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IT WAS GALEN ROWELL WHO SAID / WROTE:
“If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only to make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better.”
iMo and to my eye and sensibilities, Rowell’s nature / landscape photography is filed under the category I label as Color Screamist Photography. That is, pictures-most often landscapes-which exhibit ultra-vivid colors, hues, saturation and dramatic light. Pictures made by photo drama queens, if you will, who strive to make their pictures “better” by making pictures that are essentially caricatures of the the real world. Apparently, the real world as it is-or as close as the medium of photography is capable of rendering it-just ain’t good enough for them.
Ok. I get it. As Julian’s grandmother said, “For every pot there’s lid.” and the color screamists are the lid on the pot of the teeming masses who lust for and salivate at the sight of such visual dreck. Hey, whatever floats your boat is OK with me as long as nothing / no one is harmed in the making thereof. And, I might add, as long as I don’t have to look at it.
So, there you have it - I am not a fan of romanticized / idealized idolatry-like landscape / nature photography. Or, for that matter, any referent one chooses to picture layered with exaggerated effects and art sauce.
Re: any referent - as should be obvious, I am drawn to picturing referents of one kind or another as found and seen in the ubiquitous quotidian world / life. However, it is rarely the referent, in and of itself, which attracts my attention and desire to make a photograph. Rather, it is the part the referent plays, together with other visual elements, in the patterns (shape, lines, color and the like) I see, as isolated within my imposed framing. All of which contributes to the form I seek to create and present on the 2D surface of a photographic print.
And that speaks to the difference (or one of the prime differences) between my picture making as opposed to that of the screamists, and, for that matter, a great number of “serious” amateurs. To wit, for most non-fine art picture makers, the referent is what drives the bus. The resultant photograph is meant to be all about the referent.
On the other hand, there are those picture makers who realize that a picture can be about more than what is literally depicted.
For many in this group this means attempting to cram meaning-very often, deep emotional, psychological, meaning-of-life concepts-into their pictures. iMo, a fruitless pursuit that yields pictures that require explicative art-speak explanations to illuminate that which their pictures do not.
Then there are others in the about-more-than-the-depicted-referent crowd, myself included, who believe that a photograph is “all” about the print. That is, creating an object, a tangible thing, which illustrates interesting visual form, as seen on the 2D field of the photographic print. Form that plays with / derives from some of the classic elements of the visual arts-line, shape, space, value, and color-independent of the depicted referent.
That is not to write that the depicted referent is not an essential component of the form exhibited in the finished print. That’s cuz, in a very real sense, the depicted referent and the form derived / arranged from its depiction are intrinsically linked.
So, all of that written, back to any referent from the quotidian world / life….being wary of expressing an overly broad generalization, I will, nevertheless, pose this question; why is it that in the fine-art photography world so much of that photography which exhibits interesting form does so with depicted referents plucked from the quotidian world? Toasters instead of temples, if you will.
One key answer, at least so for me, is the dissociative sensation that results from encountering an object of beauty-a photographic print-which has been created from a rather mundane everyday depicted referent. The art of transforming “nothing” into “something”.
In addition to my many such experiences, I have encountered, too many times to count, a similar reaction to many of my photographs when I hear a viewer exclaim, “I don’t know why I like this picture, but I do.” - very much an expression of wonderment (or is it confusion?) at their interest in / attraction to a picture of an everyday thing that they would never even have noticed, much less making a picture thereof.
A PICTURE MAKING TIP: once you are freed from the tyrany of making pictures of only conventionally defined pretty / beautiful referents, the entire world and everything in it is your picture making osyster.