One thing I realized in the course of the recent Morandi discussions is that the edges of the bodies are often blurred, or more generally obscured, either through intervening snow or grass…

or motion blur…

If it’s not that, then a conventional sense of wholeness tends to be defeated by awkward angles…

or isolated details…

Strangely enough, I somehow feel that through these various obscurations I’m actually trying to understand basic horse form. Perhaps it’s that it seems too easy when handed to you in an immediately graspable way. I need to synthesize a horse from the disparate parts and peculiar views to appreciate it. It sort of makes sense to me when I put it like that, though I have my doubts as to whether other viewers would see it the same way. And it doesn’t seem to be a statement yet.

In thinking about this project, I may be aiming for something too neat and too intellectual. What I need fundamentally is a basis for editing decisions. I have so many images, I could easily mount a show limited to Eye of the Horse. When you are editing for an exhibit or portfolio submission, is simply liking an image enough to justify inclusion?

Complicating the mix are photographs that seem to have a narrative element, typically a humorous one (this may be missing for viewers who can’t imagine fun and cold weather going together).

From last fall come the more sculptural studies in strong sunlight:

Another category is the close-up portrait, which also comes in both sunlit and snowy varieties:

Enough already! It’s beginning to feel like a stampede… However, just reviewing the large number of accumulated images has helped me clarify a couple of things. The first is that the framing is becoming a more important part of it for me. I’ve always liked the square format for its own sake, but the especially nice thing in this context is that it allows me a second go at framing as I crop from the original rectangle (I only cut from the long direction). I’m not by any means always sure what I’m doing with the cropping, but it feels like the thing to do. Even though I like the original version as well, many images seem to be strengthened, and I also like the consistency of it.

The last point is closely tied to the second thread, namely my ongoing play with abstraction. I’m learning to work with the frame, alongside texture and tone, to define larger shapes I find appealing. I think it’s also affecting me more as I capture images, though it’s a bit hard to say. Photographing happens in some sort of fog I can’t recall clearly afterward, and never remember to notice during.

If I haven’t led you to any overwhelming question, at least I can’t be accused of insidious intent. For me, a simple visit with the horses is a sure way to brighten my day–all the more if there’s a blizzard. With a few inches of fresh snow on the ground this morning, I have to get going…

Update 1: I completely forgot, in my hurry to get out, that one thing prompting me to musings on this topic was that I had just seen a filmed interview with Aaron Siskind, in which he mentioned the importance for him of the framing in his series of photographs of young men diving into Lake Michigan. Called Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation (see more at George Eastman House and Hasted Hunt Gallery), the interest is in the abstract shapes made by the divers’ bodies. That’s the major commonality with my horses; differences include the absence of cropping into the bodies themselves, the reduction of detail to near silhouettes, and the elimination of environmental information such as clouds.

Update 2: Melanie’s comment #7 seemed very insightful to me, so I put together a few quick comparisons with Degas paintings. Some of these would be closer with my original (uncropped) images, but I think some common concerns are evident, especially regarding merging, cropping, and composition of shapes.

Pairs that partially merge in the bodies:

Similar to above, overlapping of limbs or other extensions; simplified environment:

Configurations and interactions of larger groups, environment essentially cropped out:

Inclusion of a bit of environmental context:

falling snow + moving horses = hatched textures.

The effect reminds me of etchings, although it’s actually more the reverse, in that the hatch lines are light, rather than dark.

As often happens, I didn’t really become aware of this until processing these images today (the outing was a week or two ago, but my computer has been down recently). I have, of course, photographed horses in falling snow before, but I just didn’t consciously think about the resulting texture and how it could be used. And it’s much more prominent in my current close-up approach than in previous work. Hopefully we’ll have more snow soon, so I can go back and play with this phenomenon more intentionally.

Made any serendipitous discoveries lately? How long did it take you to realize it?

It should be no surprise that in Montana, even in Bozeman, there’s no shortage of artists painting, drawing, sculpting and photographing horses. Which is a delight for me, engaged as I am in such a project myself (posts here and here). That gives me a keen interest in how others have responded to the subject, and enhances my appreciation of their work.

So it’s shocking to me that, before yesterday, I hadn’t thought for a long time about Deborah Butterfield. Two years ago I first saw her horse sculptures at the Yellowstone Art Museum; they had the force of revelation. I remember walking into the room and having to sit down (on a fortunately placed bench) to gaze at the horse there, one of her newer ones in patina’d bronze cast from driftwood. Without any knowledge of Butterfield, her technique, or the subject, my overwhelming impression was that this was a person who understood horses. What they are inside, and how they are put together, in both a physical and a metaphorical way.
Butterfield’s work suffers more than most from being crammed into a web image, of which examples can be seen at gallery web sites (Greg Kucera and Paule Anglim) and several museums, including the Delaware Art Museum with it’s earlier piece in scrap metal. A bit more information is at the Madison (a former stomping ground of my own) Museum of Contemporary Art (site of her first solo exhibition) and Wikipedia, and some history and reviews can be found here.

