “Look at this – this is interesting. I’m not sure why yet, but give me time and a camera and I might be able to find out.” Triple Point (Assignment 5) fall into this category. I’m grasping at an idea about the impact of time and the elements on the little bit of the planet available for us to live on, and perhaps the variety of efforts we put in to tilt the equilibrium in our favour. The idea overlaps with some of the thoughts about permanence and change in the wave series and for the moment that’s all I can say. It has to come of it's own accord.

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.

Working practice

One of the challenges of studying I’ve found is marshalling all the thoughts and materials into a coherent mass – especially as I spend 2-3 days  every week away from home – and the time I spend in hotels is therefore a large chunk of my “free” time. What I have also found pretty frustrating is trying to capture the random thoughts that occur while I’m driving – and the thoughts spurred by listening to people on the radio – as there’s a limit to my memory capability when it comes to this sort of stuff (bad jokes is another issue – but I digress).

So what are the basics – I have the notes in a ring binder, an A5 notebook as provided at the start of the course and this blog. A few pros and cons to start with.

• the course notes – in previous courses I’ve tended to scribble thoughts on them – which is a bit unsatisfactory at assessment time. I started off by carrying them with me but they are big, bulky and made of paper so easily damaged. In the end I copied the contents pages onto my phone and went with just that unless I really needed to take a page or two with me.
• the A5 notebook – I can see looking at the example videos provided by the OCA that my previous notebooks would have provided rather slim pickings for an assessor. I’ve tried harder this time – I’ve used it to keep notes of study visits, scribble down thoughts about photographers I’ve researched in books and collect my random musings. I’ve discovered that I tend to progress by simply asking myself questions – which I try to write down – the answers get ground around in my head and end up as posts here. Sometimes using the notebook can be quite spontaneous – at others it just feels forced. As time as progressed I’ve also felt restricted by the size and binding. For my next course I’ve moved up to an A4 notebook, with built in document wallets so that I can more easily add pictures and supplement notes as I go.
• this blog – is here when I need it – on my lap-top in hotels, on my phone when I’m out and about and on my home PC when I’m not. Sometimes I post finished thoughts (in as far as any thought is finished) – sometimes musings  - whatever feels comfortable  - which in truth is most things other than the random questions and jottings in my notebook. I post my photos on Flickr for linking here. For better or worse I started my OCA journey using Blogger – it’s pretty easy to use – and although the OCA model is based on Wordpress I feel no significant reason to change. What I have done throughout this course is tweak the layout to more closely resemble the OCA model – so that the assessors and, hopefully, other people can find their way around better.

What more do I need? Quite a bit actually. I find the idea of doing online research and then painfully transcribing links to a written notebook odd at best. Ditto finding images and articles online and then printing them out. Carrying an A5 notebook everywhere is simply painful – and A4 will be worse – as I don’t wear a jacket or carry a man-bag. I’ve taken the reading list seriously on this course as well – not something I did before (we live and learn), but there is a limit to how big a library I can transport. So during the course I’ve adopted a couple of practices and bits of technology to help manage this.

• One Note – I’ve blogged about this previously. It’s my go-to tool for online research – the challenge now is how to present the info at assessment without more dead trees. I use it to collect articles, links and images of interest. I use it to store my tutor reports and e-mails between myself and my tutor, and to collect my initial reactions to tutor feedback. I shall be using it to store any worthwhile forum posts I make for future reference. It also integrates with my phone – so I use it to store stuff I might need while way on study visits – train times, proof of ticket purchase etc.
• my phone – I am embarrassed to admit that in a forum response to Joe Fox I once suggested that if the answer was a smart phone you were asking the wrong question. I now use it for staying in touch with the forums when I’m on the move, as a handy camera for recce trips and visual note-taking, it has tide tables, a depth of field calculator and a sun compass –and best of all a handy little free text note taking app (S-Note) you can write on with a stylus. From time to time I export these to the PC, print them off and add them to my log-book. By the time I’ve thrown in Dropbox and the One Note app I can do pretty much anything in the field I could do at my desk (although I do prefer working on the PC/laptop for the proper keyboard.) I also have a mind-mapping app which I've just started using to keep notes from books I’m reading – not quite sure about it yet, but worth a try I think. And finally there’s the Bloglovin app which i use to stay in touch with other blogs I fiollow.
• my Kindle – much easier to read on than a computer or a phone I try to get as many of the course texts as possible in this format. I also use it for pdf texts from the net, and as a handy format for instruction manuals. The dictionary function is also pretty handy when reading some of the denser theory texts. I have the Kindle app on my phone and both computers so I can generally get a decent view of colour images if I feel I need them as well.
• forums – Flickr and OCA.; My contribution to these varies – sometimes I’m very active, sometimes I’m just an observer, There seem to be several ways of interacting with these  - my preferred methods are contributions to debates and helping relative newcomers. the latter has the unexpected benefit of testing my own understanding as well.

