I always find it interesting to see how different artists treat the same subject. Browsing the web, I’ve come across a number of images from several photographers that are close to some of mine in subject matter. Not only that, but they appear close in spirit as well. That evokes two reactions in me: disappointment that I’m not the first and only one to see the world in this unique and compelling way, and pleasure in finding others who seem to see the world in this unique and compelling way.
These are photographers I can learn from. Not only because I enjoy and respect their larger bodies of work, but because by comparing similar images I think I can learn more about my own work. I want to understand what distinguishes my own vision or style, which is not something I derive from principles, but have to discover by making images and looking at them.
I know that some would not care to analyze this way, and might also be leery of looking at art that could influence them. But I actively seek out influences: if artists have something to say, I want to listen as much as possible. I want richness of vicarious experience as well as richness of direct experience. Although I’m in my own world when I photograph, I want the me that photographs to have been formed by all the things I’ve seen and thought about — especially the good things. I have no anxiety about influence and if my work ever feels derivative, I’ll consider it a temporary stage of my own journey.
Below are four images. All three guest photographers kindly consented to the use of their images in this context. Do you think you can identify my image? Be sure to check back later today, when all will be revealed. I will identify the creators and link to their web sites, where you will be able to appreciate the single images as part of significant projects. By the way, I could have chosen images that resembled each other so closely it’s almost eerie, but here I tried to get a bit of variety. I also could have added a number of other photographers I admire, but four is enough for now.
I would like to hear your thoughts on these different photos, from any and all perspectives. What do you notice about them? Do they, in fact, seem distinctive? What’s the same, what’s different? Can you describe how the differences affect your impressions? Feel free to indulge a preference, if you have one, but I’m mostly interested in trying to understand the reasons for your reactions. The point is not to judge better or worse — which doesn’t really make sense to me in this context — but to try to discern elements of style.
I’m also interested in hearing of similar exercises you may have engaged in. Or, in your case, does such an effort seem pointless or detrimental?
UPDATE: The curtain is lifted and the photographers stand revealed.
#1 – Doug Plummer, from the Pacific Northwest, is a contributor to this blog, has personal project galleries including “Sticks”, and blogs at dispatches.
#2 – Mark Hobson, from the Adirondacks, has a select gallery from which #2 was taken. Note that the original is in color, but Mark gamely permitted the makeover for the purposes of this exercise. Mark blogs at the landscapist.
#3 – Tim Atherton is a Canadian photographer whose Bethicketted project is black-and-white, but he has also posted a color version of #3 on his blog Muse-ings.
#4 – Yours truly. Photo #4 is from the Sourdough Trail project, of which I hope to post a couple dozen more images in the nearish future.
Steve.
Considering your open-mindedness, I will admit that I like the visual dynamics of the four together. Not only does the horizontal refer to Landscape but it also captures the Vision THing.
I am reminded of a soldier’s account from the Civil War and how he was responsible for keeping watch over a long copse of trees. Over time he became confused, unable to differentiate the movement caused by his constantly refocusing Eye or his worst fear, the arrival of their Foe. By the end of his shift and as dusk settled, he wrote of being unable to distinguish between right-side up and upside-down.
Steve,
I think that the third picture from the top is your photo.
As an aside, I have a passion for trees and bushes without leaves. They remind me of the many kinds of dendritic trees of neurons.
Picture 1: This picture makes the most orthogonal impression with its multitude of horizontal branches against the softer vertical sticks in the background. I see ferns which means that it cannot be too cold. At the 72 resolution, I cannot make out whether the ferns in the center are covered by dead leaves or whether it is another ground cover. Is it possible, that I am looking at dead brush rather than a winter picture?
Picture 2 is the most startling with its shift in dimensionality. The light bare branches in the foreground look almost two-dimensional while the tree trunks in the background provide the 3-dimensionality.
