The Seeing Eye

 
click to view larger I trust everyone had a great weekend. I believe introductions are necessary: I’m Chantal, and I’m honored to be your guest-host on The Landscapist for the next week.

Let’s get right to it:

I’m completely obsessed with photography. From the minute I wake up in the morning to the minute I go to sleep, it’s all about photography (with a brief moment or two of mothering in between). At first I did it just for the 'Art' of it, I was content with not making any money at it, but as my family grows so does our need for increased cash flow, hence my new pursuit at ‘photography as profession’.

It’s fun, and I love it, but it’s not always easy and I do sometimes ask myself this: of all the things I could have been, why a photographer? In "Dialogue with Photography" by Paul Hill, Imogene Cunningham states:

…There are too many people studying it [photography] now who are never going to make it. You can’t give them a formula for making it. You have to have it in you first, you don’t learn it. The Seeing Eye is the important thing.

That always stuck with me. The ‘Seeing Eye’... what is that exactly?

The Seeing Eye isn’t a noun, really, it’s a verb. It’s the act of seeing the world in a different perspective from everyone else: noticing the little things, the larger things, the lines and shadows, the colors and forms, and the spaces in between. It’s having a wide open perception of one’s surroundings.

The act of ‘Seeing’ seems to be an innate ability to see Life fully: the good, the bad; wonder in the tiniest of things, splendor in the ordinary or even beauty in things others would find unsightly. Those who See understand that its more about looking with your eyes, its about knowing, and appreciation, and in that, there’s a desire to want to communicate what we see, how we perceive our world. For many, it’s a near spiritual experience.

But the Seeing Eye is also about feeling. I’ve always felt that feeling a scene is just as important as seeing it. A photograph is merely a moment frozen in time, and a good photograph illustrates how that moment felt; how it felt to the photographer, and also how it feels to the viewer. The photograph becomes a shared experience.

And that’s what attracted me to photography from the very beginning. To be able to stop time, to create a ‘feeling’ and illustrate emotion in two-dimensional form, and to share it with someone else, is like, amazing to me. It’s what I strive to do with every click of the shutter. I may not be successful all the time, but the quest and knowing the possibilities and power that a picture can hold is what keeps me going.

For the next week I will attempt to share with you, The Landscapist readers, my ‘Seeing Eye’. Some days I may just ramble aimlessly about whatever’s on my mind, the next day I may want to discuss an incredible book I am currently reading, and I’ll hopefully even have an interview with my all-time favorite photographer and inspiration (it’s a surprise!).

Thanks for reading.

~Chantal

FYI ~ guest host

I have just turned the Landscapist reins over to Chantal Stone for the next week. Stay tuned. She's free to take it where ever she wishes. Should be fun and when I sneak into Inlet from the island, I'm going to the library to take a peek at the proceedings. Maybe even make a comment or two.

In any event, much thanks to Chantal for keeping the fires stoked. Have fun.

ku # 481 ~ the big 6 - 0

Rain swollen West Branch • click to embiggenStarting tomorrow, I, and most of those who are nearest and dearest to me, will be leaving for a week long sojourn on a small island on 6th Lake in the central Adirondacks where we will celebrate my birthday (which is actually today).

6th Lake is part of the Fulton Chain of Lakes (1st Lake - 8th Lake). Lakes 1st thru 4th are very developed with summer cottages. 5th thru 8th are primarily wilderness in character so things should be quiet and peaceful.

This week is especially meaningful to me because just a very short canoe paddle down
The Arrowhead • click to embiggenthe chain to 4th Lake and the tiny village of Inlet takes me to the place where my life-long Adirondack love affair began. It was here that I, my 2 brothers and my parents spent considerable time every summer at the now long-gone Arrowhead Hotel on the shore of 4th Lake.

So that explains why I won't be posting for the next week. I will be doing a lot of picturing and expect to return with pictures of a part of the Adirondacks that you haven't seen before.

In the interim, is there anyone out there who would like to quest-host The Landscapist for a week? I'm serious about this - anyone want the keys to the kingdom and an opportunity to speak your piece to the world?

I need to know asap so I can set it up.

urban ku # 80 ~ hobbit light

A very odd and eerie light • click to emmbiggenLast evening as the wife and I were discussing some family matters, my eye was caught by a small sliver of sky that was peeking through a bush outside of a window on the side of our house. What little I could see looked incredibly odd.

I jumped to my feet, headed to the front door and I was immediately struck by the sensation that I was looking through a tinted window. Even though I have only experienced it 3 or 4 times in my life, I knew right way as I emerged from the house that it was 'hobbit light'. I started yelling for anyone to hear, "Get out here, get out here. It's hobbit light."

As the wife, one of the college kids and I wandered about in a state of wonder, neighbors began to emerge from their houses as well. They too had been drawn by/to the light. None could recall ever having experienced it before - the entire landscape was bathed/saturated in a deep, soft, other-worldly reddish glow.

The entirely odd and disconcerting thing was that there was absolutely no visible sunset. The western sky was covered entirely (north to south) by bank of low dark grey rain clouds. The cloud bank also extended, west to east, from the horizon to cover about 1/2 of the sky. Well above this bank of dark clouds were more 'regular' clouds with a deep blue sky poking through. These clouds were bathed in the a soft and subtle warm light from the sunset (the sun must have been below the horizon) and it was this light that was reflected on the landscape.

I don't know if this phenomenom has a 'real' name. I call it 'hobbit light' because the first time I experienced it (many, many years ago), I was deep in the thrawl of one of Tolkien's books and there was a particular passage that involved a vividly described eerie light upon the land. So, it was dubbed 'hobbit light'.

PS - on a techincal note, some might suspect that I used the H/S slider on this picture and, in fact, I did. However, contrary to what you might think, I used it to desaturate the color.

Update on Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 10:27PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Timothy Kingston wrote; ... I've seen, what I'm quite sure you are talking about a few times ... Usually it occurs in the evening ,usually after or sometimes just before a thunderstorm. Also, oftem there is no wind, I mean even the trembling aspen are totally still ...

My response: Timothy - in my experience, always after a thunderstorm and, yes. you're absolutely right - as still and silent as death.

ku # 480 ~ what's new pussycat?

Rain, rain, rain, and more rain • click to embiggenRobert Hughes, when writng about how to evaluate Art, suggests that one standard is 'the degree to which it gives us a fresh intimation of Form.' (a reminder, Form is the coherence and structure underlying life).

Basically, what he is saying is that cliche (as he puts it - 'the ten thousandth camera-club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams') just doesn't cut it. In his essay Making Art New, Hughes writes about the struggle/challenge Artists face when trying to create 'fresh' Art. In the end he quotes T.S. Eliot -

... Each venture
is a new beginning ...
... what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been
discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one
cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again ...

urban ku # 79 ~ into the sunset

A nearby view • click to embiggenEvery once in a while, an individual seizes a moment in time and bends it to his will. In recent times, Einstein did it, Dylan did it, and Ghandi did it. They, amongst others, took what came before and irrevocably changed it forever.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the single reason that we have the discussions we do here on The Landscapist is because of one visionary individual who took what came before and irrevocably changed it forever - 'it' being photography. That one individual, John Szarkowski, single-handedly grabbed the medium by the throat and elevated it to the status of Art. Period. End of discussion.

I never met the man or heard him speak but his shadow has followed me like a ghost throughout my photography life. While he never influenced me directly, the pictures of those he 'ordained' into the ecclesiastical hierarchy of photography certainly opened my eyes to new possibilities. So I was deeply saddened to learn of his death on July 9 at the age of 81.

An obituary can be found here.

I won't go into all his accomplishments as I am certain that much will be written in the coming days but I will leave you with this from his introduction to “The Work of Atget,” published in conjunction with a series of exhibitions at MoMA from 1981 to 1985 -

'One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing, It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others ... The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.'

ku # 479 ~ aesthetics

Rain and fallen birch on the forest floor • click to embiggenAesthetics - the dictionary says; 1. the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments. and, 2. the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty.

Or, to simplify, a manner of thinking and making judgements about the concept of beauty.

In his easay, Beauty in Photography, Robert Adams suggests that Beauty is the beauty of Form, '... the coherence and structure underlying life ... [that] helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning ...'

Adams goes on to opine that if the goal of Art is Beauty (and he believes it is), then 'how do we judge Art?' His answer is that it should be judged '... by whether it reveals to us important Form that we ourselves have experienced but to which we have not paid adequate attention. Successful Art rediscovers Beauty for us ...'

Adams also believes that 'succesful' Art must be measured by '... the apparent ease of its execution. An artwork should not appear to have been hard work.'- a notion that he calls 'grace' in photography. As a counterpoint to his notion of grace in photography, Adams suggests that ... we need only to examine a copy of a mass circulation photography magazine (ed. - or a online nature photo forum). Most of the pictures suggest embarassing strain: odd angles, extreme lenses and eccentric darkroom techniques reveal a struggle to substitute shock and technology for sight.'

He goes on to point out that the work of most photographers of importance is 'usually marked by an economy of means, an apparently everyday sort of relationship with their subject.' Then, IMO, Adams lowers the boom - '... only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that Beauty is commonplace.'

As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote. 'I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.'

So, that is why, amongst other things, simple seeing, an everyday sort of relationship with subject, rediscoverying Beauty in that which has not been paid adequate attention are at the core of my asethetic beliefs.

urban ku # 78 ~ summer colors

Summer colors • click to embiggenSeems like it has rained everyday for the past week. Maybe that's because it has rained everyday for the past week.

The upside to that is that everything is growing like crazy. It is as lush a summer as I can remember. And the rain saturates everything including the colors of summer in my backyard - green, violet, orange and yellow.