The Changing Boundaries Within Landscape Photography.

Introduction

What is the definition of a landscape? Is there a set way to photograph a landscape? Over the years, these questions have been asked and answered in photography and the creative arts in general. People have been pushing the boundaries of right and wrong, testing the idylls of the masses and re-capturing inspiration for a new viewpoint on life. The term landscape simply means an area, but not necessarily, of land that can be seen in a single view. So with that in mind I want to challenge myself and you on what a landscape really is, how we should view them and how the times and boundaries have changed. Before I start I want to ask a question, is this image a landscape?

Mark Rothko, No2, 1962

Chapter one: The new art form.

It is only in the last century art has expanded into what it is today, before it was only seen by the minority. As the class systems have grown closer, wealth and good living in the western world have had a huge impact on the way we view and interpret the world. The 20^th century was known for having more wars than any other, terrible things happened that forced people into new circumstances and situations. It seems ironic that in these times art and culture have exploded and flourished probably like never before in history.

Photography still a new invention in the early 20^th century and was seen as a recording piece of equipment rather than an artistic tool. The cameras ability to capture details had a huge impact on the painting world and used for referencing details. However the painting world had more of an impact on photography, than photography on art. The picturesque views and rigid sense of composition limited the camera to a very technical exercise where everything was carefully composed to suit the very conventional and conservative world of the time. However for a moment I would like to turn back time to the mid 19^th century.

One of the first British photographers was John Dillwyn Llewelyn, who was not interested in photography to start of with. He helped create sub-marine telegraphy and he also created the first private orchid house which could mimic the original conditions of south American jungles. It even had its own waterfall. He later married Emma Thomasina Talbot, cousin of William Henry Fox Talbot. We are to understand that hennery Talbot was interested in Llewelyn’s orchid house and so visited. This is where we believe Johns Llewelyn’s interest in photography developed. 1839 was a great year for photography with the announcements of both Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot; methods of photography. With great passion and encouragement from Talbot, Llewelyn played around with all the methods he could find. None of his early work seems to have survived however some calotypes and wet collodion negatives still exist in private and public domains.

John Dillwyn Llewelyn Lake at Penllergare [View of the Upper Lake at Penllergare] 1854, Aug 25

Instantly as I view this image I think of paintings, it just looks like it should be a painting rather than a photograph. I believe this is because it has been composed like a painter would. Imagine for the first time ever coming across a camera when all you have know are paintbrushes and pencils. You would use a camera to create the exact same image as a canvas. You wouldn’t know any other way to compose or create the image. You see at this point photography was more influenced by painting, mainly because photography hadn’t been around long and so its full potential had not yet been recognised. The camera its self had a long way to go before it was technically good enough to perform on its own and made its own rules.

Now, jumping forward almost 100 years into the future lets look at a master of photography and some claim the father of landscape photography, Ansel Adams. Some say Adams work is over-rated or that it is simply too picturesque and then liken it to a postcard. Lets not forget that Adams was employed by the American national parks to attract people into them and to show an element of pride in the landscape. Therefore, when people comment about his images (mostly around the national parks) being postcard like, they rarely understand that the images were for postcards and advertisement. Moving away from what I fear could be classed as politics and semantics lets look at an image of Adams.

Ansel Adams, “the Tetons snake river”, Wyoming 1941.

“The Tetons Snake River” is one of my favourite Ansel Adams images. As a subject matter there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is a landscape. After all, its images like this that come to mind when we talk about landscape photography. We think about big bold skies, empowering landmasses and then, for good measure we usually throw some water into the mix somewhere. All of these factors give the landscape photograph in general a sense of Mother Nature’s impact on us and no matter how we try we cannot control or conquer it. I believe this is especially true in American landscape photography. Mainly because the American landscape is seen as a much harsher and bigger landscape than an English or European landscape.

The composition of Tetons Snake River also makes me think of a painted like composition. However, this image has one thing that detaches it form a painter’s vision. If we look at the image again we see that the frame of the camera has cut off the left bank. Also, on the right hand side the frame cuts into the image. As a painter myself before a photographer I would personally compose this image on canvas with the sides much further back revealing the landscape much more than the confines of the camera. It is for these reasons I believe photography started to break away from the form and convention of painting composition and started to stand on its own two feet as it where.

Something we have to keep in mind throughout this is how technology develops and techniques change with it. The large format camera, that most landscape photographers used, are cumbersome and expensive meaning that to take a photograph was a challenge, let alone being able to afford it in the first place. These cameras are also difficult to use, when composing unlike modern SLR cameras the camera doesn’t have a prism to invert the image the correct way up and so everything is seen upside down. This means composition with a large format was challenging and so most images were based upon the same rigid rules of composition limited by the camera and the times.

Chapter two: The Changing Times

Again, let me backtrack a little so we can bring all the threads together.

35mm film has been around since the 1890’s however, it was mainly used for film rather than still photography. In those days cinematic film was 35mm however the image on them was 18x24mm this was because cinematic film had to allow room for the soundtrack that was embedded alongside the images on the film. Really rather intresting stuff. However this ment some of the film was wasted for imagery. In 1905 one employee who had been creating world-class microscope optics, Oskar Barnack had the crazy idea to reduce the physical size of the image in the camera only to enlarge it again when processing the image. Almost ten years after his brain wave he created the “Ur-Leica” in 1914. The small picture format of 36x24mm brought the realisation of small format photography to the world. Unfortunately due to world war the production was held back until 1924, later shown to the public in 1925.

