The sky in contemporary fine art landscape

[sun of sand]

If you can make the bland interesting are you sure the bland was ever
That doesn't seem right to me
Maybe if you can make the dramatic boring it isn't in itself all that interesting

I'm sure if we all lived in concrete boxes and then one day wandered into some pastoral field with real soil and bugs and shi( we would be spellbound by the smallest of things
We'd much rather have a chunk of granite in our kitchen than a ladybug
We SQuash bugs if they enter our homes
Go outside and suddenly upon really
seeing
a dragonfly hover above a flower
you're motionless
not wanting to disturb it so that you may observe it

A large building in Las Vegas with a circus show and lights all over it can be walked right past
Yet I'm fairly sure more people would want to spend a week in Las Vegas than some farmers field

Maybe those who make the insignificant worthy of our time and those who make the
*(&^&*^(**^#%^&*&8&*(^%%%%%%^&
dismissable
are doing the same thing from opposite ends
-humbling us-


If a blank
empty
boring
featureless skyline can so easily dominate what would otherwise be seen as ..
maybe nature is much more powerful than we usually give it credit for

said in ANOTHER way
Bruce Lee doesn't talk a lot
Bruce Lee would still kick your a$$


Is the massive sheer rockface more important than the vast sky
Does the sky keep everything in check
Is it negative space the sky or positive space
Is it yin yang
I see the rockface as scale to the heavens
"yeah, that rock is massive! ..but that sky is



"

[Kirk Gittings]

Perhaps the first and among the best such use of an empty sky was by the early landscape photographers like Timothy O'Sullivan, Carlton Watkins, and Frances Frith. The orthochromatic wet plate emulsions let the blue sky go to a blank white, and it often became a big part of the composition as an abstract negative space.


Carlton Watkins

I've always felt the "New Topographics" photographers owed at least a small debt to those nineteenth century photographers, (but then again, don't all large format photographers?). It seems not to be acknowledged because those early photographers had for so long been held up as the roots of the Ansel Adams genre, the very style the New Topographics photographers were rebeling against...

Its interesting you should mention this as I think a popular work-Mark Klett's Second View re-photographic survey from 1977 (which made a huge splash in college art programs) may have contributed allot to this aesthetic. This project clearly validates
the intersection of these two periods and accompanying aesthetics of historic documentation and cutting edge fine art photography.

from Wikipedia:

Rephotography is the act of repeat photography of the same site, with a time lag between the two images; a "then and now" view of a particular area. Some are casual, usually taken from the same view point but without regard to season, lens coverage or framing. Some are very precise and involve a careful study of the original image. The founding work in this style was the Rephotographic Survey project, conceived in 1977 by the project's chief photographer, Mark Klett. This project engaged 120 sites of government survey photographs from the American west first recorded in the 1870s. The resulting book, Second View, The Rephotographic Survey Project, included precise rephotographs of the same locations 100 years later along with an essay by Klett on the methodology and problems encountered with rephotography. Klett revisited these sites a third time for his 2005 book Third View with a new team of photographers including Byron Wolfe, Michael Marshall and Toshi Ueshina.

[Mark Sawyer]

Its interesting you should mention this as I think a popular work-Mark Klett's Second View re-photographic survey from 1977 (which made a huge splash in college art programs) may have contributed allot to this aesthetic. This project clearly validates
the intersection of these two periods and accompanying aesthetics of historic documentation and cutting edge fine art photography.

Yes, and Klett's work entered my mind as I wrote that. He's at Arizona State University (Phoenix), while Gohlke of the New Topographics is here at the University of Arizona, (Tucson). They've had their work in the same exhibitions at the CCP, (where both have work up with almost alarming regularity), and it's clear that they admire each other's work and philosophy. I admire their work too, and hope to meet them both someday...

from Wikipedia:
Rephotography is the act of repeat photography of the same site, with a time lag between the two images; a "then and now" view of a particular area. Some are casual, usually taken from the same view point but without regard to season, lens coverage or framing. Some are very precise and involve a careful study of the original image. The founding work in this style was the Rephotographic Survey project, conceived in 1977 by the project's chief photographer, Mark Klett.

