As a key artist reference to my work, Dafna Talmor’s Constructed Landscape project has a been a massive influence to my final images and work in general. The way Talmor cuts up her images is a more manual way from what I did. She refers to her technique as slicing, splicing and merging. The way I created my images was through the use of the magic wand tool in photoshop, I made sure that I didn’t create straight line cuts and made very rough tear like cuts to replicate the process that Talmor did.
Also something I picked up from Talmor’s work, was the natural side to her work, in her actual images she’s taken photos in woods and on beaches. But to contrast her work slightly, I went to an urban landscape (carpark) and took photos for my images there too.
Another contrast to her work is that her work uses natural colours that fit in with her natural photos, and I used really vibrant colours to represent the combination of urban and landscape.
In this post I have done some further experimentation on ways to compare and merge the photographs that I have taken. The main idea behind this editing is to take away parts of a photograph layered on top of another photograph to reveal a photograph in the background – this will allow the differences and similarities between the faces of the two buildings to be shown clearly. The idea for introducing shapes into the photograph to show contrast came from John Baldessari’s work with brightly coloured dots in which he covered the face of his subjects with dots that contrasted with the background; I felt that the introduction of more shapes brought another element to the photograph. Below is my first example of experimentation with cutting shapes into a photograph then layering; I cut around a coin with a stanley knife to reveal the features of the photograph below and show to create abstract effects within the composition.
In the first set of edits below I have used both circles and oblongs to create a range of contrasts within the photograph. I believe that this method may appear too confusing and removes the aesthetically pleasing aspects from the photographs but it does show contrast between structures.
In the below set of edited photographs I have used photoshop to remove the windows from the photograph on the top layer and so opening up a viewing into the background layer. This method could be used well with a double exposure method potentially, as I have done with the photograph on the left. This method helps to show similarities as even though parts of the composition have been completely removed it does not look completely abnormal.
In the below left edit I had first cut out the shapes within the windows and felt that this did not create a strong enough composition so then I continued to alter the opacity of the photograph to create more of a double exposure effect in which you can see both photographs when you look at it in a different perspective. In the photograph on the right I have cropped out circles within the photograph similarly to my first experiment with cutting out shapes. I feel that the circles do not sit well against the blocky natural shapes of a building face and so creates an abstract but not an aesthetically pleasing compositon.
Étienne-Jules Marey, born 5 March 1830, in Beaune, was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer. His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of laboratory photography. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of photography and an influential pioneer of the history of cinema.
To study the flight of birds, he invented a camera in 1882 with magazine plates that recorded a series of photographs; the pictures could be combined to represent movements. In 1894 he adapted the motion-picture camera to the microscope. Marey’s chronophotographic gun was made in 1882, this instrument was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, with all the frames recorded on the same picture. Using these pictures he studied horses, birds, dogs, sheep, donkeys, elephants, fish, microscopic creatures, molluscs, insects, reptiles, etc. Some call it Marey’s “animated zoo”. Marey also conducted the famous study about cats always landing on their feet. He conducted very similar studies with a chicken and a dog and found that they could do almost the same. Although Marey was a man of science, one cannot ignore his profound contribution to photography.
From my previous research and photo shoots I am leaning towards the focus of depiction of light and external factors that shape our environment. Essentially i will be focusing on elements of a photograph that people tend to not look at. Usually people will try and capture a certain object or subject as the main focal point of a photograph however I want to defy these conventions and look at the depiction of light, textures and other things that form and change our landscape. These initial ideas came from my artist reference on Hiroshi Sugimoto who photographs the ocean without a direct focus on the ocean itself but how the atmosphere shapes it. Leading on from this I looked into Monets Hay Stacks paintings which link to this idea of the environment being formed by external elements such as the light and atmosphere. He captures the changing light and how it colored his surroundings by painting a landscape at different times of the day.