Butterfield happens to live part time in Bozeman, though I haven’t yet met her. For that reason alone, I feel compelled to deal with her work, to consider what it says to me, and to think of my own work in some relation to that. No, I’m not in any hurry to evaluate and position. Now that I’ve “rediscovered” her horses, I look forward to working in a richer and more stimulating context. I do think we have some similar concerns, for example in how the horse is a creature of parts. She can represent that through the components she selects to assemble in her sculptures; I do it most often by not showing a whole horse, selecting parts in an arrangement I find appealing.

Perhaps the most surprising and intriguing idea that I came across is in my flurry of research in writing this post is Butterfield’s explicit approach to horses as self-portraits. As quoted on the Madison site: “I first used the horse images as a metaphorical substitute for myself–it was a way of doing a self-portrait one step removed from the specificity of Deborah Butterfield.” I suspect this inhabiting of the work may be, in part, what lends it such power.

The notion that an artist’s work represents a portrait of herself, in the general sense that it reflects her character and approach to the world, is a commonplace one. It seems much deeper to me to mentally place oneself in the subject, whether it be a horse, a tree, a mountain, a plum, a house, … I confess I have never thought in quite this way, though a feeling of affinity with the subject is often there. Have you? Or imagined your subject as having some equally intimate, though different connection to yourself? Does that approach have any appeal to you?

But at the moment, I’m taking many different kinds of pictures. The very few I’ve put on my web site are a motley and incomplete assortment, determined more by (lack of) time available than anything else. The experience has me thinking about the nature of projects.

Looking at the images afterwards, I can loosely place most of them into a few categories. First are the abstracts, like the one above, which are closest to the original idea stimulated, as described, by some work of Kathe Lesage. Most of these I have handled in my usual toned black and white, but some seem to be interesting with over-saturation of the color, akin to what I’m doing with weathered surfaces in my Patina project, though these colors are darker and less dramatic.

Then there are the portraits, of which the one below is perhaps the most conventional. This is becoming more fun as I get to know the horses individually. I’m not normally trying specifically to capture a portrait, but sometimes they come out that way. Actually, it’s hard to say what precisely constitutes a portrait, something Richard is perhaps also thinking about. I guess my vague working definition is that it should convey something of the personality of the subject(s).

Next come landscapes, i.e. horses as landscape, forms you could imagine traveling over or around. Clearly, there’s an appeal to abstraction here. These tend to be hill forms, but the one below reminds me, especially in color, of the sandstone arches in Utah, for example in Arches National Park.

Finally, when I remain after sunset and the light gets dim, I set my shutter speed as slow as possible (around a second) and take pictures like the one below. This fits into one of my very first series, which, for lack of a more original title, I am calling Ghost Horses.

Sometimes lack of a single direction might be a good thing. This is how, for me, the various ideas swirling around in my own head can meld into a concept or approach that will be thoroughly my own. Not that this work with horses needs to be a single project. Perhaps the different strands I’ve identified will be separable enough as to constitute separate portfolios. Even so, they’ll inevitably inform each other.

Does this evolution of a project sound familiar to you? Or do ideas come to you with such clarity that it only remains to execute them? Perhaps they come in seeming clarity, as in a dream, only to dissolve when you try to express them? And then begins the effort of re-discovery and re-creation?

Now for something completely different from my usual inanimate landscapes. Probably almost every photographer in Montana has done horses at some point. They were actually a major subject of my first photos when I started up with digital photography, and starred in my first self-assigned project (not on the web site; I guess it’s still in progress). But they were eventually neglected as I mostly pursued my long-term interest in landscape and abstraction. Then I saw some postcards of the Horse Nudes portfolio of Kathe Lesage and realized what I’d been missing. Last weekend I had a chance to do something about it.

In fact, horses offer a fabulous opportunity for abstraction, though I’m certainly still learning how to do it in a way that works for me. On the scene, there’s constant movement and no opportunity to contemplatively frame a view. I know better now what it’s like for Doug Plummer photographing his dancers. I aim for things that catch my eye, try to anticipate, take a lot of frames, and edit afterward. This project has virtually my only off-tripod work.

I’m just beginning to think about the shape of this project. Here I show a couple kinds of images that have caught my interest. One involves interaction of the horses with each other, as in the lead-off image where the two are scratching each other; despite appearances, this is definitely not anger or attack.

The other kind is more about interaction with me, and tends to focus on eyes. Even though I don’t offer food, the horses (at least some) like to be petted and scratched, and they nuzzle, nibble, or lick me (especially if I’ve been sweating). There is actually a fence between us, which I’m sorely tempted to cross, but I haven’t yet located the owner and asked permission.

There’s a lot more to be done here, and I’m sure the images will change as the project develops. The ones here represent the only processing I’ve done so far, so I’m just getting to know them (there are almost 300). At the moment, the project feels very exhilarating in its difference from my other ones. It’s so new, I haven’t even formulated questions yet. But I’m very interested in any comments you might have.