Picture 3 has the most filigree. Again, there are ferns on the ground which is confusing to me. Is it winter or is it a dead bush? The out-of-focus firs (?) in the background and the ferns in the foreground provide a soft frame for the thin, bare branches of the bush. The symmetry of the bush with its fine branches pointing in all directions is lovely.
Picture 4 could depict early spring. The upper right gives me a sense of lightness and hope. The juxtaposition of the solid trunks with their smooth, dark bark and the light in background is wonderful.
Steve, the one image that stands out from the others is #2, and that’s mainly because of the dark border. Otherwise, these all could have been taken by the same person, or not.
I think that personal vision and style is often more possible to recognize in individual works by painters or others who make marks by hand, because there is sometimes (not always) something unique about the marks themselves. With photography, especially that done outside a studio, with found imagery, the vision reveals itself in groups of works over time. I don’t think I can look at individual photos and have much feedback to give. But in looking at a large project there can be a lot to talk about in terms of choices the photographer has made.
I disagree with David’s comment above. To me, each picture has a unique fingerprint.
Steve,
The last one is obviously your photo. Either that, or the first one. I recognize your style anywhere. The second one is a bit like some of your work, as a study of texture, but I do not recognize the dark border. Of course, if you were trying for something really different, you could have made the third one also.
The more I look at these images, the more distinct they seem to be, not simply at the obvious level of structure, but in their entire feeling or theme. The first image gives the feeling of moving through a complex, tangled space. It is very tense. The second is more of a restful view. The third gives a feeling of rapid motion, as though swinging through the branches. The fourth is restful again. The foreground trees seem to give a feeling of stability.
You have made me very curious with your riddle here.
That does it, Birgit. Pistols at 50 paces!
One thing that interests me is people who find pictures such as these “threatening” and at times even take offence that the forest isn’t being displayed as “beautiful”.
There is apparently something of a dichotomy between seeing the forest/woodland as a place that is welcoming, friendly, inspiring(“God’s Pacific Northwest redwood cathedral” or a sort of Walden pondish approach) and seeing the same place as mysterious, foreboding, even threatening – and essentially indifferent to humanity.
I think part of that is also a sort of ordered disorderliness – there is indeed a pattern to how the forest grows and forms, but not one that is necessarily pleasing to the eye or at least not initially so
David,
Do pistols shoot properly at -2 F?
Birgit and Karl, thanks for your “close seeing” of these pictures. This is extremely interesting to me. I like the idea of forest as tangle of neurons; the living skin of the earth is like the cortex where Nature thinks and feels (what’s on her mind right now?)
I agree with David that a body of work is needed. That will become available later, but I thought it would be interesting to see how far one can go without that. Interesting suggestion that they could all be by the same photographer…
But Karl seems to be working toward some nice distinctions which will be interesting to examine with more pictures. I agree about the sense of tension in the first. Is that the effect of the straighter lines? And the border noted in #2, does that change what the image says to you?
Tim, I think you’re right in saying these images would not be described as “beautiful” in a picture postcard sense. Would you call them beautiful in some other sense, or is that just not a good term to use? I like your “ordered disorderliness” notion, and it certainly relates to what these images are about. Do they all have the same balance of order vs. disorder? Does one of those aspects dominate?
David, I just watched “Crash” again. Be sure to use the bullets in the red box.
I too am attracted to bare tree limbs. mostly for their varying line qualitites and their melancholic tone. I respond most to the first one and last one for that vairety of line. Thick, thin, light dark. There’s lots of movement. I don’t feel like I know your work well enough to guess which is yours, although I have looked at a lot of your work (I’m slow, esp looking at photography which is like a foreign language to me…what can I say?). I have a a hard time distinguishing styles in photography as well (don’t shoot me Birgit!), except in series and over a body of work. Inidividual photots of tree limbs do not scream out in individual artist voices. And for me as a painter, the “hand” of the artist is not as apparent when the actual hand has not touched the final product. That is not to say that the final product is any less interesting or “valid.” Just that the individual voice of the artist is a little quieter. I think that can be an advantage in photography, that perceived “objectivity” that the medium generates.
