How do the photographers Chrystel Lebas and Mandy Barker explore issues of the changing environment?

 Introduction 

Anthropocene: the Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, based on overwhelming global evidence that earth system processes are now altered by humans. In my essay I intend to explore how the photographers Chrystel Lebas and Mandy Barker express their views on the natural environment changing due to human activity in the anthropocene. Looking at the environment is a relevant topic for todays society, but I think the topic of how how natural landscapes have developed needs to be represented creatively more often. The photographers Lebas and Barker both portray their opinions about the environment changing from external factors such as climate change and pollution .  Climate change is yet another environmental problem that has surfaced in the last couple of decades. I first became interested in the work of Mandy Barker when i began researching photographers who represented these issues in their photography. I was personally interested in this subject as Barker’s work particularly fascinated me through the intriguing patterns created from her microscopic samples in her series ‘Beyond drifting: Imperfectly known animals’, addressing issues with plastic debris levels in seas and the detrimental effects this has.  She takes inspiration from John Vaughan Thompson’s early scientific discoveries of plankton and subtly uses his original writing, descriptions, and figures recorded in his research memoirs from 1830, entitled ‘Imperfectly Known Animals’. I also chose to explore the work of Lebas’ as she portrays her views on environmental change uniquely, revisiting the areas that Edward James Salisbury had to see the effects that time had on the landscape and the species living there. I aim to to compare the reasonings behind both of their works, their inspirations, how their images look visually , and  how they present their works to help their underlying message. Researching these two artists has helped me develop my own work by inspiring me to take images in the style of early scientists and botanists. Similar to how they both looked at archival imagery, I also looked at archival imagery from the area La Motte, Jersey to see how the environment has changed over a century. Their exploration into anthropocene has lead me to research this topic and let it influence me in way way i take photographs.

 Historical/ theoretical context

The 19th century was the golden age of landscape painting in Europe and America. Three aesthetic concepts emerged 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 existence. 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. Burke believed that “whatever is fitted to produce such a tension must be productive of a passion familiar to terror, and consequently must be a source of the sublime ” (Edmund Burke, 1757, Philosophical Enquiry into the ‘Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: pg. 149) where our ability to perceive or comprehend what is presented to us is temporarily overwhelmed. However he also believed there was an inherent pleasure in this emotion. 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” (Burke, 1757).

The theory of the picturesque was developed by writers William Gilpin (Observations on the River Wye 1770) and Uvedale Price, who in 1794 published ‘An Essay on the Picturesque as Compared’ with the Sublime and Beautiful. Picturesque arose as a mediator between these opposed ideals of beauty and the sublime, showing the possibilities that existed in between these two rationally idealised states. The Pastoral and Picturesque reference mankind’s ability to control the natural world, the Sublime is a humbling reminder that humanity is not all-powerful.

In British art, Romanticism was embraced in new responses to nature in the art of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner.  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 the Meadows, 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’ (Tony Schwab, 2016, The Persistence of the Sublime: pg.5) Constable’s painting is balanced between these two aesthetic ideas.

In Victorian England, J.M.W. Turner focused on the energy in Nature itself when he went outside to paint in all kinds of weather. He painted expressions of vastness, terror, and obscurity, portraying nature itself as Sublime.

His  painting ‘The Shipwreck’  is one of the artist’s largest and most intensely dramatic pictures, unmatched at the time of its creation in its depiction of the destructive power of the sea. (David Blayney Brown, Sea Pictures: Turner’s Marine Sublime and a Sketchbook of c.1803–10, Tate) 

Artist, writer and critic Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has expressed a current view of the beautiful-sublime relation in his book, Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime, 1999.  What is most revolutionary about Gilbert-Rolfe’s perspective is his notion that the sublime cannot exist in nature today.  He claims that the sublime can only inhabit, or be expressed by, technology – as technology is limitless and yet to be apprehended. Picturesque Travel author William Gilpin first defined the landscape term as expressing “that particular kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture” (Watson, 1970, 19).

First artist/photographer in relation to your essay question.

