“Photographs slice space into place; land is framed as landscape… Photography contributes to characterising sites as particular types of places within the order of things.” (Wells, 2011, p.56)
Landscape is essentially about exploring the relationships between the maker, their subjects and where they are, both geographically and spiritually or psychologically. .. Whether celebrated for its beauty and the bounties it provides or respected for its power and the challenges it presents, the different ways we’ve presented the landscape – and continue to present it – tell us above all, about the depth, range and contrasting values we place upon it. .. For the vast majority of people working with photography, whether as a tourist or within professional practice, the camera provides an opportunity to record, if not an accurate representation of the scene before them, then an enhanced interpretation of it. This reflects an urge – perhaps even an instinct – to tame the land, and in an abstract sense to take ownership of it. Jesse Alexander 2013 p22.
This blog is based on my studies for ‘Landscape’ OCA Photography Course Level 2 by Jesse Alexander 2013. It is part of my thinking through of my approach to landscape and landscape photography:
– how do I feel about and relate to my environment? how does photographic practice increase my awareness of the world around me? how do or should I react to the technological changes that are taking place in the ways people are affecting the environment? what is ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’? why?
– why photography? what do I want to say? do I want to portray beauty (form, colour, light, wind and being alive)? sublime (the awe of it all, darkness and light?)? in everything (including things destroying the planet?)? do I want to show human interaction with the environment and social documentary/activism? does photographing the world teach me something new through making me slow down and slice up then reconstruct?
– what is the best way to visually communicate my perceptions and feelings? through photography for different purposes: my professional work on development in Africa, Asia and Latin America and also my art practice and interest in post-modern/multicultural approaches to illustration and digital processes. How do I communicate emotions, feelings and messages in a 2D frame?
– what are the best ways of showing my work (when it is good enough) to change what I want to change? photographs in an exhibition? photobooks? web galleries? other?
1: Beauty and the Sublime
2: Landscape as a Journey
3: Landscape as Political Text
4: Landscape and identities
5: Resolution: Kyrgyzstan
Transitions: Bench forthcoming
Other Links
This landscape photography blog complements:
- Zemni Images : http://www.zemniimages.com – commercial site for my photography, art and design website. High resolution versions of the images on this blog can be found there as indicated in relevant page links.
- http://zemniimages.info links other blogs for my OCA degree in Visual Communication.
Other OCA Photography student blog links
Using search engines and any other resources, find at least 12 examples of 18 and 19th century landscape paintings. List all of the commonalities. Try to find out why the examples were painted (eg private or public commission.) your research should provide some examples of the visual language and conventions known to the early photographers.
Notes here to be updated from visits to exhibitions at:
Tate Britain: Late Turner and Turner galleries
National Gallery : Pedar Balke
National gallery and elsewhere Maggie Hambling
Corot
http://www.jean-baptiste-camille-corot.org Creative Commons website
Horizon lines, framing devices, division between foreground, middle ground and background planes. Aerial perspective.
Storm at Sea, 1865
Diagonal lines of rain point to solid horizontal horizon.
Souvenir du Pont de M
antes
Framing device and aerial perspective.
Constable
http://www.john-constable.org Creative Commons website
Haywain
Hampstead heath with a rainbow
Hampstead Heath
- frequent use of the Golden ratio to position horizons at one or two thirds levels in paintings
- uses a lanes, roads and other devices to lead the eye into the picture
- interest in plays of light and naturalistic colour
- linear as well as aerial perspective
- use of triangles and implied triangles on foreground objects like carts, boats etc.
- later starts to experiment with dynamic and impasto brushstrokes, as precursor to Impressionists
John Martin
Turner
http://www.william-turner.org creative commons website
Turner tends to have his horizons lower, or non-existent. And makes lots of use of dramatic swirls for storms, and brilliant sunsets. But still positions vertical elements and objects around the thirds line.