Do pistols shoot properly at -2 F?
Okay…..snowballs!
David, I just watched “Crash” again. Be sure to use the bullets in the red box.
Hmm, I think I saw it too long ago. Can’t remember. Oh wait, now I do.
Leslie,
Yes, it’s the lines that dominate in these photographs. I agree about the quieter voice in photography. But the sense of objectivity could be misleading, depending on the photographer’s intent. Though these are clearly photos of real scenes, how representative are they of those settings? Would a random snapshot emphasize quality of line as much? I know you’ve looked at Matisse; as far as movement, does #2 seem to have more of dance than the others? I think it does to me.
Tim, I think you’re right in saying these images would not be described as “beautiful” in a picture postcard sense. Would you call them beautiful in some other sense, or is that just not a good term to use?
I think in some ways sublime fits better for a lot of this kind of work – in the sense it was used by writers and artists in the 18th century – Cozens etc and Burke’s “dark, uncertain, and confused.”, which nevertheless is a partner with beauty and can in itself produce a sense of pleasure
The first picture is growing on me. I am hedging whether I should vote 1 or 3.
Having seen only limited number of your photographs, I would, nevertheless, say that photograph number four has your photographic signature on it.
It has a tonal range and narrow(ish) DOF that together create a certain feeling of gentleness that I associate with your Along Sourdough Trail photographs.
“as far as movement, does #2 seem to have more of dance than the others?”
Yes, I agree that it does. Especially because one of the trees at the top seems to be extending his arm down and to the right to one of the smaller twigged bushes in the foreground. There is a swirling movement to the whole thing, reminiscent of those contra dancing photos we saw awhile ago. It takes me longer to dissect the middle two photos because the contrast is not as high.
D,
Thanks for your story of the soldier. As I’m walking along in woods like these, I often think I detect movement when it is actually just a shift in what’s visible past some screen of trees. I’m always hoping it’s a bear, but so far moose is the best I’ve seen.
Tim,
I always thought the sublime did have an element of the threatening or terrible in it for 19th century artists.
Mark,
Interesting point about depth of field, #4 does have the most out-of-focus background. I’m not sure if the tonal range is really greater, but there are larger dark areas in the two trunks. In fact, almost all the branches here are darker than their surroundings, whereas there are at least some branches in the other three that are brighter.
Last chance to place bets on which, if any, images are mine! Attributions will be posted in an hour or two.
Steve,
Without looking at the comments, I’m guessing yours is number 3.
The first photo effects me viscerally — I feel like I’m thrashing through underbrush. It’s mostly, I suspect, because of the viewpoint — all those branches right at eye level. As a country kid, I’ve been there.I find it uncomfortable, and on an intellectual level, I would say it lacks focus and makes your eye fly all over. But it’s the visceral level that I’m really feeling.
In the second we are looking down into the tangle, so it isn’t as visceral. But it puzzles me a bit because I can’t quite grasp the viewpoint. I like the way the branches are light in the foreground and then the light comes through the trees and echoes the white foreground, with all the scrubby stuff inbetween.
The third one has the satisfying explosive effect. It’s clearly a branch tangle, but is also rhythmic in its effect.The natural against the artificial (the rhythm) is most satisfying (and reminds me of the allium from a much earlier post).
The last one I find is one that would be photographed most often, the dark line of trunk against the tangled and varied lines of the background woods. I have been intellectually mulling over this kind of framing — has it been done to death, where even a (photographic) neophyte like myself has seen it a million times? Or am I dummying it down when I look at it, and so missing subtleties.
Ok, now I’m going to go look at what other people have said.
Ok, I’m back, before Steve reveals all but after I see that Opinions Will Vary.
Birgit, I was startled by your observation of the ferns (it can’t be winter because….). Here in the Pacific Northwest, the ferns are most glorious in the winter, when they gleam green against the browns and grays. I associate them with winter, even though I grew up in central PA where they surely didn’t exist from November to March.
