Romanticism – an art movement that originated in the late 18th century that countered the new world of the industrial revolution. Romanticism mostly focuses on the beauty and awe of the natural world and the belief that life before the ‘new world’ was greater. Typically, artists in this genre are people who see themselves as casual observers of the modern world.

Origin of Romanticism

Romanticism paintings of this time mostly focused on the beauty of landscape art and the natural world that was being taken away from people due to the industrial revolution. In fact, the industrial revolution is part of the reason for the existence of romanticism. However, the origin of romanticism came from the time before the industrial revolution, the age of enlightenment. The age of enlightenment is described as the age of reason, when people began to think more factually and scientifically than emotionally, putting reason over superstition.

However, some people of the time felt that the age of enlightenment removed emotion too much from their art, and eventually those people started to feel resentment to looking at the world in a scientific, super realist way. Rather, people felt that emotion should be presented a lot more in art, and that people shouldn’t constantly think in rationality, rather they should think more about the things that they don’t fully understand or can’t completely comprehend. This is where romanticism began, however only a small number of romanticists began to paint the sublime landscapes of the natural world. Although, the idea that the new age of the industrial revolution was stripping humanity from its animalistic, natural roots began to grow, and people started to look towards romanticism and the beautiful sublime landscape paintings.

Romanticism on its own can be used in many ways. In the painting below, romanticism is used to demonstrate the beautiful world that the industrial revolution was stripping away from society. In other cases, it can be used to present the problems within the new society that was forming.

Sublime

Sublime – a combination of extreme beauty and overwhelming scale that evokes a strong emotional reaction.

Romanticism and the sublime go hand in hand when it comes to art. This is because, on its own, the sublime is such an overwhelming emotion that an artist is able to recreate using the vast landscapes of the rural (romantic) world.

An example of this is Edwin Deakin, an American-British artist that was well known for his paintings of romantic and sublime landscapes.

In this painting, which was painted sometime in the 1800s, Deakin has presented romanticism by demonstrating the beauty of the natural landscape and painting trees and colourful grass, and presents sublime by painting the distant vast cliffs and mountains of the Yosemite valley. This example of romanticism isn’t meant to send a grand message just about the greatness of the natural world, instead it also captures the vast and powerful landscape. The sublimity of the painting is shown through the overwhelming scale of the mountains against small and meager humanity.

The awe that is created by these views and landscapes is described very well by an English philosopher called Edmund Burke. Burke, born in 1729, wrote many books about romanticism and the sublime, and is a well known figure in the romanticism world. In a book he wrote about the sublime and the beautiful, Burke stated “terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime”. This quote is saying that the emotional reaction to the sublime is created by the fear of insignificance and being small in the world in comparison to the magnificence and size of these incredible landscapes.

John Constable

This is a painting by John Constable, a notable figure in English landscape painting during the 1800s. Constable was also a romanticist himself, and has painted many nature landscapes that sometimes tell a deeper story. This painting, named ‘The Hay Wain’, is a very good example of this.

At first glance, the painting appears fairly ordinary. It depicts an English landscape with green trees, large and open meadows and shallow rivers that appears bliss and free, like a utopia. However, on deeper inspection there are details that imply further meaning to the painting. Firstly, the house on the left appears unkept and poor. In addition to this, a shoddy horse carriage, also called a ‘hay wain’, carrying two men can be seen in the foreground of the painting. These two details imply that this landscape could not be as bliss and free as it seems. It could be interpreted as a demonstration of what was going on between the socio-economic classes in England at the time. This is because it was common for large and wealthy land owners to use their class and power to control the farming happening around their property so that they could make money off of the poor farmers. This is what could be happening in the painting, because there is a difference in cleanliness between the background, where there is a large open meadow with animals and nice green trees, but in the foreground the trees are dark and the ground is muddy and unappealing.

Romanticism in Photography

Since then, romanticism has changed drastically. Photography was introduced in the mid 1800s. It was a completely new way of presenting art. At the same time, the industrial revolution continued to grow, cities got bigger, populations grew and the yearn for the natural, romantic world was more prevalent than ever. This meant that more and more people were drawn to photography and paintings to express their love for the rural world.

One of these people was Roger Fenton. He was born in 1819, and most likely grew up being influenced by the romanticism of the time.

This is a photo that Roger Fenton took in Wales, in the small village of Bettws-y-Coed. The photo depicts a small waterfall, surrounded by rocky surfaces, with trees in the background. In the far distance, we can see a few houses. Although most likely not intentional, the distant houses could imply the romantic view that the natural world is best, and that the man-made world should be kept distant. This photo is actually a recreation by Fenton from Thomas Roscoe’s guidebook, where he details this exact position where you must stand. At that standpoint, where you are almost level with the upstream, and you are very much involved with the elements of the stream. This could be interpreted as a romantic, as you are more involved with nature.