I guess it’s possible to say technology has taken over my life but it feels about right to me. Information gathering is done with the phone, Kindle, forums and PCs and recorded using the logbook, S-Note and OneNote. Musings and thought sorting are done in the logbook and sometimes her and on the forums and the final (and sometimes semi-final) output recorded here.

Not sure if all this is helpful to anyone but me, but I’ve not really thought about the physical structure of my learning experience before. Overall it feels comfortable – although I’m sure I will continue to tweak it as I progress.

PS Did I mention I sometimes make photos?

An alternative take on the Lakes – AF and DJ Unsworth

Excepting the centre of London, and maybe a couple of southern tourist traps I doubt anywhere in the UK has been photographed more often than the Lake District – that’s why I’ve resisted using it as the basis for much of the work I’ve done of this course – I couldn’t see how I would do it differently or better.

But on a visit to a little local gallery/craft outlet (Thornthwaite Gallery) yesterday I came across the work of two people, Angie and David Unsworth, who seem to have achieved just that. Their website is full of amazing images of the Lake District which for the most part avoid the obvious views and sweeping vistas to give  a very personal take on the area. Many of the shots are right up my street – concentrating on the details of the countryside that give it its character – the flow of rivers, the grain and colour of the native rock, the play of light on plants and the multitude of greens.

Overall their work reminds me of the works of Shinzo Maeda and seem to be born of a deep understanding of, and familiarity with, their patch. This provides me with some reassurance that I’m not just being parochial by focussing on the area immediately around my home for most of the shots for my assignments and portfolios – I genuinely feel that working a patch I know is likely to give more interesting results.

Assignment 2 rework – the final picture

This has taken a bit longer than I expected, but that means I have been able to include a more active recognition of time into the final collage. I’m currently comfortable with the idea that the overall picture we build up of a place incorporates elements from differing seasons and I have made use of passing time to do this. I have also tried to reduce the regularity of the matrix on which the collage is based to reflect the differing priorities aspects take in our memories. Finally I have taken the opportunity to replace one of the images Simon highlighted as having a quality issue, and a second that I felt unsure about myself. The final images is here and will be worked into the final submission in the near future:

I did think about replacing the small grass picture in lower left with a much closer shot of dew-drops, but I think that wetness has sufficient dominance in the final composition without that so am leaving it unchanged.

The final thought is how I would display this, and I am tempted to suggest that I would suspend the images individually so that from a distance and viewed from eye level they appeared essentially as the single image above, but on closer inspection, or by moving around, the relative size and importance of the images would vary, and interaction would cause the pictures to move slightly relative to each other – in much the same way that thinking to hard about a memory appears to alter it in some ways.

I also wonder if, as an installation, it would not be relatively simple to augment the overall image with new additions, and allow some to fade or simply remove them altogether, so that the installation changed over time as our memory would.

Why do they do that?

I've been chewing my way through Landscape and Western Art by Malcolm Andrews and on the whole I've found it a fascinating - often enlightening read. But he's just irritated me.

Chapter 8 covers the development of landscape painting in the context of a growing scientific understanding of the world. In it he notes the increasing role of photography as the instrument of pictorial naturalism, and asserts photography's inability to express the rhythmic energy of a site or its vitality.

 

So far, so fair - but the evidence Andrews produces to support this is a comparison by someone called Machotka between a Cezanne and a 1930 photo of the same view by a Professor of Art History. Come on! Is that reasonable? Why not compare an Adams, a Weston or a Rowell (got the book - now understand the attraction better) with an amateur oil painting by a Photography Prof and see where that takes us.

 

It would be amazing if there were not things that each medium does best, but what is served by this kind of facetious comparison?

Grrrr!

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.

Intimate Landscapes

I started writing this post – and then for some reason lost in time I stopped – so I’ve started again. In the course notes it observes that the dividing line between landscape and nature photography is not well defined. It suggests that the point at which the horizon is removed may be that line – which to me simply illustrates the futility of such definitions. Indeed a quick look at First Light (Joe Cornish) or the Classic Images (Ansel Adams 1987 Barbican retrospective) shows that both these “landscape” photographers frequently omit horizons – or have horizons which are so broken up or hidden that they play no significant role in the composition.