I like the analogy of dancing that Leslie made in the second one — in fact, the viewpoint, looking down and then across is a bit like the viewpoint in the Matisse Dancers.The analogy makes the photograph more interesting to me, which I know is Bad Form — reading from text to vision isn’t how its sposed to go.
It would be fun to have really good prints of these to dissect the forest ecologies that are being depicted. I don’t find them sublime (except in the general sense that life itself is sublime) but each one seems distinct. A forester might be able to tell us what area of the country was being photographed. I can say that this isn’t old-growth that we’re looking at. The birch tree in #4 is growing on me — the way the two branches touch and then curve away from one another.
And David’s statement: “the vision reveals itself in groups of works over time” seems to me to be true of the work of many artists, not just photographers. It’s an important truth — a reason to own books and have membership in your local art museums — on-going access to work over time.
I can say that this isn’t old-growth that we’re looking at.
I think number three is very old growth
I don’t find them sublime (except in the general sense that life itself is sublime)
I guess I was thinking of the pre-romantic notion of the sublime as opposed to the Romantic notion of it that we still tend to have now. And although it was often associated with grand and large scale subjects (the daunting and awe-ful Alps for example) I think it can be applied on a smaller scale, especially in the context of the endless forest – the Sublime of Kant and Burke as I mentioned in an earlier post “Beauty may be accentuated by light, but either intense light or darkness (the absence of light) is sublime to the degree that it can obliterate the sight of an object. The imagination is moved to awe and instilled with a degree of horror by what is “dark, uncertain, and confused.” While the relationship of the sublime and the beautiful is one of mutual exclusiveness, either one can produce pleasure. The sublime may inspire horror, but one receives pleasure in knowing that the perception is a fiction”
As a country kid, I’ve been there.I find it uncomfortable, and on an intellectual level, I would say it lacks focus and makes your eye fly all over.
to me, that’s part of the point – as artists/phtographers (humans?) we tend to try and impose an order, especially a visual order – so we look for something to anchor the image, when the experience of the place itself might be a lack of order, a confusion (have you ever been lost in the bush/) etc. That the entire visual field becomes the overall experience, giving the eye no obvious place to rest, could be important (think van Gogh’s tree roots and trunks) – the visual field becomes a patina or curtain. Imagine some of these prints anywhere from 2′ to 4′ wide
Tim,
I like your idea of the visual field as a patina or curtain and think it’s a valid one. It’s also an interesting intellectual concept.
My intial reaction to the photo in question was really right out of my long ago wood wanderings. As a grown-up city dweller, I perhaps should have overridden that gut feeling, but I couldn’t do so.
Do you suppose that that patina/curtain which initially reads as confusion causes a kind of pulling back or panic in general, or was it just an idiosyncracy of my own misbegotten childhood?
June,
I think forests and even woodlands, while being familiar and – in the right circumstances benign, “friendly and fun” as it were – more often engender a sense of panic or fear, of the unknown or unknowable – which has a strong tradition in art and literature/myth/storytelling but which has been somewhat lost in the West with the whole one with nature walden pond thing.
check out this post and the full essay by John Berger linked at the end
http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/02/jitka-hanzlov-forest.html
June,
Thanks for calling my image unoriginal! Seriously, I really value your observation. Doug’s #1 seems the most unusual or original in conception to me, and I wish I’d done it. As Mark noted, I probably would have had nearer parts more noticeably out of focus.
you can get a slightly better view of my two (taken a day apart) here (the web really is poor for this…)
http://bp2.blogger.com/_023w4hdG0iI/Rb1_N7cMY8I/AAAAAAAAAdc/eHmU4dmij6g/s1600-h/LandscapeColour05.jpg
http://www3.telus.net/kairos/immersive/large/0005.jpg
this one though might have fitted better witht eh them (but it wasn’t up)
(Note – the immersive landscapes site isn’t a finished work – it’s really more a set of notes up to allow some friend and colleagues to discuss the project)
http://bp0.blogger.com/_023w4hdG0iI/Rck0sWmAkKI/AAAAAAAAAr0/3mncJtkEZYs/s1600-h/TreeRAW03.jpg
Tim,
Thanks for the links to larger versions. Why did you present the sunlight/shadow version in color, while the rest of the series is black-and-white? Did you prefer that in this case, or just wanted to consider the difference? I think Mark would say (please correct me if I’m wrong or oversimplifying) that color is closer to the reality he sees and wants to convey.