In the 1900s, landscape photography began to change. Photography had since developed and had become a lot more mainstream, especially during and after the second world war. This was when photographers like Ansel Adams became very well known for their romantic landscape photography.

This is probably Ansel Adams’ most famous photograph. The photo details a wide river, deep in the forests of Wyoming, which passes by miles of wilderness, and leads the eye towards the distant snow coated Teton mountain range. In this location, the viewer feels very involved and deep in the wilderness. There is most likely no civilisation for miles. This photo is the encapsulation of romanticism and the sublime. It probably demonstrates the exact emotion that Edwin Deakin, John Constable and Roger Fenton felt towards romanticism. The vastness of the distant mountains create such a great feeling of sublime, and the many miles of trees, rivers and wilderness evoke passionate emotion for romanticism. To the viewer, it feels as if they are there themselves.

Summary

Romanticism and the sublime go hand in hand when it comes to depicting the natural world. It is the key to creating incredible paintings and photographs that create such mesmerising emotions. Those who have mastered it have become highly praised for their work and their ability to put so many minds in awe of nature and chasing a romantic dream.

The most important factor when creating a romanticism painting or photograph is sublimity. Whether it is large cliffs, mountains, incredible distances or a combination of all, an artist must include some sort of awe inspiring detail or scale in their work to evoke a sublime emotion.

Here I took some photos of buildings, the sea and anything else that was around me as I tried to take pictures as to how I see the view to show my own point of view, I put these photos in black and white mainly to be inspired by Ansel Adams. The whole point of taking pictures of the beach and buildings is to show the different places in the world how  each person may see it differently , why taking a picture of it how its seen and not adjusted will help to capture the true moment and not fake photography as many things that are shown today have been photoshopped due to technology and photos have become created by AI which makes everything a lot more dangerous and scarier. If we have Ai creating pictures then what’s the point in going out and taking them, well it helps to keep photography real and alive, it helps to show the true perspective of the world and not how some people may edit it and make ‘fake news’. I feel as though making my photo black and white helps to keep the nostalgia feeling alive as in a few years this area could be covered in new houses or different buildings, it could also be destroyed due to some complications, the answered are always unsolved. The black and white helps also to make the photo look more modern in my opinion as you don’t have colours clashing with each other creates a contrast, contrast is one the basic elements of design, as the eye is drawn directly to it. 

Here are some photos of France, these are landscape photos, however instead of having a photo filled with nature, plants, flowers and no man-made items, instead I have used landscape photos of buildings, with other things surrounding them such as cars and people. I made these photos black and white to yet again represent Ansel Adams photos, although his photos don’t tend to have buildings in them, I wanted to show how society has changed and how beautiful empty lands are getting taken over by humans building houses and other things. This is destroying nature and taking over. Even if these building are seen as beautiful and helpful, they have taken over the empty lands and these photos look very different from each other. Most of these photos still have plants in them which shows that we still have elements of nature around us, and we aren’t destroying everything. To edit these photos, I used photoshop and used the adjustment tool to level how dark each colour on the photo would look as black and white. This help to make each photo have certain things highlighted . these photos here tend to have an industrial look t them as they are filled with buildings and don’t have many natural landscapes and these places would have changed over time as they didn’t always have buildings which shows that man-made products are slowly destroying the earth, for one reason is because many houses, buildings are being built onto of these beautiful places and soon we will have no free land left to do all of our farming, we also have technology taking over where many people are losing their jobs as technology is able to replace them with robots which is a bad thing, but we do have plus sides to technology for example cameras have excelled our photos so much and being able to edit our photos is a big help, to mature the photo, make it look more presentable.

Here I have some photos in colour to show the difference between black and white photos and coloured photos and how they can make the whole mood of the photo look different. For example black and white photos tend to have a nostalgic look to sadness and yearning, they tend to make the photos look quite gloomy, the black and white have a tendency of showing that the photograph is quite old and ancient as they didn’t have colour back then, therefore gives us a nostalgic sensation as the photos are very old and the building/ area could have changed so much between that time. I decided to keeps these photos in colour as it helps to look at the different shades in the sky and how the sky can change very quickly within minutes, that’s why its important to take a picture of the moment and not miss anything.