But I have a more fundamental objection to the proposed split. The most awe inspiring landscapes are built of rock and moss and plants, shaped by frost and rain, altered and used by animals of all varieties – including us – so why draw a line? I can see that a label is useful commercially – but I understood this to be an art course – and in this context the split seems wholly arbitrary. If I am using landscape as a metaphor, or as a tool for investigating other concepts why would I wish to limit myself to a subset of the opportunities available simply to satisfy someone’s need to categorise my work?

Not quite sure where I’m going with this argument but I think it’s leading me to suggest that a key role for landscape/nature photography is to help us understand the world around us, the way everything links together and the impact that destroying even small pieces of jigsaw has

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.

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

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.

Geese – it matters if they’re coming or going

Or at least it does to some people. I took the following shot just a couple of weeks ago at Caerlaverock, near Dumfries. It shows a flock of Barnacle Geese coming into land after a day out on the marshes.

To me, and to those of us observant enough to notice such things in the UK I think geese are about autumn. They’ve spent the summer breeding up in the Arctic somewhere and now they’ve flown south for winter – so their arrival is a sign of autumn. I don’t think I’ve ever considered them a sign of spring – unlike the first house martin – now that’s a sign of spring. But for the scholar of Japanese haiku it does matter which way they’re flying – and departing geese like these would be taken as a sign of spring. Arriving geese would be a sign of autumn and seem, as far as my limited experience goes, to be a slightly less common as an allegory.  If I wanted these to be autumn geese they would need to be flying into the camera – clearly arriving.

Unlike this duck – a wigeon to be precise. Now he’s definitely late autumn or winter.

So what’s my point? To be honest it’s fairly simple. In this course we have a series of exercises that ask us in one way or another to photograph seasonal landscapes – to show how the landscape changes with time. Which is fine – but our western sense of seasonal change is a relatively blunt instrument compared with at least the traditional Japanese sense of the same. By exploring these associations I can provide myself with a toolkit for seasonal comment and in doing so perhaps use photographs to convey time (and perhaps even more) in a single image.

Are these images landscapes though? A short discussion I prompted on Flickr suggests they might well be. The first qualifies unequivocally in my books – it illustrates land and sky and has a clear seasonal reference in both our, and Japanese culture – so it’s difficult to argue it’s not a seasonal landscape. By implication then the wigeon must also be a landscape, since it features one of the three primary landscape elements and a seasonal reference, and so must this:

For me this prompts a whole range of possibilities within landscape photography that I’d not really thought about too deeply until the last couple of weeks. I shall just need to be very careful how I present them.

Assignment 1: Tutor Feedback

Been several weeks now since I got my tutors feedback on Assignment 1, but I wanted to have  a chat with him about a couple of things before writing up my reflections/thoughts/reactions etc. Done that now and as with the previous couple of calls it has been very helpful in sorting out some things running around my head.

Purely practical

A couple of the comments are purely practical and, as I agree with them, can be implemented without further ado. Springboard diving – Image 3: a slightly tighter crop at the top to reduce the amount of background seems very sensible, as does the suggestion to do something about the extraneous blackbird in Image 5 – Rifle Final

Image alignment with concept and assignment

Image 10 – Beach volleyball: Simon felt this was being shoehorned into the concept, and on reflection I think I agree with this. In particular his point that the beach is too dark to be seen seems spot on. I obviously can’t retake it as that defeats the concept so I may have to substitute another image/sport. In the Jari Silomaki set I referenced the link between the image and the news item is sometimes tenuous at best, but in my case I am trying to engage in visual punnery so I feel different ‘rules’ apply.

In a related vein he notes that the opening and closing images suit the concept well but it wasn’t clear what they said about summer. In mind at least the first was intended as a comment about the peacefulness on summer in my part of Cumbria (in contrast to the madness of the opening ceremony), and the second made a point about how rapidly summer fades. I have a couple of choices: the first is to change the shots – but then I lose the top and tail of the set. The second is to explain my thinking more clearly – so I’ll be going for that option.

Tension between the allegory and the assignment and final portfolio

By this I mean that some of the images suit the sports well but maybe illustrate the feeling of season less well. I was aware of this tension as I proceeded, especially as the concept required that I take photos in less than summery conditions. While I acknowledge it as a tension I believe it is something I have to live with. The simple truth is that summer in my bit of Cumbria is frequently damp and grey – I can choose to pretend it isn’t so, or I can represent as it is. In the context of this isolated assignment I saw no issue with this. For me this particular summer was about the Olympics, and if I didn’t capture that idea in some shape or form I would be missing an important facet of the summer.

