Landscape Theory
I continue to wander the wilds of New York City searching for a unified theory of landscape photography. Recent experiments with exposure and depth of field have yielded many interesting failures, but only a few successes. I feel I may be at an important turning point: shrugging off some preconceived notions of what makes a good picture and more clearly able to see into the landscape for what it is.
It is when I get to one of these points, which seems to happen every six months or so, that I realize just what a steep hill I have to climb. I still don’t have a strong conceptual framework for what I am doing, I am just striking out at random and hoping for some good luck. As I feel more confident in my abilities as a photographer, I feel entirely less confident in my abilities as an artist.
I’ve realized recently that when I am looking at others’ work, I have become more critical of the thesis of the body of work as a whole than I am of individual photographs. It is not so hard to make one excellent picture. I have stacks of pictures that I think are quite good, but they don’t really make sense when viewed together. These photos have become useless to me—examples that I know how to use a camera, but little more.
Lately my work has become more stylistically and thematically cohesive, but I still have no thesis. Judging by my own criteria, the work fails. I am not sure I will be able to figure out the “why” behind this landscape work any time soon, but I know I need to keep taking the pictures.
In the meantime, I am setting a small challenge for myself: to create a short but complete series of new work by March 15. I have no preconceived notion of what it will be about or what form it will take, but I am hoping that the process will offer insight into some of the questions I’ve been asking myself.
December 3, 2008