Photoshoot 3 – pyrenees

Other Strong photos from this photoshoot:

This is a part of the photoshoot I did In the Pyrenees. I Thought the mountains looked very similar to the mountains in the national park Ansel Adams took photos of. So I didn’t want to miss the chance of getting some photos of the vast mountain range. Here Is my favourite photo from the photoshoot:

Photo 1:

I took this while walking in the Pyrenees around early spring time. I’ve edited it to match how Ansel Adams photo turned out. He often used a red filter over his camera to make the scene more dramatic, so I replicated this in Lightroom by increasing the contrast and adjusting the highlights and shadows. I used Ansel Adams zone system, making sure there was some pure black and pure white in the image, With an even spread of the rest of the zones.

Photo 2:

Photo 3:

Photo 4:

Virtual Gallery:

Here is the link, I also edited the mountain range photo with different settings.

Landscape photography is generally focused around displaying the beautiful views of the world. Rural landscape photography focuses on demonstrating the beauty of the natural world. This can be from wide landscapes of mountains and rivers, to rural houses and trees.

Origin of Landscapes

Landscapes are not only depicted in photography. They have been around for centuries, the earliest findings of landscape art were from Ancient Greece. Although, landscape art wasn’t popular for a very long time as it was seen as something to put in the background of religious art rather than being its own category.

However, in the 16th century, Dutch artists did begin to see it as its own genre of painting, and painters like Gillis van Coninxloo began to paint the Dutch landscapes.

At the same time, the artistic movement of the renaissance was also taking place, and artists began to seek out new forms of expression in art. Because of this, landscape art began to take on a new form. It started to be about the beauty of the environment. This was how Classical Landscape was introduced.

Now that more European painters were interested in landscape art, the competition for quality began to rise, and better and better landscapes were being produced. This also meant that more and more real places were being painted. Additionally, framing became very important, and the positioning of objects in paintings were perfected.

Claude Lorrain was a French painter in the 16th century. In this painting, we see what appears to be the Italian city of Venice. Although this is not a rural landscape, it does show how painters of the time started to focus on the positioning and framing of their paintings. In this example, we can clearly see a main focus and subject, which is the boat in the middle of the painting. Additionally, there are detailed buildings placed on either side of the painting, as to not intrude our line of sight of the sky and the sunset in the background. We can also see people standing in the foreground of the image, which creates an environment in the image and makes the painting feel lively, and makes the viewer feel as if they are in the city at that moment.

After the renaissance period came the industrial revolution. Cities began to grow, factories became more complex and the quality of life of people living in big cities such as London rapidly decreased. Because of the increased population which followed the rise in mass production, the cities were crowded and cramped and they became even more unhygienic than they had been ever before. In opposition to this, some painters of the time began to paint landscapes to demonstrate the beauty of the natural world and how it was much better before the rise of the industrial revolution. This is also called ‘Romanticism’.

An example of a painter that was involved in the romanticism art movement is Edwin Deakin. Edwin Deakin usually painted buildings in cities, such as churches and cathedrals. With this experience, Edwin Deakin learnt how to frame and arrange his paintings, so when he decided to paint the Yosemite Valley he knew where to place the objects in the painting. This painting is a perfect example of this. There is a foreground, middle ground and a background. In each of these, the U-shape of the valley is clearly outlined by the trees and the clifftops. Additionally, the trees in the foreground move away from the viewer and lead the eye to the centre of the image. In the centre of the image, we see the vast cliffs of the Yosemite Valley, however we have nothing to scale the cliffs to, so its size is undetermined. This makes the cliff appear even larger in the painting, and gives the viewer a feeling of sublime.

Sublimity became a common feature of romantic landscape paintings, even through to the 19th century, when landscapes went from paintings to photography.

In the 1940s, Ansel Adams became one of the most notable landscape photographers of all time. His sublime depictions of the Yosemite Valley made waves through society. Adams knew exactly how to show the beauty of the Yosemite Valley. Take this photo for example. The positioning and framing of the trees and cliffs are set to perfection and blend perfectly with the sublime fog that covers the valley below. The cliffs stand on either side of the frame and meet far in the background where the valley opens up and we see a small glimpse of the vast mountains of the rest of the valley. In the foreground, we see the tops of the trees that stand below the hill that Adams stands on. We only see the tops of the trees in the foreground because it keeps all of the trees in the shot in the same consistency. The trees also lead the eye from the foreground to the middle ground, where the fog covers the entire valley. This fog adds mystery to the photo, and when paired with the sublime mountains and cliffs of Yosemite, evokes an even deeper feeling of sublime.

Summary

Overall, Rural landscape photography focuses on many things. The beauty of the landscape, the positioning and arrangement of objects in the frame, the great scale of mountains etc. However, the key element to rural landscape photography is nature. Nature must be the most prevalent aspect of a rural landscape photo.

what is Anthropocene

Anthropocene is a way of describing the most recent time period. Its said that its very human-influenced to the point where us humans have our natural worlds is now effected and changed due to us.