This lack of summeriness also provides some tensions for the final portfolio. Would I be able to find other major events to hang the other seasons off, and how do I differentiate the summer shots from spring or autumn (as Simon pointed out). Had I carried this concept forward I might well have found that I was forced into a less honest edit with some essentially false seasonal differentiation, and a much weaker concept because I would not have had the headline events to hang the future images on.

In reality however I was already fairly committed to this idea before the penny dropped that I really need to use the course as an opportunity for exploring my interests photographically, rather than as a set of exercises to be completed in a tick box sort of way. My final conversation with Simon was about the potential for submitting this assignment, and substituting three entirely different images in the final portfolio. Happily we have agreed, and I have confirmed with the office, that this is appropriate given that I have now had an opportunity to think about the overall direction of my interests.

For me this was another key piece of learning – a lightbulb moment – a clear concept certainly helps with a brief, but even more important – at least in the context of academic study - is a clear concept that fits into a structure, so that I am not simply leaping from one unrelated idea to the next.  If I want to take my photography beyond simply shooting whatever comes to mind I need to understand what it is that interests me and why, and then work out how I can use photography to investigate it.

I think that my recent posts show a couple of clear threads – one associated with perspective, and one associated with the idea of portraying time in a single image. I haven’t got my thoughts quite clear on these yet, but I’m pretty sure that’s the direction in which my final portfolio lies.

For the meantime this has been an extremely useful assignment. I need to make it as good as I can, make sure I heed the lessons and move on. The next challenge is taking these thoughts forward into Assignment 2.

People and Place Assessor’s Feedback

In full it reads:

Continue to develop your practise alongside contextual research to create more consistent and clearly resolved bodies of work. Build upon your strengths of reflection on your work and the work of others. Focus future research around some of the key themes you have identified in your projects

A couple of things jump out at me here. The first sentence in some ways parallels the advice of Sir Joshua Reynolds which I identified in my previous coursework:

“A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him for a new-found country”.

Given my scientific background I had assumed that research would come naturally but, in the context of an arts degree, it doesn’t. Fortunately the course reading list has a potential solution so I’ve got hold of a copy of Behind the Image: Research in Photographyby Fox and Caruana to give me a framework. I’ve also resolved to make more effort to get to significant exhibitions so that I can view more photography. All this ties in nicely with my tutors suggestion to do a bit of mind mapping and identify some threads to follow.

On the back of this I also need to take a rather more analytical approach to my photography – rather than just machine gunning and selecting. The latter has its place, but if I’m trying to develop a theme I perhaps need to be a bit more focussed.

The last sentence relates to this as well. If I look back at my response to the projects in People and Place there is no clear link between them – I’ve simply gone with what I fancied at the time rather than developing a clear photographic path. This doesn’t mean I need to slavishly follow one path though – I was listening to Jeff Wall on a Tate Gallery video yesterday and I was struck by the fact that he followed several different threads. The key issue was he understood why he was following them – they weren’t, ultimately, just a set of whims.

I’ve already made a bit of this mistake with Assignment 1 where I’ve settled on an idea and gone with it in isolation. I think it stands alone reasonably well, but I shall have to see what my tutor makes of it. I’m hoping that I can start again with my final portfolio as I have a much clearer idea of how I would like to develop it than I did 2 months ago. All I have to do now is stay focussed – not really one of my strong points – but I need a challenge.

Perspective

Perspective – it’s an interesting concept. A dictionary definition is “a technique for depicting volume or spatial relationships on a flat surface” and as a starting point that doesn’t seem unreasonable. perhaps the most interesting part of that definition is the use of ‘a’ rather than ‘the’. It is clear that there are a variety of ways in which this might be achieved.

The tradition Western approach is based on a perception of physical reality in which the viewer is effectively at the centre of the image. Objects further away appear smaller (which reflects the simple physics of seeing), and often fainter or less distinct – again reflecting the physics of the viewing experience – atmospheric haze, limitations of eyesight and so on. We are so used to this approach that we seldom think about it – it’s how the world appears to us, so any photo that produces the same effect is “realistic” and any that doesn’t is odd.

As explained in the course notes, in this model similar sized objects closer to the camera appear larger than those further away, and lines converge towards a vanishing point. But in reality that is not true. Similar sized objects are exactly that – their size does not vary with viewing distance. And parallel lines most certainly don’t – in traditional geometry – meet at infinity. They don’t meet.