Chrystel Lebas

The French photographer Chrystel Leas spent the first 10 years of her life in Sérignan-du-Comtat, a village in the Vaucluse in south-eastern France. To the north the village is bordered by scrubland and pine forest, first with her mother and then on trips with her school, she begun to study the life of the forest. At the end of the 1990s,  she began to photograph the natural landscape. She preferred to work at night, or at twilight (what the French call l’heure bleu ) when the world becomes more mysterious. “I was fascinated by night itself, by the absence of light and the impossibility of photographing,” Lebas told Nanda van den Berg, the director of the Huis Marseille in Amsterdam. (Liz Jobey on Chrystel Lebas, 2016,  Financial Times)

In 2011 the Natural History Museum London commissioned Chrystel Lebas to make new work inspired by an early 20th century collection of glass negatives depicting the British landscape by photographer Edward James Salisbury. She particularly focused on Scottish and Norfolk landscapes, re-visiting the places that Salisbury did in the  1920s and 1930s to document  environmental change that had occurred over nearly ninety years later. “Walking, searching, GPS in hand, I attempted to find the exact locations where Salisbury stood when he took his photographs at the beginning of the 20th century” (Chrystel Lebas, 2011, Re-visiting) . She focused on three subject areas: habitat, locality and specimens and “through photography and film  Lebas traces the continual encounters between the forces of the wind and the sea with humans, animals, and plants.” (Bergit Arends on Chrystel Lebas, 2017, Published by Fw:Books, Amsterdam). On her walks, Lebas was often accompanied by a contemporary botanical expert searching out the plants he had isolated and documented on light sensitive paper. “I was interested in challenging how I used the cameras, but also challenging the landscape.”(Liz Jobey, 2016, The Financial Times Weekend Magazine)  For this latest project, however, the challenge was set by the landscape and its past.

“My remit was very different from Salisbury’s. He was a scientist disguised as a photographer. Was I becoming a photographer disguised as a scientist?”(Chrystel Lebas, Publications, www.chrystellebas.com/publications)

Rothiemurchus in Scotland

This photograph was taken in Rothiemurchus, Scotland, linking to concepts of sublime photography and focusing on nature as being the main subject.. The Rothiemurchus estate is one of the largest surviving areas of ancient woodlands in Europe where the average age of the Scots pines exceeds 100 years with some more than 300 years old. Le bas’ panoramic landscape photograph expands what is seen by the audience of the scene. The underlying story of this photograph to me is the detrimental  effects that mankind have had on the environment over the past years. This photograph was taken in 2012 which I think is Lebas’ way of expressing to people how mankind is effecting the environment today and is still very much a relevant issue. The way this photo was documented makes it seem to me as though she has stumbled across this on her walk which adds to the shocking nature of it. The surrounding trees are perfectly in tack but the tree in the centre of the image  is completely snapped in half on it’s side. This makes the audience question why it’s like this and creates mystery behind the scene.

The surrounding trees are all tall and straight, some going out of the frame on the left side of the image which adds to the contrast of the standing trees to the broken one. As well as this, most of the green tones in this image are on the surrounding trees, the broken one being a light brown tone which is different from the rest of the image, further emphasising the contrast of the two elements in the photo.   This follows on from Lebas’ environmental series looking at how the environment has changed over 90 years in comparison to Salisbury’s photographs. This image in comparison to Salisbury’s is shocking which I think emphasises the effect of climate change. “My photograph shows more trees than Salisbury’s black and white plate. Mark Spencer explained that these could have been growing thoughout the 90 years surrounding the older tree seen in the center of the image. Thus showing me that in order to understand that habitat one must understand its history.” (Chrystel Lebas, The Photographers Gallery interview, Daniel C. Blight) So Lebas’ true meaning behind this image in particular was to show how landscape changes over time, portraying new trees that have grown over the 90 years, and the older on its side, portraying how trees are growing, dying and re-generating themselves.

The loss of plant and animal species due to human activities have been more rapid in the past 50 years than at any time in human history, increasing the risks of abrupt and irreversible changes to ecosystems. (www.anthropocene.info) When Lebas revisited the areas that Salisbury did she found that species that were there over 90 years ago weren’t there anymore, reflecting her views about species going extinct within her photography. Sean O’Hagan thinks that the book is “an investigation of a landscape that now has such a heavy human footprint as to no longer be “natural” in the way Salisbury would have understood the term. ” stated in his article in The Guardian (Sean O’Hagan, 2017, The Guardian: Field Studies by Chrystel Lebas review). I think this is true as the landscape she visited has changed so much that a whole plant species has gone extinct. This reflects the ideologies of anthropocene where atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic and other earth system processes are now altered by humans, which is a concept I think Lebas is trying to represent.

