civilized ku # 966 ~ the good, the bad, and a whole lota stuff in between
Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 01:33PM 
City tree / hitching post ~ Center City - Philadelphia, PA • click to embiggenPreviously, I mentioned I liked John Szarowski's Forward in Robert Adams's book, The New West. Here's an excerpt:
Adams's pictures are so civilized, temperate, and exact, eschewing hyperbole, theatrical gestures, moral postures, and espressivo effects generally, that some viewers might find them dull. There is probably nothing that can be done about this. It is not even certain that anything should be done about it, since the measured Attic view of things is not intrinsically better than the romantic. But for other viewers, for whom the shrill rodomontade of conventional conservation dialectics has lost its persuasive power, may find in these pictures nourishment, surprise, instruction, challenge, and perhaps hope.
Of course it should come as no surprise to Landscapist regulars that I like pictures that are "civilized, temperate, and exact, eschewing hyperbole, theatrical gestures, moral postures, and espressivo effects", aka: straight photography. Conjointly, those kinds of pictures are the kind I strive to make. So it comes as no surprise to me that "some viewers might find them (straight photography) dull" - how many times have I heard, "Why'd you take of picture of that?"
On the other hand, I have heard often enough (to be encouraging) the declaration of, "Interesting. I never would have taken a picture of that." Upon hearing such statements, I come to the conclusion that viewers of my pictures have found "nourishment, surprise, instruction, challenge, and perhaps hope". Although, like Swarkowski, writing re: Adams's pictures, I preface the word "hope" with the "perhaps" caveat.
My friend in NYC could barely look at the pictures in The New West book. He found them (as far as he got with them), way too depressing. Obviously, he did not find any hope in Adams's beautifully made pictures - pictures described by Swarkowski as "....pictures [that] describe with precision and fastidious justice some of the mortal and venial sins that we have committed against our land in recent decades. The gaggle of plywood ranch houses at the foot of the mountains, fenced in by the trailer parks, acid neon, and extruded plastic of the highway..."
It is well worth pointing out that my friend is attentive to, acquainted with, and well versed in the Fine Arts. He is open and receptive to all manner of derived meaning to be found therein. His interests go well beyond the merely decorative and entertaining. Nevertheless, about 20 pages into The New West, he had to put the book down.
Interestingly, as mentioned, I had purchased 2 Robert Adams books - the other being What Can We Believe Where? PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE AMERICAN WEST - and it was the second book that my friend seemed to really enjoy even though that book contained many of the pictures found in The New West book.
However, the second book also contained a good number of "pure" or, at least, minimum humanly-invasive landscape pictures (one of which hit me in the eye like a big pizza pie, punctum wise) that do not require a redacted and redirected reaction in order to appreciate them. The pictures are most definitely "precise" and exhibited "fastidious justice" to their referents but they do not describe any of humankind's "mortal and venial sins".
Those pictures are more Sir Ansel than they were Adams, the minor. And what they had in spades was the derived element of escapism. As in, "Let's escape to the beach where we can relax, drink Corona and lime, and pass the time away without a care in the world." That said, I suspect if one were to look long enough at those pictures and get beyond the element of escape one might find some hope inasmuch as the interaction between man and nature portrayed in some of those pictures suggests that humankind doesn't necessarily have to shit in their own bed every time they turn over the earth in the name of human aspiration.
I mention all of the preceding because it has always been bothersome and irritating to me that, when it comes to conservation picture making, there have only been 2 proscribed paths: 1) representing the over-the-top, spendorific beauty of the natural world, or, 2) representing how humankind has screwed it up, the more down-and-dirty the pictures, the better.
IMO, that's crappola, a load of malarkey, and misses the mark by a country mile. And, in case you haven't noticed, neither path appeals to me.
Paths 1 and 2, while not intrinsically untruthful when out of the hands of picturing drama queens, are largely concerned with extremes, i.e. positions which reside at the extreme far ends of the good/bad spectrum. In fact, there is a broad middle ground, that infamous and much maligned "gray area". A place where it is neither all black nor all white.
For me, that place is found in the "everyday" world. An imperfect landscape of nearly perfect dimensions. A vast readable landscape, some of which tells us what is, some of which tells us what has been, and some of which suggests what could be. To my eyes and sensibilities, it is a rich tapestry with an equally rich story on offer for those keen enough to be able to read it. in all of its various guises.
Reader Comments (2)
I have always wondered, exactly how long is a country mile?
A country mile is 5280 feet plus or minus a nebulous delta N, meaning the distance is naturally imprecise and approximate.