Traditional Western perspective solves a particular set of problems – how to represent what the eye sees from a single viewpoint, how to show 5 sides of a cube from a position on the 6th side. It is well suited to bound books which display single images in a limited space. But there are other problems it doesn’t solve. For example, how to illustrate a view seen from a moving viewpoint – for this western or linear perspective requires movies – essentially rapidly changing single viewpoint images which fool our brain into believing we are moving. It also restricts our ability to communicate the passage of time. This is not really an issue in painting, where we can choose elements to tell a particular story – but as several philosophers have observed a photo is literally a moment in time.

Enter axonometric perspective – the type favoured by Chinese/Japanese culture until their contacts with the west, and perhaps even the west until the Renaissance or thereabouts (c.f. the Bayeaux Tapestry). If you are reading a scroll, which you continuously wind on, losing the RHS of the image and gaining new LHS with every passing moment then single point perspective doesn’t really work. True you could paint an extremely wide panorama, but the limit is a 360% rotation rather than linear movement and if you wanted to see the whole picture you would need a very wide wall or a magnifying glass.

Distant objects become vanishingly small and foreground objects distort quite oddly – in short you start to lose some ‘realism’ because this isn’t how our eyes see.

The Chinese/Japanese solution was to use a set of rules in which parallel lines don’t meet at infinity and an object in the foreground retains its relative size compared with something of the same size in the distance. To western eyes this is quite strange, but it means that as you unroll the scroll you are not fixed to a single viewpoint- so you effectively walk through the image.

A third approach – also adopted by eastern cultures - was to simply vary the viewpoint. The benefit of this system is that it allows the artist to produce a single image (as opposed to a scroll) which creates the impression of a moving view point, allows the artist a choice of which elements to emphasise by painting them ‘larger than life’, and still retains something of the visual effect of normal sight from the various viewpoints. It is this technique, combined with the convention of simply placing more distant objects higher up the painting which creates the slightly disconcerting effect of traditional oriental wall hangings.

In western art similar concerns about how to create space on a flat surface appear to have influenced the Cubists and, much more recently, David Hockney

In my written blog I have analysed one of these paintings - "Landscape with Waterfall" by Tsunenobu, an artist of the Japanese Kano school. I can’t post a link as I can’t find it on the web but the effect is like an extreme version of the compression produced by a very long lens.  Interestingly it still makes use of aerial perspective and sharpness, with the more distant objects increasingly indistinct. Use of colour is not an issue as it is an ink drawing on a sepia ground, but there is also limited use of diminishing perspective within the individual elements of the overall painting.

To my mind a clear benefit of this approach is the ability to represent time in a single image. It is not necessary for every individual element to have happened, or be visible, at the same time. Because the image has become a temporal narrative it allow the portrayal of, for example, all four seasons in a single image – a regular oriental motif which is emphasised by the use of symbolic elements – cherry blossom, geese, mist etc. Although this is not unusual for painting,  photography has until recently been fairly solidly locked into traditional perspective by simple physics. Some , such as Duane Michals have sought to push the boundaries of this by using shots in short series. Digital techniques, however, allow the opportunity to combine multiple viewpoints in a relatively convincing manner, to give something of the feeling of an oriental wall hanging.

The image on the left is my first attempt to address some of these issues. It is, admittedly, a bit of a cheat as, the waterfall are from Iceland and the other two shots are from Switzerland, but at this stage I am simply exploring the technical possibilities of this approach to a landscape photograph.

It certainly manages to capture some of the feel of a town in the foothills of the Alps, and I would like to think that there is the sense of a journey for the waters from the snow fields at the top to the wide rivers at the bottom.

In Zen Buddhist terms – which informed a lot of Japanese art in particular - I think there may also be a reverse reading, from bottom to top, reflecting the nature of the struggle to move from the relative comfort of the lowlands to the airy open peaks of enlightenment. Certainly that is captured in the painting I was trying to imitate, although I make no real claims for that in my attempt.

There are a number of themes which I would like to explore which emerge from these initial thoughts, including:

• the use of panoramic photography to illustrate four seasons in a single image, which is something I’m already thinking about for my portfolio
• the use of multi point perspective to capture a narrative about a particular location
• other ways of capturing time by still photography.
• the impact of very wide angle panoramas on perceptions of space
• the use of multi-point perspective and collages to capture an idea of space or a space.

I may well come back to revise this post, but for the meantime I simply wanted to capture my early thoughts on these matters for later reference.

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.