man & nature # 241 / tuscany # 58 ~ the light
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 12:03PM 
Adirondack light • click to embiggen
Tuscan light • click to embiggenWhen my brother asked if we would be interested in going to Tuscany with him and his wife, my very first thought was ... oh yeh, making pictures under Tuscan light.
I suppose that it's possible that there might be a picture maker, Landscape Division, out there who hasn't heard of / seen pictures of Tuscan light but I'm not one of them. I owned (it was destroyed in the flood) only one of them - Tuscany: Inside the Light by Joel Meyerowitz - but virtually every one of the Tuscany picture books I have seen make reference to "the light".
FYI, I would not recommend the Meyerowitz book only because the reproduction is second rate - I have seen some of the original prints and they look very little like what they look like in the book. That said, the reproductions in the book do "resemble" the originals that I saw in as much as in both cases the visual results fall into the category of what would be called "delicate and subtle". In that sense, they differ remarkably from the typical Tuscan pictures which are almost always on the color saturated / garish side of things, picture-wise.
That delicate and subtle quality was what I was expecting in Tuscany and for the most part that's exactly what I got. However, I would not attribute those characteristics to "the light". I found Tuscan light to be pretty much just like "the light" here in the Adirondacks. Light is, as they, just light.
Is there a difference in the manner in which the light interacts with the elements that make up the Tuscan landscape as opposed to the manner in which in it interacts with the elements that make up the Adirondack landscape? Absolutely, without a doubt.
I was thinking about how I would explain this difference when I came across an interview with Joel Meyerowitz that touched on just that subject. The interview is well worth a read for a number of reasons but here's the thing about "the light":
This particular valley, called the Vald’Orcia, which is below Sienna, is composed of a kind of white clay ... its got a white base to it, it’s not black earth, or rich American earth, and so when the light rains down in this valley, and because it’s a valley there’s a particular kind of moisture always trapped in it. So, the valley itself has a kind of pearlescent quality its as if the air in the valley is illuminated from within. Because sunlight striking the ground rises up from the ground it doesn’t suck up the light because of dark earth so there is a funny kind of glow around everything ... it infused the photographs that not only I made but my students made.
In so many words, that's about how I see / saw it as well. It's not the light per se that is different, it's a combination of many other factors as well that create the visual character of the place.
The same holds true for the Adirondacks. The light is just light but, just as in Tuscany, it interacts with elements in the landscape to achieve a look that is particular to the place. The Adirondacks is not composed of white clay nor is it an "open" landscape. In most locales the earth is, if not covered by the canopy of the forest, blanketed by a thick cover of vegetation of some sort - there is very little reflected light, the light that adds the luminescent (glowing) quality to "Tuscan light".
In the Adirondacks the light tends to be characterized by a quality that is often described as "Hudson River School light" - a "type" of light that emphasizes the bold contrasts between light and dark. It also is strongly identified with dramatic skies - storms and especially sunsets. FYi, the Adirondack picture above has rather remarkable Hudson River School qualities, both color and light, that are the product of the light and the elements that day, not the result of post processing.
The above Tuscan picture really does illustrate very typical mid-day Tuscan light although it is perhaps not what most picture makers think of as typical.
They are much more familiar with the color-drenched pictures of Tuscan fields cover with sunflowers and the like. A kind of Tuscan light that has been reduced to the same color-drenched light that they literally create for every picture they make no matter the location or the actual quality and characteristics of the light to be found there.
Reader Comments (1)
Mark I think that each singular squared centimeter of this planet (and maybe even on the other planets) has its own light. You are right stating that its not only the light it is the whole time-space, us included, that makes the uniqueness.