This amazing innovation brought photographers closer to their subjects and asked the to look at them in a new way. Where as before in large format photography, images would be upside down and tricky cameras to operate. The Leica was simple, small and most importantly, you look through a viewfinder. Leica’s are in general range finders so unlike SLR cameras you don’t look through the lens. You look through a viewfinder to one side of the lens. This means you don’t have a mirror taking up room or a prism. The camera can be very small. This means you are physically looking at your subject in a different way. A much closer way to how your eyes would see your subject. Needless to say composition immediately changes and the transportability of the camera makes photography in remote or dangerous places more plausible. Photojournalism has now truly been made possible and some would argue now born because of the leica.

Chapter Three: Landscapes evolve

Now with the ability to create a photograph almost anywhere and in any situation in the world photojournalism and the media exploded and grew together. In world war two photography found itself involved in propaganda, war documentary and recognisance missions. With photographers like the great Robert Capa setting the way forward into wartime photography the idealistic landscape was challenged. Going back to one of the first things I mentioned, a landscape simply means an area, but not necessarily, of land that can be seen in a single view. We will come back to “but not necessarily, of land” later but first lets focus on “a single view”. I personally find it easier to say a landscape is an environment captured in a single view. With that in mind, would you class war photography as landscape?

Scanned from Robert Capa photofile, original image Teruel, December 1937

As I said before this is about the chaning boundries of landscape photography. I am fully aware this image is older than the Ansel Adams image. This is just a very good example of what I mean. It’s classed as war photography or photojournalism but in today’s day and age is this image a landscape? Or a single view of an environment? The simple answer is yes. The only way I believe some people say it is no, is because it isn’t a pleasing image. I believe they are torn between the idealistic and picturesque landscape embedded in their brain from a young age, compared to this striking image of a landscape scattered with dead soldiers. Street photography also can ask these questions about the human race and the world we live in. What is stopping it from being a landscape? Its technicality or its message? Just because an image is challenging to view or the image is asking uncomfortable questions about you or the world, does that change its

genre? Likewise, you wouldn’t watch a controversial play and not call it a play. A genre I personally believe is a technical way of describing an image or types of something. Yes some things can fit into multiple genre’s but only because it holds technical properties of more than one genre. Just because an image has people in doesn’t limit it into a portrait genre, likewise just as an image doesn’t fit idylls and picturesque beliefs doesn’t stop it form being a landscape. If we are being technical almost everything can be read as a landscape, this however does not mean that everything will be received well as a landscape or that you will effectively communicate what you want to as a landscape.

This leads me nicely onto a subject matter that I am, and have always, been interested in, abstract photography or more to the point, the abstraction of landscape photography. We have to ask ourselves first, what is an abstraction? As far as my understanding goes it is when you start changing an image pre or post-production into something else. Take long exposure photography for example, its not necessarily abstract but it is definitely different from the real scene in front of the lens.

ZEBRATO - Michael Levin, 2005

Michael Levin is a big name in fine art black and white photography. He is especially known for his great use of contrast and long exposures, along side other great photographers like Cole Thompson and Michael Kenna. Levin’s work has inspired thousands of people to experiment in long exposure photography but what draws you into them? Is it the fine composition that people want to re-create? Alternatively, is the fact that long exposure photography changes the scene in front of you? Have we now reached a point where we have seen everything from the media, things we wouldn’t see without travelling, that we now want to see things in a new way? Therefore, we abstract reality? I admit myself I’m known for using long exposures in lots of my work and they make work very powerful and give it a new edge. However, I have never worked out why.

With long exposure photography, you can change a storm into a tranquil mist. Isn’t that an “incorrect” interpretation of what really happened? Is it more or less of a landscape? Technically it’s still a single view of land or an environment so technically it is a landscape, just under a new interpretation. I wonder just how far can you push this idea, that technically the image is a landscape but under a new interpretation? Is macro-photography therefore within landscape photography? Or is it its own genre?

I am currently creating a series of images that I could class as landscapes, and yet there is nothing in the image apart from tones. Why? Because the images were created, without a lens on the camera. Nevertheless, the camera was pointing at an area of land and the film has been affected by the different tones reflecting of the land, so is that a landscape? A much-admired artist, who’s work I adore, Mark Rothko. I believe has asked this question in his famous paintings where he paints blocks of colours some paintings are bright some dark. They have all been received as “abstract” paintings, but Rothko himself denied that they were abstract (even though he was a part of the American abstract movement alongside Robert Rauschenberg) and never said what they were. I personally see landscapes in his paintings. Also I see and feel a relaxed state of mind. Interestingly his paintings are in quite a lot of Buddhist temples for meditation. What do you see? I ask again is this a landscape?

Mark Rothko, No2, 1962

Conclusion

Now in the digital age where manipulation is so easy, are we at risk of loosing the photographers of the world? On the other hand, is it making photography what it could never be before? My digital images are created in the camera and only edited in traditional ways that you can do in the darkroom. I want my photographs to be known for my photographic skill rather than my editing skill. However images that have a high dynamic range, have been manipulated in photoshop or even painted on in photoshop I would critically call a photographically created image. This is the freedom photography now has in the modern world. Where the balance between photographs and photographically created imagery ends who knows. It’s for you to decide, but I’m sure they will still be classed as landscapes.