The Fighting ‘Téméraire’ tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, National Gallery
Snow Storm, Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps 1812, Tate Gallery
Snow Storm- Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth c. 1842
Caspar David Friedrich
http://www.caspardavidfriedrich.org creative commons website
distinctive style, influenced by his Danish training, where a distinct national style, drawing on the Dutch 17th-century example, had developed. To this he added a quasi-mystical Romanticism.
The Wanderer above the Mists 1817-18
Strong contrast in colours and between foreground and background with dramatic silhouette. Quasi symmetrical balance between right and left side of the image. Diagonals leading to the centre figure.
Trees in the Moonlight
Use of diagonals and muted colours.
Two Men by the Sea at Moonrise
Use of strong horizontals with central horizon line. Silhouettes against an oval pool of light. ‘High Dynamic Range’.
Monet
from Tate.org search
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
from http://www.tate.org.uk/search/Whistler
mists, high horizons. Strong horizontals and verticals.
Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Cremorne Lights 1872
Nocturne: Blue and Gold
– Old Battersea Bridge c.1872-5
Then try to find examples of landscape photographs from any era that conform to these conventions.
See analysis in posts on:
Exercise 1.2 Photography in the museum or in the gallery
This image has horizon on top thirds line with leading line of rocks from, between and to vertical thirds lines. The original image though breaks with conventions on aerial perspective in that the rocks in that although there is a progression in sharpness from fore to middle to background, the equal haze of water and sky add the feeling of mystery. In a painting probably there would have been an attempt to use various devices to de-emphasise the sharpness on the rock at the front to more effectively lead the eye into the picture to the triangular rock at the middleground and back again. In the photograph this is achieved to some extent by the changes in tonal contrast from relatively equal tones between the foreground rock and sea to the sharper contrast between the dark triangular rock and the sea. Then back to the sharp dark/white contrast lines on the foreground rock.
See posts on:
Fay Godwin (reading still to be written up )
Most landscape photographs on sites like Flickr, photographs submitted to landscape photography magazines and camera club competitions also conform to:
– conventions of rule of thirds (reflected in grids in Lightroom and Photoshop),
– contrast between fore/middle/background to include near and far objects
– use of leading lines/implied lines to link the elements.
They also generally:
– blur motion on water through slow shutter speed
– increase tonal contrast in cloud and sky areas, and often enhance colours
– have a deep depth of field through small apertures – both these done through using a tripod.
– simplify the image, cloning or removing distractions in digital processing.
Arguments:
Landscape (from lakes Tahoe to Wobegon) is conceived by the middle classes in America as evoking the universal constancy of geological and mythic America beyond politics and ideology, appealing to ‘timeless values’.
But: every representation of landscape is also a record of human values and actions imposed on the land over time. Even formal and personal choices reflect collective interests and influences – philosophical, political, economic.
In late 19C US, after the ‘Indian problem’ had been brutally solved, a Cult of Wild Nature flourished. Tourism to national parks exploded. Supported by cowboy films from Hollywood.
But landscape photographers represented are mostly male.
John Pfahl Power Places – beautiful pictures of nuclear power plants but there are no statements to anchor his photographs. Expensive for gallery.
Contrast with Lisa Lewenz Three Mile Island Calendar uses photographs from nearby inhabitant’s windows. Published cheaply for mass distribution. Much more human and political.
Landscape images are the last preserve of a nation’s myths about nature, civilisation and beauty. It is no accident that the genre’s resurgence in both popular and high art is taking place during the Reagan Revolution when multinational corporations have been given virtually free rein over the economic and physical environment. Photographs of the strong graphic lines of a blast furnace or pithead tell us nothing about the massive exporting of industries to impoverished labor markets overseas and the devastated communities left behind…Landscape imagery has almost always been used to argue for the timeless virtues of a nature that transcends history – which is to say, collective social action…
But landscapes needn’t serve such meagre ends. If we are to redeem landscape photography from such a narrow, self-reflexive project, why not use it to question the assumptions about nature and culture it has traditionally served? Landscape is not the ideologically neutral subject many imagine it to be. Rather, it is an historical artifact that can be viewed as a record of the material facts of our social reality and what we have chosen to make of them.