"Rephotography" was going on long, long before Klett's 1977 concept. Klett's work just has a splashier artistic style. The problem with wikipedia entries on contemporary art splashes is that they tend to be written by those involved in the splash.

[Struan Gray]

I would agree that at least part of the reason for all the blank skies is that it is a currently popular schtick, and a slightly tired one at that. It - and the central positioning of a flat horizon line - are also reactions to the perceived kitschyness of camera club rules.

But there are good reasons too. Partly, that is simply what the sky looks like in many parts of the world for most of the year. 'True' or 'honest' photography won't try to hide that fact by taking pictures only on the acceptably dramatic days, especially if it wishes to promote itself as 'documentary'.

Also, there is another simple practical reason: overcast skies change the formal aspects of a photograph so that colour relationships and two-dimensional juxtapositions become more important than contrasts of tone and three-dimensionality. The flat lighting from overcast weather makes it easier to accept a photograph as a plane of graphic elements, and not as an approximation of a real scene.

The cynic and the practical photographer in me also knows that shadows are really hard to photograph well. Garapata Beach is loved as a photographers' photograph for good reason.

Lastly, in my own experiments with abstraction and planarisation of the world I have found that the sky can be amazingly distracting. Just a bit of horizon or a hint of cloud structure, and the things on the ground that I wanted to draw attention to immediately become bit players instead of stars. I don't know if this my monkey brain trying to keep track of which way is up, or the results of hundreds of years of accumulated conventions in art history. Either way I almost always like my photographs more if I get rid of the sky altogether.

[Ken Lee]

currently popular schtick

The flat lighting from overcast weather makes it easier to accept a photograph as a plane of graphic elements, and not as an approximation of a real scene

experiments with abstraction and planarisation of the world

[Struan Gray]

:-p

[Brian Ellis]

I suppose that someone who can make the bland interesting is better than someone who makes the dramatic boring.

But is someone who makes the bland boring better than someone who makes the dramatic dramatic?

[Steve M Hostetter]

Why not? Who says that blank boring bleak lonely sky isn't beautiful? Who says a big billowy cloud is? Why photograph a toilet you piss and dump in? Why photograph tide pools? If there is one subject I almost universally dislike seeing photographed it's tide pools ..especially vertically

what are the aesthetic reasons for any of this shi(? A fkn bunch of bananas is beautiful but the sky isn't UNLESS
BS

They rank cities by amount of sunshine they receive
Rochester NY would be pretty low but phoenix would be high
Now I'd much rather have the weather of santa monica -and no doubt it would rate higher than phoenix-
but I'd prefer rochester over phoenix as well


"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity"

maybe if nothing else these photographers show us ourselves

I'd rather have these rebels than none
That's about as much as I'd care to think about it

I agree w/ alittle less passion

[GPS]

"De gustibus et coloribus non disputandum est". Already the old Romans...

[Wilbur Wong]

Finding your own voice in the art world is a tricky business. Your not going to get there with the standard approach to scenic vistas. You might find lots of approval among your peers, even though you are essentially mimicking the shots of a master, with no introspection or revelations on any kind in the work. You can find success with that kind of work among photography based groups, and then meet resistance within a broader art community.

Work that's created with the idea of finding out what makes your vision different will have a different look. People who are bound to the do's and don'ts of the acknowledged masters won't like it, usually. Its good to decide just which group your shooting for so you don't get too frustrated, but innovation can mean departure and disassociation from a community and that carries with it the potential for disapproval.

It can also be true that work that's heavily oriented towards the personal vision can be totally boring and without beauty. Its all a matter of experimentation on some level, with our own tastes and inner level of courage, and that of whoever gets to see your work.

AMEN