I think strong photographs are the result of an intimate visual dialogue beteen the artist and subject. The photograph is the material product of this interchange, and if it can be characterized as "beautiful" in and of itself, then I think it has succeeded, regardless of how it compares to the original "scene".
I think Neal is right on the money. The almost complete fixation photographers and photo editors have on the cliche is beyond pathetic and represents the complete failure of imagination. I mean does the world really need one more picture of halfdoom, the Tetons, or the Grand Canyon rim with the obligatory gnarled juniper tree in the foreground? All these people rush off to phtoograph the landscape and end up taking the same worn out ?icon photos? that have been done a million times before. In short, a lot of landscpae photography is nothing more than pretty scenery realistically captured in good light ?.ZZZZZZZZZZZZ. It replicates looking out a window rather than into a dreamy painting. But each to his own.
The really talented photographers can achive visual impact in their Backyards and don?t need to rely on ?perfect? and pristine landscapes, or exotic places. If you can?t take good shots in the local park, what makes you think you?ll do better by lugging the gear into the unspoiled backcountry? Do you want a record, or art?
Think about this: The pristine Sierra Club calander shot of a place untouched by mankind DOES NOT represent how most view the landscape; not the way most people encounter. So why are so few photographers interested in documenting the landscape from a human interaction standpoint - how people usually see it? Doesn?t this approach have potential?
I guess if being a landscape photographer is being a "failure", I hope one day I will be as big a "failure" as Adams.
"I think strong photographs are the result of an intimate visual dialogue beteen the artist and subject."
Nice language, but what does it mean? Landscapes don't respond to my attempts to start much less continue a dialog. They seem rather impassive to attempts to communicate with them. All I end up doing is having a dialog with myself, making choices of where I want to point the camera, which lens, filter, film, framing, timing (now or later, and if so, when?) and exposure to use in an attempt to find a visual equivalent for my internal intellectual & emotional machinations.
I "listen to the trees" as John Sexton calls the process, but I don't engage in a dialog with them. I don't think they care whether or not I pull out a camera or not.
Photographs, paintings, sculptures, plays, poems, architecture, drawings, music, trees, glaciers, mountains, solar eclipses, prose,etc. -- good, bad, or indifferently executed --are just metaphors for somehing else. It is when I am compelled to start looking beyond the surface and start getting curious about what else is going on, that's when, for me, photographs (et. al.), whether someone else or I made the thing I'm responding to, start getting interesting, which is i guess my criteria of good.
Neal's reference to his New Zealand trip and the resultant "boring" vistas strikes brings up an interesting point. When I visit new territory, I have that childlike awe that comes about from being in a new environment. Sometimes we have to get over that initial "infatuation" and look beyond our feelings as we assess the attritutes of the surrounding landscape. For me, LF photography makes me study my environment as I try to determine what it is that provokes those feelings of awe. I think that most of us can trust our gut instincts. However, it's being able to quantify and qualify those emotions that makes the difference between a photograph that is personally fulfilling versus one that is mediocre.
Happy holidays to all and best wishes for a productive (and fulfilling!) 2002!
Ansel Adams reportedly took over 40,000 photographs. Somewhere between 10 and 40 of these are recognized masterpieces. We do not say that he was a failure because his batting average was less than 1/1,000.
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