Anthropocene is used in lots of different forms through photography, film, vertical reality etc…And the main idea behind capturing these images are to be able to show how we are changing our world usually for the worst .These beautiful landscapes we had are now worn away. The images tend to makers you ashamed and to call us out as most of us are guilty for probably not treated our world and environment as well as we should be.

I believe that these images although they are not completely solving the issue. They are bringing a lot more attention to the problem. By doing this it makes people reflect on they’re choices and lifestyle and maybe make them feel slightly responsible so they may make a small change .However if everyone makes one small change in terms of being more environmentally friendly that can really help and cause lots of good changes.

the environmental sides of Anthropocene

This is probably more useful now than ever because as of recently climate change is effecting us more than ever every year our global temperature appears to be increasing with research saying “The global-average temperature for the past twelve months (March 2023–February 2024) is the highest on record, at 0.68°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.56°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average”.

However global temperature is not the only thing being effect. as of recently there is a major increase in loss of biodiversity due to many reasons like cutting down trees trees in order to provide us with material however by doing that we are often cutting down lots of animals homes. But not only are we cutting down animals homes animal hunting as become a lot mote popular compared to a few years ago. It may have been common a few million years ago when hunting animals were our main source of food however that has changed now and hunting is more done for enjoyment and to create material things out of the dead animal which is causing so many more animals to become extinct.

‘A man altered landscape’

New topographic was a term created by William Jenkins in 1975, used to describe the style of American photographers. Including photographers like Robert Williams and Lewis Baltz who all had a similar style of light contrast black and white images of landscapes with new industrial work and areas that were just nature before being built up.

What was it a reaction to?

New topographics was a reaction to the irony of idolising the beautiful landscapes, like in Ansel Adam’s work in comparison to what we see every day and how in fact everything was becoming a lot more industrial and torn away from just nature. It was a contrast to landscape photography as it was known reflecting how quickly the world was urbanising around us without us even noticing.

What is a new topographic?

To be basic it is a photo or a series of photos in black and white of urban areas. However there are smaller details within each shot that is important to the idea of new topographic, each one is in black and white historically as it allows for the simplicity of some of the shots to seem more impressive. Using low contrast often allows the images to feel hollow and empty linking the stunning landscapes being eaten away at by urban industrialisation to the simple photo. Most new topographic will commonly have some sort of nature in the image, whether it be a perfectly cut lawn or unruly mountain range, juxtaposing the rest of the image which has buildings and human involvement of some kind. Unlike Ansel Adam’s work which aimed to inspire and interest people with hints of romanticism, the new topographic movement strays away from being romantic and instead the shots tend to be bleak and foreboding with the future of America’s nature and how it was becoming more and more mundane and built up.

Ansel Adam’s Connection to New Topographics

“I don’t like to think there are ugly streets in America, but when it’s shown to you—without beautification—maybe it tells you how much more we need here.”  This was a response to ‘the Installation view, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape, 1975, George Eastman Museum’ it describes new topographics very well. As the movement pulled away from Ansel Adam’s style of big, beautiful dramatic nature scenes with a style of romanticism people started to realise that even though, America particularly, has some stunning landscapes and breath taking views that in fact that wasn’t the reality of most of the places. It was also a clear difference to Adam’s style of differentiating nature from people where as new topographics pull both nature and human/human construction into one image. “At first it’s stark nothing, but then you look at it, and it’s just about the way things are.” New topographics showed the real America and what was the reality of what many people saw every day in comparison to Adam’s work that helped people escape and almost live in the naivety that we all appreciate nature and it’s strength just because we have seen a couple of stunning photos.

Formatting New Topographics

The photos are often filled frame, common place captures. However it always has an unfamiliar look to it as a camera can capture so much in one photo that would take the human eye and brain a few minutes to register all of the same things and even then not notice things we see everyday at all as we tend to pick up important details, bright colours, loud noises etc, but in a photo we do the same first taking in the bright colours, high contrast or unusual shapes. the difference being we also see so much more as we are only looking at one scene without any other option. This is quite interesting when looking at the style of the photos, being deadpan and removing any things lie horizon lies that would make the photo more impressive than what we would see if we looked past the scene everyday. This is why a lot of the photos use harsh lighting in the middle of the day as that’s what we seen when we walk past a scene.

Typologies

Typologies are a grouping of similar photos in a grid pattern. Often used for documentary, pattern and similar subject photography, it has a distinct look to it and is a great way to display multiple shots at once. Often used in the new topographics style as it can showcase the similar architecture and built up world around us.

