Bronx, New York
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.
photography I think leads us down a primrose path, telling us what we wish to hear and then when we see the results, we realize that camera lied, or the film lied, or the light, the shadows, the contract, the subject…all lies! for every 3 rolls of film I take, I get 1 or 2 lies back I can live with. i never have themes, it is one theme-everything.
I guess I would pose the question, what is wrong with “stacks” of good, individual images? Could the “why” behind your landscape work be a story? (the story of the place?) Good luck on your March 15th goal. I’m sure you’ll be successful in putting together a cohesive project.
Hi Earl,
I have a few different answers for that, but I think the important one for me is that the series has become a more interesting challenge than the individual image. There are fantastic images everywhere, all that is required is a sense of adventure and some open eyes. But a series of images that all work together to tell a story, even in a very abstract way, is much more complicated task. It requires a strong sense of concept, patience, persistence, and editing. It can take months, years, or even a lifetime. That is the sort of challenge I enjoy setting for myself.
Another good reason is that I do want to expose my work to a larger audience, someday. (Not there yet, but it is another goal). The more common ways of doing this—galleries, magazines, a book—are almost all in favor of the series over the single image.
Still thinking about the why… I think it has more to do with me than it does the landscape itself. I feel like I could be shooting still lifes of flowers and still struggling with the same questions.
I understand your feelings on the good photo stack. I still use flickr as sort of a dump, but I don’t expect or care much if people look at them.
I feel like working with the final book, with maybe 40-60 photos as the project is more interesting to me as well. Maybe a little writing, but mainly all the visual connections, and the poetry of a good sequence. It is really hard though, months and months of just shifting things around.
I appreciate hearing of your struggle to define or work within a theme. I have similar issues with my own work and often feel I am forcing a theme onto a collection of images just because the gallery or competition requires it.
Then I wonder if other artists are doing the same thing and if we are all just fooling ourselves by giving words to the images and not leaving the photos to speak for themselves.
(I like your work and found it through the Wall Space webpage…)
I have been going both ways… sometimes a theme develops naturally out of a few days/weeks/months worth of photographs, and sometimes I feel like it has to be visualized first and then acted upon. But, after much struggle I have come to wholeheartedly believe that the series is the way that photography is transformed from craft to art. There is art in taking a single great photograph, of course. But the extended effort of conceptualizing, shooting, and editing a project over months and years creates something that transcends the power of any single image.
This has come as much from studying others’ work than thinking about my own. When I think about my favorite photography books, they are all more than just a collection of great single images. I would love to see a retrospective of Robert Adams’ best work, but a single reading of The New West easily trumps that for me.
Now, writing about the work… that’s something altogether different and I am still not very comfortable with it! But maybe that just comes from experience and gets better with time. I can say that in the time I have been focusing on this blog, my thinking and writing about my own work and art in general has become more clear, which was one of my main goals. So I think it is something that can be learned.
By the way, I took a quick look at your site. Beautiful work! I can see that we have some things in common.
Dalton, I'm working on a project for my History and Theory of Photography class at UCLA and thought I'd email you and google "Landscape Photography." Two birds with one stone – which sources do you consider seminal considerations of landscape photography? I'm having trouble creating a genealogy…I think that's ultimately the question with landscape photo, and maybe for all of photo history. But I'd still like to know what strong creative minds turn to for theory –
Megan
PS. Not entirely apropos for this blog and the placement of this post…email me directly if you'd prefer.