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Developing, Research

VARIATION – PATTERNS

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The variation of patterns within nature on plants, flowers, tree bark, and forming on water are diverse and show the fascinating visual details of the natural world. One artist who looks at patterns of nature in a compelling way is Adrienne Adam, a fine art photographer. Her up-close photographs of plants, flowers, trees, sand and the ground explore the varied colours, forms, shapes, thicknesses and sizes of the subjects she photographs, furthermore fulfilling the idea of natural beauty that surrounds these natural forms.

Adrienne Adam

Adrienne writes on her website that the art of seeing for her is a spiritual practice by which she empties her mind of the business of life in order to be fully present and available to her surroundings. Most of the images she makes are intimate landscapes showing the subtle and unique patterns and textures… the magic found in nature. When making images her intention is to show the Spirit of nature. The degree to which she is successful at capturing the essence and energy of the subject on film is directly proportionate to the degree to which she is fully present with the subject that catches her eye. Adrienne considers herself a “student of light“– always standing on the edge of confidence in her exposures. “Light is as subtle and ever-changing as the wind. It is tangible and yet illusive.” For this reason, the images she makes are all exposed in available light so they are a study of how this element shifts and dances on the surface of a tree, of the water, of our lives. The images Adam’s presents are made with either the medium format 500CM Hasselblad or digital Nikon D300 cameras. Regardless of which camera or lens she uses. her intention is to isolate a small part of a scene in a way that tells the entire story of the big picture. During the selection process she chooses images that best represent the spirit of the original subject or scene in terms of color, contrast and mood. When Adams uses film, the “selects” are scanned and guide prints are made.  The guides are returned to her to determine accuracy of the scan as-well-as for cropping purposes. In the case of images made with the D300, she makes the color and size adjustments herself. Once this process is complete the images are ready for print on a variety of papers and alternative media.

“AS I SEE IT, THE CREATION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC ART HAS TWO PRIMARY ELEMENTS – THE ART OF “SEEING” AND THE ART OF “CAPTURING” WHAT IS SEEN ON FILM.”

When seeing and technical knowing are aligned I am fortunate enough to “capture” the Spirit of Nature on film and share it with others. More importantly, I have become a better person and my life is filled with the understanding of what photography and nature teaches me… “Be conscious and notice the abundance and magic of life in every moment.”

Developing

ART / PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION STUDY

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On a visit to Jersey Arts Centre, CCA Gallery and The Private and Public, I have looked at the exhibitions and photographed any displays I feel relate to my work. This has led to me mainly taking interest in exhibition works based around nature; butterflies, weather patterns and trees. I enjoyed physically seeing the works rather than on a screen as I could really see the intricate detail and interesting features, like glitter on silkscreen (Deific by Damien Hurst) up close which I wouldn’t be able to experience online. I have sourced the galleries I visited below which reference full overviews of what the current exhibitions are about and information about the artists / photographers.

https://privateandpublic.com

http://artscentre.je

https://www.ccagalleriesinternational.com/

Deific by Damien Hurst – 2013
Contextual Studies, Research

CONTEXTUAL STUDY 3: ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY

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Abstract photography is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment, processes or materials. An abstract photograph may isolate a fragment of a natural scene in order to remove its inherent context from the viewer, it may be purposely staged to create a seemingly unreal appearance from real objects, or it may involve the use of color, light, shadow, texture, shape and/or form to convey a feeling, sensation or impression. The image may be produced using traditional photographic equipment like a camera, darkroom or computer, or it may be created without using a camera by directly manipulating film, paper or other photographic media, including digital presentations.

One of the key advances of abstract photography has been the realization that cameras are not required to make photographs. Since the early twentieth century, abstract artists have continually returned to the “photogram” – the cameraless photograph – as a medium allowing for uniquely self-reflexive and creative interventions into the photographic form. Rather than capturing an image by the passage of light through shutters onto photosensitive paper, the paper itself is directly manipulated and treated – often brought into contact with other objects – allowing for a potentially endless array of effects. As a general rule, abstract photography has tended to avert its gaze from extraordinary and arresting subject-matter. Instead, it focuses on the irregular forms and impressions which can be generated by representing familiar objects in new ways.

“THE MOST ASTONISHING POSSIBILITIES REMAIN TO BE DISCOVERED IN THE RAW MATERIAL OF THE PHOTOGRAPH”

László Moholy-Nagy Signature

Maija Annikki Savolainen

The series Paperworks, by Savolainen, is a study on the colors of sunlight and the photographic way of seeing. The images are made with a folded, white A4 sheet placed in direct sunlight at different times of the day and year. When looking at the picture at a distance, one might see a horizon line. When taking a closer look, it becomes clear that there is something strange about the view. The horizon appears to be a fold on a sheet of paper, the colors are reflections of sunlight on the white surface; a little bit of information makes the eye see something else than before. This series is a clear example of abstract photography linked to the natural landscape.