I also think many of her photographs  greatly link to the ideologies by philosopher Edmund Burke in ‘Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)’ where he talks about the thrill and danger of confronting untamed Nature and its overwhelming forces. This image displays nature as untamed through the broken tree in the centre of the image and the towering trees filling most of the photograph, nature overwhelming the senses. “Lebas sees her works as referring to the Romantic tradition, citing Casper David Friedrich and notions of the sublime as key influences. With images of escape, wilderness and the grandeur of nature, her practice relates to some of the main tenets of Romanticism to photography and raises significant questions about how the contemporary (urban) viewer engages with nature.” (Deborah Schultz, Portfolio Catalogue, Chrystel Lebas: The Wait: pg. 35). I can see how Lebas’ work takes inspiration from the 19th-century Romantic landscape painter Casper David Friedrich through the tones she’s emphasises to portray vast nature as well as the bright backgrounds against the darker subject, creating a romanticised aesthetic.

Caspar David Friedrich Cairn in Snow 1807, Midday 1821-22

Sean O’hagan thinks that “Lebas’s images have a kind of heightened elementalism. She uses a panoramic camera and often shoots at dusk when the light quality in these still, quiet places can be almost otherworldly” (Sean O’Hagan, 2017, The Guardian: Field Studies by Chrystel Lebas review). I agree with this statement as I think her use of cool dark tones adds to to an elementric quality. Elementalism refers to ‘worship of the natural elements of earth, air, water, and fire.‘  and i think Lebas’ photography  has an awareness of spirituality in living things. In this image the way she’s accentuates the patterns in the dark green trees against the bright sky makes them seem alive and spiritual in comparison to the broken tree. Also the way she shoots at dusk emphasises the mystical atmosphere and shadows that consumes the image adding to the elementalism.

I agree that Lebas “alerts people to the changes wrought by man and the climate on the landscape, than by drawing them in through these photographs to consider how fragile it has become.” (Liz Jobey, 2016, Natural Histories, Weekend magazine: pg. 27) to an extent. Although she does present nature being ‘fragile’ and vulnerable to changes of  human activity, she also presents it as vast and powerful through her use of cool tones and boundless landscapes. Overall she presents  her underlying message that the changes in natural landscapes are due to humans and climate change and portrays nature as immense and beautiful at the same time.

I tried to photograph the landscape at La Motte taking inspiration from Crystal Lebas’ natural landscapes. In this image I tried to emphasise the cool tones to heighten the elementalism, like in many of Lebas’ images relating to the ideologies of sublime. I think this particular image of mine definitely reflects that of the sublime, through the bold, structured shapes of the rocks with dark tones ranging rom brown to black. This combined with the sky which is a blue tone due to being taken at dusk, creates a mysterious and other-worldly appearance, similar to Lebas’ images. In this image I wanted to show how the environment was changing by how the rocks had been warn down in comparison to archival images from one-hundred years ago. This is similar to how Lebas wanted to express how the environment was changing though how trees are growing, dying and re-generating themselves.

Second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question.

Mandy Barker

In 2012, photographer Mandy Barker was awarded The Royal Photographic Society’s Environmental bursary, which enabled her to join scientists in a research expedition to examine the accumulation of marine plastic debris. She began her investigations in the Pacific Ocean but has subsequently widened her focus to different bodies of water around the world.  Her series, “Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals” was presented at the Unseen Photo Fair in 2016. The images were based of scientific fact about an area she had documented for more than nine years where she hoped by producing images would lead to positive actions in tackling this increasing environmental problem, which is currently of global concern.

Barker started focusing on ocean plastic as a both a “message and a medium as she was brought up near the sea and regularly walked the same beaches and locations. This is where she noticed over the last 20 years that the natural objects I used to collect were being replaced by man made ones.” (Mandy Barker, 2016, Faculty Magazine interview). Once struck by seeing the same inkjet cartridge in the stomach of a bird that was used in her own printer, Mandy creates meticulous, contemplative works that connect us back to the choices we make and the things we leave behind.