Having explored the light i wanted to look into another factor that shapes the environment thus being tidal movement. I have researched one artist Micheal Martens who looks at how the tide forms the landscape at different times of the day. I have responded to this in one shoot however plan to look further into this in a scientific way, exploring how this occurs and why. As well as this i will also complete some more shoots simply exploring how the low tide vs high tide changes a familiar landscape into something quite different. Furthermore, as well as this scientific exploration I will also look into the spiritual culture as a whole and how this is demonstrated in photography. Through this i will look into Japanese culture and zen Buddhism inspired by the spirituality that is conveyed through Sugimoto.
My current ideas for an end product is a photo book and possible cinematic video that will be inspired by Koyaanisqatsi. Through the photo book there will be a sense of spirituality looking at the beauty within things that aren’t usually seen as beautiful. I will include aspects of the way in which the landscape is transformed by elements such as light and tidal movement. With intentions of creating a video, it would consist of cinematic sequences of the environment throughout a day to show how the landscape is transformed through a day and how light effects it. Also, there would be clear reference to the ocean since this plays a significant role in transforming the landscape from something familiar to a place vastly different.
Jim Sanborn is an American photographer and artist born 1945 in Washington. In his photographic series ‘Topographic projections and implied geometries’ he explores archaeological, mathematical and scientific exploration through his photography. In his photography Sanborn tries to highlight mixing mathematics and physics such as looking at unseen aspects of existent concepts or objects such as the Coriolis effect, the earth’s magnetic field or cryptography. Sanborn produced his series ‘topographic projections and implied geometries’ in the late 1990’s. He created all of the images individually using a large format light projector to create the shapes and formations in his images with the projector being half a mile away to create the perfect scale of the projection. He used generators to power the projectors which he transported to the locations. Sanborn photographed the American South west as well as the coastline of Ireland.
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun, and the rotation of the Earth.
While tides are usually the largest source of short-term sea-level fluctuations, sea levels are also subject to forces such as wind and barometric pressure changes, resulting in strom surges, especially in shallow seas and near coasts. Tidal phenomena are not limited to the oceans, but can occur in other systems whenever a gravitational field that varies in time and space is present. For example, the shape of the solid part of the Earth is affected slightly by Earth tide, though this is not as easily seen as the water tidal movements. This links to the previous contextual studies I have engaged with and the fact of seeing past our reality at things that cannot be seen.
Tide changes proceed via the following stages:
Sea level rises over several hours, covering the inertidal zone; flood tide.
The water rises to its highest level, reaching high tide.
Sea level falls over several hours, revealing the intertidal zone; ebb tide.
The water stops falling, reaching low tide.
I decided to do this research as a result of Michael Marten sea change project as i wanted to gain a scientific understanding of the tidal movement. As well as this scientific approach I will look into the spiritual approach that this sea change could be viewed as and I will try to display these ideas in my work. Perhaps with a scientific approach it could be interesting to add text into the images that display the height of water, time of day and weather types too.
The 19th century was the golden age of landscape painting in Europe and America. Three aesthetic concepts established during the Romantic era divided the natural world into categories: the Pastoral, the Picturesque, and the Sublime. The first two represent Nature as a comforting source of physical and spiritual sustenance. The last, as articulated by Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), refers to the thrill and danger of confronting untamed Nature and its overwhelming forces . This Romantic conception of the sublime proved influential for several generations of artists. Burke associates qualities of “balance,” “smoothness,”and “color” with the beautiful, while he speaks of the sublime in terms such as “vastness” and “terror”.
Beauty/ Pastoral
Beauty is a widely employed term, referring typically to aesthetic experiences that are pleasing, while to some extent transcending preferences and needs that are specific to an individual. That is, the experience of something beautiful will please a subject for reasons that reach beyond the subjective inclinations of the subject and that can be experienced also by many other subjects. The scenes are peaceful, often depicting ripe harvests, lovely gardens, manicured lawns with broad vistas, and fattened livestock. Man has developed and tamed the landscape – it yields the necessities we need to live, as well as beauty and safety.
Picturesque
Picturesque arose as a mediator between opposed ideals of beauty and the sublime, showing the possibilities that existed in between these two rationally idealised states, seen as being artistic but containing elements of wildness or irregularity. Derived from the Italian pittoresco, “from a picture,” the term picturesque de nes an object or view worthy of being included in a picture. It is an aesthetic category developed in the eighteenth-century to describe, in the words of artist and author William Gilpin (1724 – 1804) in his 1768 art treatise Essay on Print, ‘that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture’. It was associated with fashionable landscape gardening, however its cultural significance extended far beyond this.
A picturesque view contains a variety of elements, curious details, and interesting textures, conveyed in a palette of dark to light that brings these details to life. In later publications Gilpin developed the concept more fully. The picturesque may be thought of as halfway between the beautiful, with its emphasis on smoothness, regularity, and order; and the sublime, which is all about vastness, magnitude, and intimations of power; the picturesque must combine aspects of both of those. A picturesque landscape would have characteristics of roughness (which includes textured or variegated surfaces) — indeed, Gilpin wrote that “roughness forms the most essential point of difference between the beautiful and picturesque”
By the last third of the 18th century, Enlightenment and rationalist ideas about aesthetics were being challenged by looking at the experiences of beauty and sublimity as being non-rational. Aesthetic experience was not just a rational decision – one did not look at a pleasing curved form and decide it was beautiful; rather it came naturally as a matter of basic human instinct.
“Disputes about beauty might perhaps be involved in less confusion, if a distinction were established, which certainly exists, between such objects as are beautiful, and such as are picturesque—between those, which please the eye in their natural state; and those, which please from some quality, capable of being illustrated by painting.”
—William Gilpin, ree Essays on Picturesque Beauty, 1794
Sublime
According to Burke, the Beautiful is that which is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is that which has the power to compel and destroy us. The preference for the Sublime over the Beautiful was to mark the transition from the Neoclassical to the Romantic era. Burke connected the sublime with experiences of awe, terror and danger. Burke saw nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders. This Romantic conception of the sublime proved influential for several generations of artists.
Causation can be divided into formal, material, efficient and final causes. The formal cause of beauty is the passion of love; the material cause concerns aspects of certain objects such as smallness, smoothness, delicacy, etc.; the efficient cause is the calming of our nerves.
“What is most peculiar and original to Burke’s view of beauty is that it cannot be understood by the traditional bases of beauty: proportion, fitness, or perfection. The sublime also has a causal structure that is unlike that of beauty. Its formal cause is thus the passion of fear. He believed that “terror is in all cases… the ruling principle of the sublime.”
In landscape the sublime is exemplified by J.M.W Turner’s sea storms and mountain scenes and in history painting by the violent dramas of Henry Fuseli. The notion that a legitimate function of art can be to produce upsetting or disturbing effects was an important element in Romantic art and remains fundamental to art today. Painters like Turner and Constable wanted to express the sublime in visual art. They were landscape painters and, although in different ways, they emphasized the strength of natural elements and studied the effects of different weather conditiond on the landscape. In 1814 the English landscape painter John Constable put this in his own words when he said the beauty of nature generates a train of associations that leads “to the contemplation of higher, spiritual values”(Anne Lyles, Sublime Nature: John Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from theMeadows, Tate) and his idea is illustrated in Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831. Constable’s dark, passionate clouds, are in contrast to the sunlight of the foreground, where you see the church scene as gothic, and negative. These aspects of the painting widens towards sublimity: God, nature and man. Burke favoured this aesthetic idea over Beauty because, he said, ‘astonishment, obscurity and vastness cause a more powerful physical reaction in us than Beauty’s orderly calm’
Because the sublime is emotional, it is traditionally considered something one must experience alone. It’s no coincidence that Rousseau’s last work was titled Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Traditional Romantics associate the sublime directly with nature, and the artist, poet or simply the Romantic experiences the sublime directly witnessing the beauty of nature. But it’s important not to confuse or reduce the sublime with simple beauty, rather, Romantics are interested in natural experiences that utterly consume us, perhaps moving us to tears, and giving us a humbling sense of the wonder and majesty of the natural world.