Developing, Experimenting

SHOOT 5: RESPONDING TO RINKO KAWAUCHI

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For my 5th photographic shoot, I have taken primary source in response to Rinko Kawauchi’s work. I really like her work as it reinforces the sublime beauty of seemingly mundane things like insects, and skyscapes. She uses the element of light to her advantage and zooms in on nature to produce romantic imagery. Taking inspiration from her areas of study, I have photographed a variety of subjects i.e. the sun rising and setting, patterns in the sand, and a bee close-up. I have included multiple videos to show visual movement where I have photographed, specifically the movement of water, which I can’t present in a still image. I have shown direct comparisons between my responses and her works in multiple images to show clear contrast and similarities.

PRIMARY SOURCE:

Analysis, Research

RINKO KAWAUCHI

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08v8gxj/the-art-of-japanese-life-series-1-1-nature

Rinko Kawauchi Hon FRPS 川内 倫子 is a Japanese photographer. Her work is characterized by a serene, poetic style, depicting the ordinary moments in life. Kawauchi became interested in photography while studying graphic design and photography at Seian University of Art and Design where she graduated in 1993. She first worked in commercial photography and advertising for several years before embarking on a career as a fine art photographer. In 2001 three of her photo books were published: Hanako (a Japanese girl’s name), Utatane (“catnap”), and Hanabi (“fireworks”). In 2004 Kawauchi published Aila; in 2010, Murmuration, and in 2011 Illuminance. Her series Illuminance is inspired by the subtle aesthetic of wabi-sabi.

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes.

Kawauchi’s art is rooted in Shinto, the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. According to Shinto, all things on earth have a spirit, hence no subject is too small or mundane for Kawauchi’s work; she also photographs “small events glimpsed in passing,” conveying a sense of the ephemeral. Kawauchi sees her images as parts of series that allow the viewer to juxtapose images in the imagination, thereby making the photograph a work of art and allowing a whole to emerge at the end; she likes working in photo books because they allow the viewer to engage intimately with her images.

Analysis:

Kawauchi’s photographs give a sublime perspective of nature up close. She incorporates one of the most important photographic elements of light into her work and uses it in her favour to create the most striking images. She studies basic subjects that people see as boring or nothing special i.e. ants, water, flowers, leaves, and turns them into extraordinary focal points. Her photographs have an almost spiritual feel to them as they present nature in a majestic and serene way, differing from many other nature photographers who photograph in monochrome and capture the landscape as a whole rather than zooming in on the finer elements.

“PEOPLE OFTEN SAY THAT I HAVE A CHILD’S EYE. FOR EXAMPLE, I STARE AT ANTS GATHERING AROUND SUGAR, OR WHEN I SEEK SHELTER FROM THE RAIN, I GAZE UPON SNAILS. THESE ARE THINGS WHICH YOU OFTEN DO WHEN YOU ARE A CHILD AREN’T THEY? I HAVE A VERY SIMILAR SENSIBILITY TO THAT.”

“IT’S NOT ENOUGH THAT THE PHOTOGRAPH IS BEAUTIFUL. IF IT DOESN’T MOVE MY HEART, IT WON’T MOVE ANYONE ELSE’S HEART.”

Analysis, Developing, Experimenting

SHOOT 4 – WATER

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1.

My 4th photographic shoot has been based around ‘water’. I categorized nature into 4 sections I would focus on photographing, water being one of them. Before my shoot, I have looked at photographers who incorporate water photography into their work, including Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Rinko Kawauchi. Hiroshi specializes in ‘seascapes’, an area of work focusing on the distinct horizon between sea and sky. On the other hand, Rinko looks at the sublime, including photographs of the water in her large collection of work. She uses the element of light to her advantage, something I have taken inspiration of in my photograph pictured below. I have captured the light hitting the water and glistening in the reflection. I photographed and video-captured this to show the movement of light and include motion in my imagery. I believe these primary sources represent the beauty of how light and water come together to explore the sublime.

2.

For the second part of my photographic study on water, I have looked at the source of habitat it provides in the environment to wildlife. As I am looking at variation of nature for my project, I thought it would be an interesting angle to look at the various ways in which water can be photographed; one way being as an element, another as a habitat and another as a form of patterns and abstraction.

3.

My final area of study is based around the patterns, form and abstract nature of water. The variety of images I have taken of water in the sea and reservoirs, show the interesting patterns, and shapes within the water. I have edited the photos into black and white to show resembelance to Sugimoto’s work, as well as highlighting the varying shades and tonal contrasts as a result of different white balance and lighting.

Using one of my photographs, I have created an edit in response to the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s. Like Hiroshi does with his photographs, I have separated the horizon from the sea with a distinct landscape line. Using Photoshop CC, I have filled in the top half of the photo with a pale grey colour to contrast with the black and white water.

Analysis, Research

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO

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BBC SERIES ON THE JAPANESE ART OF NATURE

Hiroshi Sugimoto is an example of an alternative landscape photographer. Sugimoto, born on February 23, 1948, is a Japanese photographer and architect. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm New Material Research Laboratory. His use of an 8×10 large-format camera and extremely long exposures means Sugimoto has gained a reputation as a photographer of the highest technical ability. He is equally acclaimed for the conceptual and philosophical aspects of his work. Sugimoto has exhibited extensively in major museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1994), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1995), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2003) and the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris (2004). His most recent exhibition, “Lost Human Genetic Archive”, is showing at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum from Sept. 3 – Nov. 13, 2016, incorporating selected images from Seascapes among others.

Seascapes

In 1980 he began working on an ongoing series of photographs of the sea and its horizon, Seascapes, in locations all over the world, using an old-fashioned large-format camera to make exposures of varying duration (up to three hours). The locations range from the English Channel and the Cliffs of Moher to the Arctic Ocean, from Positano, Italy, to the Tasman Sea and from the Norwegian Sea at Vesterålen to the Black Sea at Ozuluce in Turkey. The black-and-white pictures are all exactly the same size, split exactly in half by the horizon line. Sugimoto describes his vision of sky and water as a form of time travel.

Seascapes’ timelessness by Hiroshi Sugimoto

“THE SEASCAPES ARE BEFORE HUMAN BEINGS AND AFTER HUMAN BEINGS.”

Tyrrhenian Sea Priano, 1994

Image analysis:

Hiroshi uses prolonged exposure times in order to produce flat and clean images in which the ocean has creases rather than ripples and waves. He freezes time, stills movement, and makes the seascape into an unrecognizable abyss. His use of contrasting light and dark explores the haunting concept of battle between life and death. His black and white photographs stand out from the works of other photographers in its use of natural light. Hiroshi’s work embraces shadows and forms. His photographs are left open to interpretation and make viewers question the notion of his work. As a photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto has a reputation for having some of the most impressive technical abilities.

“Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. The beginnings of life  are shrouded in myth: Let there water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that  could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let’s just say that t here happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example.  Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea.  Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.”

Sea of Japan Rebun Island, 1996
Contextual Studies, Research

CONTEXTUAL STUDY 2: PHOTO-REALISM

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During the late 1950s and early 1960s in New York City, the dominant art movements were Abstract Expressionism, followed by Pop art, then Minimalism. In the mid-1960s, a far smaller movement of individual artists producing realistic paintings related to photography began to practice their craft, also in New York. This was labelled as Photorealism. Photorealism artists’ work depended heavily on photographs, which they often projected onto canvas allowing images to be replicated with precision and accuracy. The exactness was often aided further by the use of an airbrush, which was originally designed to retouch photographs. Photorealism complicates the notion of realism by successfully mixing together that which is real with that which is unreal. While the image on the canvas is recognizable and carefully outlined to suggest that it is accurate, the artist often based their work upon photographs rather than direct observation. Therefore, their canvases remain distanced from reality factually and metaphorically. Many Photorealists adamantly insist that their works are not communicative of social criticism or commentary.

“SOMETIMES I REALLY WANT TO PAINT SOMEBODY AND I DON’T GET A PHOTOGRAPH THAT I WANT TO WORK FROM.”

Chuck Close Signature

Since the origin of photography in the early-19th-century, artists have used the camera as a tool in picture making; however, artists would never reveal in paint their dependency on photographs as to do so was seen as “cheating”. In contrast, Photorealists acknowledge the modern world’s mass production and proliferation of photographs, and they do not deny their dependence on photographs. In fact, several artists attempt to replicate the effects of photography such as blurriness or multiple-viewpoints, because they favor the aesthetic and look. Therefore, while the resulting image is realistic, it is simultaneously one-stage away from reality by its dependence on the reproduced image. These works question traditional artistic methods, as well as the differences between reality and artificiality. The representation of light, as well as the interaction of light and color together has concerned artists throughout time. By using slide machines to project images onto bare canvas, Photorealism for the first time unites color and light together as one element. Furthermore, Photorealists, along with some practitioners of Pop art, reintroduced the importance of process and deliberate planning over that of improvisation and automatism, into the making of art, draftsmanship, and exacting brushwork.

Developing, Experimenting

SHOOT 3 – CLOUDSCAPES

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The 3rd category of my nature study is cloudscapes. From previously researching Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivelents and John Day’s photographs for inspiration, I have taken my own photos in response to the artists. In response to Stieglitz, I have captured heavy cloudscapes in times of bad / stormy weather in order to emphasize the dramatic sky like he focused on in Equivalents. John Day approaches cloudsacapes in a complete opposite visual style, with heavy saturation and colour enhancement in order to present the rich and varying colours of the sky above.

PRIMARY SOURCE:

Analysis, Planning, Research

CLOUDSCAPES

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Cloudscape photography is photography of clouds or sky. An early cloudscape photographer, Belgian photographer Léonard Misonne (1870–1943), was noted for his black and white photographs of heavy skies and dark clouds. In the early to middle 20th century, American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) created a series of photographs of clouds, called “equivalents” (1925–1931). According to an essay on the series at the Phillips Collection website, “A symbolist aesthetic underlies these images, which became increasingly abstract equivalents of his own experiences, thoughts, and emotions”. More recently, photographers such as Ralph Steiner, Robert Davies and Tzeli Hadjidimitriou have been noted for producing such images.

Equivalents

In the summer of 1922, Alfred Stieglitz began to take photographs of clouds, tilting his hand camera towards the sky to produce dizzying and abstract images of their ethereal forms. In an article the following year, Stieglitz maintained that these works were a culmination of everything he had learned about photography in the previous forty years:

“THROUGH CLOUDS I WANTED TO PUT DOWN MY PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE—TO SHOW THAT MY PHOTOGRAPHS WERE NOT DUE TO SUBJECT MATTER—NOT TO SPECIAL TREES, OR FACES, OR INTERIORS, TO SPECIAL PRIVILEGES, CLOUDS WERE THERE FOR EVERYONE—NO TAX AS YET ON THEM—FREE.”

Over the next eight years, he made some 350 cloud studies, largely produced as contact prints on gelatin silver postcard stock. Stieglitz called these photographs Equivalents. More than describing the visible surfaces of things, the works could express pure emotion, paralleling the artist’s own inner state. Stieglitz, along with many of the artists of his circle, argued that visual art could assume the same nonrepresentational, emotionally evocative qualities as music. Indeed, music was an inspiration for the Equivalents, and this is reflected in the early titles he gave them: Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs (1922) and Songs of the Sky (1923). Stieglitz did not limit himself to clouds, or allusions to music, in these photographs: one notable work, Spiritual America, shows a close-up of the nether regions of a harnessed gelding (a castrated male horse), the image serving as a metaphor for the artist’s impression of a diminished American culture in the same way that his depictions of clouds represented his emotions. Stieglitz often presented the Equivalents in series or sets, recombining different groupings of prints for exhibition.

The Cloudman

The “Cloudman“, Dr. John A. Day, is a professor emeritis from Linfield College, in Oregon, USA, who taught meteorology for over forty years and who has a great passion for sharing the wonder of clouds. Now in his nineties, he continues to write, teach, and inspire people of all ages, around the world. His photography and writings are found in international publications and museums, and are used by artists, musicians, teachers, and many other cloud lovers. In 1962 he was granted a Faculty Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to study Cloud Physics at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, England. In 1971 he returned to England, this time on sabbatical leave, for intensive study of the History of Cloud Classification, focusing on the work of Luke Howard, England’s first meteorologist. Day’s interest in clouds was first of a technical nature, learning to forecast their appearance and development. Studies of clouds in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s were directed toward gaining a fuller understanding of the physical causes that led to the formation of particular cloud types. In this period he started photographing clouds which led to an extensive collection of photographs. In later years his focus of interest has shifted form technical to artistic, and through the medium of photography, he attempts day by day to capture the beauty and majesty seen in the cloud forms that grace the sky. His photographs are rich in colour and greatly differ from the works of Alfred Stieglitz’.

MANY SKIES ARE SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL TO BEHOLD. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO SAY IT. SHEER BEAUTY! THE COMBINATION OF FORM, POSITION, GRADATIONS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, AND EVEN COLOR IN THE LATE EVENING AND EARLY MORNING HOURS IS PLEASING TO THE EYE, AND STIRS AN INNER SENSE THAT CAUSES ONE TO BREATHE AN INAUDIBLE, “AHH, THE GREAT ARTIST AT WORK!”

https://www.cloudman.com/photography.htm