Plankton form a diverse group of microscopic marine organisms living in the water column, not able to swim against the current; rather, they exist in a drifting state. In this series, unique specimens of this animal species are related to the pioneering discoveries made by John Vaughn Thompson in Cobh a military surgeon and amateur naturalist in the 1800s, about little-understood marine organisms, which he referred to as “imperfectly known animals”. This title relates to today as ” plankton today are ‘imperfect’ because they contain micro plastics” (Mandy Barker Interview, Photo Works) whereas Thompson collected and studied plankton when they were not ingesting plastic.

For example in this photographs she uses a long exposure, like in her other images, to show the movement of the plastic floating like plankton would which is then presented within a circular frame. I think using this shape frame makes the audience feel like they’re looking through the microscope themselves. She captures this on expired film with faulty cameras, making the film grain intentionally visible, which i think gives the image a more authentic look and adds to the historic science book appearance that she designed it to have. The shapes created by the plastic debris are abstract and aesthetically pleasing, the white shape contrasted against the black background. Barker does this to then shock the audience when they find out that what they are looking at is not something beautiful, but instead is being digested by marine life around the world. To me, this image in particular looks natural, like a plant or flower due to the shapes made by movement, this then shocked me when i found out that it was plastic. “The longer you look at these otherworldly images, there is something ineffably delicate, at times, vulnerable, that surfaces and goes beyond Barker’s photographs themselves. (Sabrina Mandanici, 2018, Collector Daily). I agree that her images are otherworldly as the pattern created is not something that a person would see in their everyday life, which is what makes the series so impactful at expressing her views about the changing environment.

I agree with Sabrina Mandanici, when she states that “in the simplest sense, Barker’s photographs are beautiful images of inanimate objects that, through the means of photography, become living organisms” (Sabrina Mandanici, 2018, Collector Daily). I believe that her work links into the ideologies of beauty and romanticism as she states in  a podcast interview that it was her intention to create a ‘beautiful images combined with text, the hard hitting, shocking facts. alongside. Without the text it wouldn’t work because it would just be a beautiful image for arts sake.’ (Mandy Barker Interview, 2016, The Documentary Photographer Podcast, Roger Overall) This means that she wants to make the images aesthetically pleasing to draw the audience in, but them shock them with idea that it is not plankton  they are looking at, but plastic debris. She makes the audience think that that what they are looking at is plankton by moving plastic in the same way plankton moves. “Contradiction between beauty and information will combine to make people question” (Mandy Barker, 2018, Port Magazine). This expresses her opinions of changing environments as she takes inspiration from Thompson earlier work investigation plankton in the late 1800s and compares this to her work in the 21st century where plankton species are eating plastic, showing how this species has changed over time due to the effects of anthropocene.

I tried to take inspiration from Mandy Barker in some of my own images in experimentation creating the appearance of a looking through a microscope. Similar to Barker’s I displayed the images with circular frames and cropped the images so that they were zoomed in. In Barker’s images she uses a long exposure when photographing objects to create the appearance of movement like plankton floating in the sea. For my work I formally photographed natural objects i found in the area La Motte and edited them by inverting them and adjusting the hues. Photographing the images formally allowed for me to create shadows underneath the objects, which when edited are blurred to create the appearance of movement. I think my images, similar to Barker’s, relate to ideologies of romanticism and beauty. Having natural objects as my subject makes the appearance look more delicate and fragile.