Hilla and Bernd Becher

Hilla and Bernd Becher were a husband and wife photography team who made the typology style what it is today. They took photos of industrial architecture but specifically industrial architecture that was disappearing over time, forgotten about. The duo first started working together in 1959 after meeting in 1957 in Kunstakademie Düsseldorf the academy of fine arts in Germany. Bernd always trained in typology and fine art and Hilla a commercial photographer, combining their efforts created the pieces of their work we know now. From travelling around Europe and North America we now have images of the the long forgotten water towers and many other what would have been essential parts of daily life no one else noticed until put in a typology by the Becher’s. This really started the mainstream use of typologies all over the world, continuing to develop over time.

The term, New Topographics was first made up by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of many American photographers whose photographs all had a similar aesthetic. This was that they were particularly banal – seemingly boring and unoriginal – and also mostly black and white. They were images of the urban landscape, involving different kinds of buildings and urban settings. This included places like parking lots, suburban houses and warehouses and these were photographed in a similar way to how early photographers photographed natural landscapes. Photographers who did this style of photography were:

• Robert Adams
• Hilla Becher
• Bernd Becher
• Nicholas Nixon
• Stephan Shore
• Lewis Baltz
• John Schott
• Franke Gohkle
• Joe Deal
• Henry Wessel

New Topographics includes urban settings rather than the natural landscape that was typically seen. It transforms these banal sceneries into something more. William Jenkins described these photos as “neutral” and “reduced to an essentially topographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion, and opinion.”

People who viewed the images in the exhibition made comments such as;

“I don’t like them—they’re dull and flat. There’s no people, no involvement, nothing.”​

“At first it’s stark nothing, but then you look at it, and it’s just about the way things are.” ​

“I don’t like to think there are ugly streets in America, but when it’s shown to you—without beautification—maybe it tells you how much more we need here.”

Comments like these show the expectations people have on America and how photographers like Ansel Adams shaped their view leading to this surmise. These new landscapes were showing a more truthful version of life, showing that urban landscapes are becoming more.

First Photoshoot – Towns landscape: New and Old buildings

Green coloured:

These photos are rated 4 – 5 on the star rating, and are flagged: This means that they fit the aesthetic of ‘New Topographic’ photographers like Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Frank Gohlke.

Yellow coloured:

These images are taken well but lack the correct amount of exposure, need to be cropped or re-adjusted with their angles.

Red coloured:

These images did not fit the aesthetic because they where either blurry, poorly taken or did not fit the concept I was basing my photoshoot off.

Second Photoshoot – Walk Out across seaside and industrial area.

Green coloured:

These photos are rated 4 – 5 on the star rating, and are flagged: This means that they fight the aesthetic of ‘New Topographic’ photographers like Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Frank Gohlke.

Yellow coloured:

These images are taken well but lack the correct amount of exposure, need to be cropped or re-adjusted with their angles.

Red coloured:

These images did not fit the aesthetic because they where either blurry, poorly taken or did not fit the concept I was basing my photoshoot off.

Process of Editing Images

Edits of Best Images

My first two Photoshoots were focused on the damage which Storm Ciaran left behind in jersey. for the first photoshoot I went to St Catherine`s Woods, I went here because there are many trees there and St Catherine’s is not often visited and maintained so I thought there would be still some storm damage left there. I went there and took photographs of the damage left there, mainly the fallen trees and branches.

In this Contact sheet you can see I changed the exposure every now and then to get a darker tone in the photographs I took. Overall, I think this photoshoot turned out fine, I did as I had planned out to take the images which relate to the storm however only some images in this photoshoot link with The Sublime.

These images below are my best outcomes from this photoshoot after experimenting with them in lightroom. I put all of these images into monochrome and i took inspiration from Ansel Adams and added a sepia tone to some of my best images from this photoshoot.

Overall i think i could have done alot better with this photoshoot, i think i should have maybe zoomed out and took photos from a far instead of just getting close ups and getting a variety of both.

This is the Contact Sheet for my second photoshoot, this photoshoot was taken around le Rocquier school. I chose this location because St Clements was the parish which was affected the most by Storm Ciaran and the le Rocquier area had a lot of damage to it.

Below are my best images from this second location after having experimented with them in lightroom. For these images i thought that they would turn out better with a retro filter on them.

Overall i think that i got greater outcomes out of this location compared to the first location, This location had more damage and i was able to capture it. My favourite outcome from this photoshoot is the photograph of the house with the broken face, this photo is very simple and has been taken straight on with minimal editing however i think it is a strong image as it links to the sublime and clearly shows evidence of damage.