Steve —
oops. Here on the Left Coast we substitute wet noodles for snowballs. I did redeem myself a little though, by observing the nice curves of the birches in the foreground.
I guess this is why I liked David’s comment about “a vision … over time.” if you use a “semi-ordinary” view for an extraordinary photograph, how do you get the careless viewer (moi, moi) to look more closely (without losing your own integrity and sense of the art). I think David’s got the answer. Or maybe Tim’s 2′ x 4′ would do it, although that seems a bit small to me.
Tim, I like your quote and now must go look at your links.
steve – on colour, I started off the project unsure whether colour of B&W worked best. That was one of the few I took in colour. It really only worked for a short time of the year. Once the green really came out, that took over, along with “beautiful” blue sky – or later, with snow, they all look like Christmas cards… as well, most of the colour ones really didn’t work (this was one of the few that did.
(In fact I often start a project unsure which I want to use….)
There is actually the B&W version of this here (but it really doesn’t comes across at all on the web)
http://www3.telus.net/kairos/immersive/large/0019.jpg
June, I think 48″ is about the biggest I’ve printed one of these – after that it starts to get a bit more awkward… (and expensive!)
btw – all the discussion on this has been fantastic!
Tim,
The Berger essay is fascinating;I always find Berger more like music than words. A lovely opaqueness. And the photographs of Hanzlov are striking. Of course.
The big versions of your photos still strike me in the face, as it were. But I identify these kinds of small brushy areas with the forests I knew that had been heavily logged maybe 30 years before I wandered around in them. My relatives were scornful about them because they didn’t have “useful” wood (dogwoods, protected by the state even when I was growing up, caused them to snort in astonishment) By useful, they meant good hard building wood. I spent a lot of time between the age of 5 and 15 getting lost and finding myself in such thickets, and getting hungry and eating birch bark and tea berry leaves, too.
I think I may have a more mixed notion about “nature” than either the classical awe/fear-some or the Romantic idyll and sublimity of, say, Ansel Adams. But that’s still an idiosyncratic view.
I am trying to get a feel for your “immersive landscapes” — I didn’t download the viewer. I wonder what they would feel like in their largest incarnations, presented as a complete wall covering.
Oh, and what kind of bush/small tree is the one in color and (I think it’s the same) in the B/W? It looks a bit like a curly branched willow, but I’ve never seen them in the woods.
June,
Watch out, you’re in danger of losing all my hard-won respect… So, I do have a specific question about the “semi-ordinary” view. I agree that having a prominent foreground object against a distant background is rather hackneyed, though it can be done well by better photographers than me. I think I tend to avoid it, despite all the photo book advice. I don’t know whether I had that in mind or not when I took #4, but I think I was particularly interested in having the foreground trunks split the frame, the question being where. My sense is that that would be a less common composition, but I’m really curious about your (or anyone else’s) impression regarding that. Don’t worry, my skin is rhino hide. If anything, it’s perhaps embarrassing to admit that I’d like to do something partly because it’s different. It’s not that I’m looking for a gimmick, it’s just that I tend to find the unusual more interesting.
Hey, has anybody else found a comparison exercise like this useful? I feel like I’ve learned a lot from all the comments, at least the non-violent ones.
June,
these were taken along the northern edge of the Boreal Forest/Taiga – that’s a willow. The other trees – birch, Tamrack, Jack Pine and so on don’t grow much thicker than 6″ or 8″ and not tall enough to form a canopy at all.