Conclusion/ Comparison

In conclusion both artists express their view on the changing environment effectively. Lebas does this by documenting landscapes and investigating the areas that Salisbury did over 90 years ago to see the changes in the environment,reporting that she found entire species of plant that were not there anymore and comparing her images to archival ones. On the other hand Barker uses beautiful abstract microscopic samples of marine plastic debris to shock the audience when they find out what they are looking at, highlighting the issue of plankton eating plastic which is then passed through the food chain in oceans. I also do this in my work by comparing my landscape images with archival photos from the area La Motte to see how the environment has changed in a century. Both photographers images’ reflect that of otherworldly, Lebas’ images having a heightened elementalism with emphasised dark tones, whereas Barker produces abstract images that have patterns that are not seen an a persons everyday life, highlighting the feel of movement. Both emphasise these aspects to draw the audience in to get their underlying message across. I also think my images reflect that of other worldly as I emphasised the dark blue tones in the landscape taken at dusk creating a mysterious appearance and a heightened elementalism. I think that Leas work reflects that of the sublime where she emphasised the vast landscapes she comes across with dark tones contrasted against bright ones. Similarly, I think my work links to concepts of sublime where i have emphasised dark shapes and cool tones. I tried to draw attention to the bold structures in the landscapes such as rocks and earth to highlight the vastness.  On the other hand I think Barker’s work links more to the ideologies of picturesque and beauty through the delicate patterns and blurred photos so that the underlying message comes as more of a shock to the audience.  Another aspect that both photographer have in common is that their series’ ‘Field Studies’ and Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly known animals’ both have a antique science book appearance, mimicking the past while reflecting on the current situation regarding organisms. Lebas’ work takes inspiration from that of Edward  Salisbury a landscape photographer in the early 1900s where his visited different areas and documented the scenes and specimens he found. Similarly, Barker takes inspiration from  John Thompson in her series, an amateur naturalist in the 1800s, who made pioneering discoveries  about animal species, which he referred to as “imperfectly known animals”. I also think that my work links to this idea, as i have looked back at archival images, taken over 90 years ago and have compared that environment to what is there now.  Both photographers refer back to past discoveries and images by photographers over 90 years and 200 years ago to show how the environment has changed over that period of time and to highlight the effects of anthropocene.

Bibliography: List all relevant sources used

Quotes:

Edmund Burke, 1757, Philosophical Enquiry into the ‘Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: pg. 149 (https://books.google.je/books/about/A_Philosophical_Enquiry_Into_the_Origin.html?id=pdpDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=pleasure&f=false)

Anne Lyles, Sublime Nature: John Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, Tate (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/anne-lyles-sublime-nature-john-constables-salisbury-cathedral-from-the-meadows-r1129550)

Tony Schwab, 2016, The Persistence of the Sublime: pg.5 (https://www.academia.edu/35950994/The_Persistence_of_the_Sublime.docx)

David Blayney Brown, Sea Pictures: Turner’s Marine Sublime and a Sketchbook of c.1803–10 (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/david-blayney-brown-sea-pictures-turners-marine-sublime-and-a-sketchbook-of-c1803-10-r1141418#fn_1_1)

Liz Jobey on Chrystel Lebas, 2016,  Financial Times (https://www.ft.com/content/ce6821a4-b1cd-11e6-a37c-f4a01f1b0fa1)

Chrystel Lebas, 2011, Re-visiting (http://www.chrystellebas.com/Re-visiting/re-visiting.htm)

Bergit Arends on Chrystel Lebas, 2017, Published by Fw:Books, Amsterdam (https://fw-books.nl/product/chrystel-lebas-field-studies)

Chrystel Lebas, Publications (http://www.chrystellebas.com/publications.htm)

Chrystel Lebas, The Photographers Gallery interview, Daniel C. Blight (https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/content/photography-regarding-nature)

Sean O’Hagan, 2017, The Guardian: Field Studies by Chrystel Lebas review (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/24/field-studies-chrystel-lebas-photographic-journey-britain-wild-places-plants)

Deborah Schultz, Portfolio Catalogue, Chrystel Lebas: The Wait: pg. 35 (http://www.chrystellebas.com/articles/Lebas-portfolio%2048.pdf)

Liz Jobey, 2016, Natural Histories, Weekend magazine: pg. 27 (http://www.chrystellebas.com/articles/Chrystel_Lebas.pdf)

Mandy Barker, 2016, Faculty Magazine interview (https://faculty.ac/interview/mandy-barker/)

Mandy Barker Interview, Photo Works (https://photoworks.org.uk/interview-mandy-barker/)

Sabrina Mandanici, 2018, Collector Daily (https://collectordaily.com/mandy-barker-beyond-drifting-imperfectly-known-animals)

Mandy Barker Interview, 2016, The Documentary Photographer Podcast, Roger Overall (https://player.fm/series/the-documentary-photographer-podcast/episode-27-mandy-barkerbeyond-drifting-imperfectly-known-animals)

Mandy Barker, 2018, Port Magazine (https://www.port-magazine.com/art-photography/plastic-art-mandy-barker/)

Research Links:

www.conserve-energy-future.com/15-current-environmental-problems.php

http://www.anthropocene.info/planetary-boundaries.php

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/aug/19/scienceandnature

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever