Fairy Land

[John Kasaian]

I think it was 12 years ago this July that I crossed the Sierras in style, on a young Quarterhorse mare I'd started that Spring and with my little "egg" mule packed with gear (the mare since retired and the little egg mule "Miss Stubby" has long since gone to her reward) The destination was a patch of paradise, part meadow and part extinct volcano that I've named Fairy Land because it looks like a place where fairys would cavort even though it is snow-bound for most of the year. I've always wanted to return with the 8x10 but life kind of got in the way. However it got me thinking about similar landscapes I've seen that were taken with LF gear and it occurred to me that such landscapes invariably fall within one of two kinds. The first kind is (what is the word I'm searching for?) "clinical " I guess. While it may or may not be technically perfect, it succeeds in making a landscape---the sort that I'd call "Fairy Land" into mere rocks and trees, textures and tones---a sum of all its parts artistically corrected with swings and tilts to look like another shot in the mountains
The other type, which also may or may not be 'perfect' tells a different story---showing a landscape where fairies frolick and where ogres lurk (without special Uhlesman--sp?-- effects!) and where tarns are enchanted.

I'm not sure if I'm describing this well enough, but if you know what I mean, then you know what I mean. It is, for me a "successful" landscape but what makes it so isn't so much technique (I think---please correct me if I'm wrong) but attitude. Mountains are heroic, legendary places (usually) and if I just wnat to document say, a peak or waterfall that is generally what I'll come home with.

Close but no cigar.

What kicks it up a notch is discovery, not control---discovery that the 'tog is part of the story, not just a viewer looking at something pretty but as a voyager having a role to play in the drama of the mountain(s)---a story within a story or perhaps more of a story within a picture.

Like Sam told Frodo at Cirith Ungol when discussing the tale of the elf-princess Luthien and Beren the woodcutter:

"...We've got---you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't great tales never end?"

Its like the difference between a Hobbit photographer and an Orc photographer (btw, could Orcs post modernists?)

What are your thoughts? Does the difference show up on film (your film?)

[Ash]

Uelsmann :)

[Jack Fisher]

To me, there is a difference between "snapshots" that are beautiful, and photographs that communicate something. They may communicate to me, or to others. The philosophy is personal, and differs with individuals, cultures, etc.

In my thinking, there are two types: technicians, and artists. The technician strives for the perfect photograph. The artist communicates. As a technician, I often have to make extra effort to understand what the artist wants to communicate - and I often find beauty in a technically perfect photograph, and sometimes miss the "message."

Then there are those who obsess over hardware. But that's another story.

...always learning.

Jack

[Ralph Barker]

Although I think the technician and artist categories cover a majority of photographers, I also believe there is nothing preventing an artist from becoming sufficient enough of a technician to be able to maximize the message. Nor is there really anything preventing the technician from becoming an artist - except the willingness to envision the fairies cavorting in John's meadow.

[Eric Brody]

A famous artist, I cannot recall whom, said something along the lines of..."Great technical skill will not negate artistic genius." Perhaps one of our more literate colleagues will be able to identify the artist and quote more accurately.

Eric

[Vaughn]

What makes the landscape into a magical place, is not the landscape, but the light that dances with it.

That, and a mind that is open to all the mysteries.

Vaughn

[Jim Galli]

Auchhh. The wee folk it seems only want to dance when I like to sleep. Bugger!

[Eric James]

The other type, which also may or may not be 'perfect' tells a different story---showing a landscape where fairies frolick and where ogres lurk...

Me thinks I would need a few drinks to comment adequately, but here is a shot taken in Fairy Meadows (Cirque of the Unclimbables) by George Bell of Santa Cruz. I'm not sure where it fits in your dichotomy. (See Image "GB8")

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geocities.com/gibell.geo/cirque/images/88cirque1475_59harrisonsmith.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.geocities.com/gibell.geo/cirque/photos.html&h=695&w=503&sz=109&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=uk8x5mVh9gUbzM:&tbnh=139&tbnw=101&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfairy%2Bmeadows%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN

Orks (weather, gravity and mosquitoes) lurk here.


What kicks it up a notch is discovery, not control---discovery that the 'tog is part of the story, not just a viewer looking at something pretty but as a voyager having a role to play in the drama of the mountain(s)---a story within a story or perhaps more of a story within a picture.

Isn't what you are describing a personal experience - evident in the image to you, but not others? Can you post an image that you have taken which illustrates you in the drama, so that I can see; or is that particular dramatic element visible only to you, the maker?

[John Kasaian]

Eric James,

You're right about photography being a personal experience for me, the difficulty is communicating the personal experience to a viewer. I'm thinking that the missing element in some landscapes is a certain childlike sense of wonder (hence the fairy example) What I find interesting about a landscape photograph is when this sense is fostered by the image and perhaps it can only be fostered by the image if it is embraced by the photographer. Sella seems to do a good job of it even though he often used a considerable amount of manipulation in his printing. I don't doubt that Sella was living a part of a larger story, the history of it is well documented in which Italian noblemen hired porters to take thier cast iron beds along on climbs, and photographers packed huge ULF glass plates (as if stories of elfin Princesses and woodcutters aren't hard enough to imagine??) There is a fine little story in The Hills and The Sea where the protagonist spends a stormy night lost in the Pyrenees pursued by demons and banshees before he stumbles upon a basque village and takes refuge in the tavern. Silly by today's standards (even though the demons and banshees were allegorical) but not in a deeper, more raw and elemental view---a view which I'm begining to think helps make photographs be more relevent.

The issue is that a landscape photograph is seen as a likeness, but it can be "merely" a likeness of a given place and time, or it can be a window looking out upon a given place and time. A story in which the photographer and the photograph itself plays a part.

Great mountian pix, btw--thanks!

[Struan Gray]

I think George Bell still lives in Boulder, CO. Great Guy.

John, in Europe at least, the Fairy thing died in the mud of Flanders. Hoaxes like the famous Cottingly pictures discredited the idea of small folk in particular, but a whole range of social and conceptual changes following on WWI made the late romantic attitude to landscape untenable except to those willing to shut their eyes and ears.

There is still a sense of the fey wildwood in Eastern European and particularly Russian photography. I can't point to specific photographers off the top of my head, but even on enthusiast sites like photo.net you will find slavic names adopting a more fantastical, metaphysical aproach to the landscape, as well as to things like studio portraits.

Even so, the fairy-tale feeling is something I associate with a hundred years ago. It was the great age of illustration too, and many of the photographers were consciously copying the styles of popular artists like Arthur Rackham or Ivan Bilibin or Carl Larsson, or the lady artists and their childrens' books: Beatrix Potter, Elsa Beskow. After the Somme, Paschendale, Verdun and the rest, it all seemed a bit too sweet and irrelevant.

PS: you might like John Brownlow's "Wild Things" series. The summer ones in particular have a wonderful sense of everyday magic. www.johnbrownlow.com

[John Kasaian]

While I'm still decompressing from the Josh Groban concert (a birthday present for my bride) Monet's paintings of Givenchy come to mind as an example of an artist playing a role in a bigger story. I've never been there, much less know how to spell it but I've seen prints of some of the paintings. Monet IIRC "made" the garden famous enough to be valued as a brand name for a line of perfume, clothing and a few re$ort$ scattered around the planet. This ain't my kind of story but could it be argued Monet is part of a bigger 'story' because of his intimacy with the gardens and how he painted them (as if fairies were scampering about the place)