(further north that willow is a tree – nothing taller…
http://forestmanagement.enr.gov.nt.ca/forest_education/trees_shrubs/willow.jpg
http://forestmanagement.enr.gov.nt.ca/forest_education/trees_shrubs.htm
The last one is obviously your photo. . . I recognize your style anywhere.
Steve, great aesthetic riddle and lots of fun also (especially since I guessed correctly!)
Doug, Mark and Tim, thanks for joining in Steve’s post. Despite Steve’s remark that “here I tried to get a bit of variety”, I found your photos radically different in expression. As I wrote in a comment above, each projects a completely different emotion and interpretation of “bare limbs”. I’ve never been a big fan of group exhibitions (probably because they typically lack focus or purpose), but this one was different and something very special. I hope you will join us again.
Steve,
While the last picture has your signature in terms of scientific/technical aspects (playing with the light)it differs drastically in sentiment from the BW photos that you showed here and on your website. Now, I know that, emotionally, you are chameleon.
Birgit,
Very interesting, I’d like to hear more. Not that I mind being a chameleon at all, and anyway the viewer is always right. You said earlier that #4 has some sense of lightness and hope with the light in the upper right, and many of my Sourdough Trail photos do have bright (even over-exposed) areas, while also often having dark tree trunks. How do you feel #4 is different? Or do you mean the Sourdough Trail series is different from other things like the dead rabbit or the ghost town interiors?
Steve,
It is true that I have been focusing on the ghost town interior and the rabbit. Tonight after work, I will study the Sourdough Trail series. I think that June also chose picture 3. Thus, I may not be completely off base.
More later.
I think this is where I left off some days ago….
Steve,
the trunk of the tree _is_ wonderful. And I am reminded of the (re)post by Karl on Feb 5 of Bioboot’s comments on art: s/he sorted out some of the more difficult questions of art vis-a-vis artist and society for me:
“8. High art is produced by artists who well understand the symbolic landscape their target culture.
Their art is stretching the symbolic language of their own intellect and may be beyond the understanding of the majority.”
You must imagine me to be, in the case of photography, “the majority.” But still capable of stretching my own intellect. Even the comment that “5. To an old person art is a less common experience” has its roots in that idea of the symbolic language which has stretched the intellect. So long as I’m acquiring a new symbolic language, I guess I don’t have to worry about being art-less.
There, did I obfuscate and cover my tracks well enough? I’ll keep looking and reading about photography and maybe someday I’ll really get it.
Tim,
In the meantime I see how the willow can be the only “tree.” Having lived in Wyoming for some years, I recognized the form after you identified it for me. The “corkscrew willow,” beloved of local interior decorators is a distant relative — one I’ve only encountered here in Portland, far south. But of course, in Portland, your willow would be a house plant <snort>. Sometimes the explosion of foliage, even in the city, threatens to drown me.
June,
Don’t think you can obfuscate me. But I’ll let you off the hook for implying I’m using some symbolic language beyond your understanding, if you can let me know specifically where to find those interesting comments of Bioboot’s. For some reason I can’t locate them.
Steve,
It’s not easy to find…
Comment #17 here
http://www.artandperception.com/2006/09/what-is-art.html#comments
Oddly enough, Steve, I saw them the other day and was so impressed I copied the list off and saved it on my desktop. Then today after copying the quotes, I tried to find it to link to and it seemed to have disappeared.
Here’s the notation on the original from which I got the quotes: “Comment by Bioboot — February 5, 2007 11:22 pm
[this comment is from 17 December but got posted to the old A&P site –Karl]”
Karl?
June,
Look back one comment, I give a link. Bioboot’s comment got posted on the old A&P site and I didn’t find it and move it until recently.
I think our messages crossed in the ether, Karl.
Actually I hadn’t refreshed the site for some time, so I’m a day late and a dollar short. But it’s fun to go back and read older posts.