‘Pure’ Landscape Photography Versus Including the Human Element

[r.e.]

Is Christopher Jordon still making photographs ? He was quite involved with photographing the "human element" ...

Jordan updated the About page on his website in 2021.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Jordan_(artist)

[Tin Can]

Read and looked at his sight

Great!

Jordan updated the About page on his website in 2021.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Jordan_(artist)

[Vaughn]

Humans are social animals, despite a tendency of some to be unsociable. The immediate viewer response to images with people and/or signs of humans is different from that to images without signs of the hand of man. Since my work is primarily about the light on the landscape, I tend to direct the attention of the viewer with light --- without the distraction of human elements taking the viewer into a social direction (who is that? where is this? what happened next?) instead of the visual direction I was hoping for.

And I like working alone. But it is not all one way and none of the other.

Sometime people creep into my images...or something real concrete helps to create the light I want to use.

[jnantz]

Jordan updated the About page on his website in 2021.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Jordan_(artist)

he went from one extreme to the other, which is pretty amazing !

unfortunately when I clicked on the images on his splash page I got blank pages .. I read his "about " and it was pretty amazing,

[r.e.]

he went from one extreme to the other, which is pretty amazing !

unfortunately when I clicked on the images on his splash page I got blank pages .. I read his "about " and it was pretty amazing,

I just had a look at his code. He's using Squarespace. Maybe try a different browser? On Safari, his site is working fine.

[Michael R]

Ned Pratt’s book One Wave is terrific. He’s the son of two great Canadian painters - Christopher Pratt (one of my favourites, and still working) and Mary Pratt who was a photorealist.

Olaf Sztaba, who wrote the PetaPixel article, is from Poland and emigrated to Canada in the late 1990s. I'm sure that he's well aware of man's influence on the landscape in Europe. He may have in mind places where the impact of man (leaving aside climate change) is minimal to none, not hard to find in British Columbia where he lives, but I think that he's talking about landscape photography that overtly incorporates references to people and their presence.

Sztaba clarifies what he means in this sentence:

...upon studying the works of [Canadians] Ned Pratt [and] Edward Burtynsky, [Swede] Jan Töve, and [American] Chuck Kimmerle, to name a few, I became fascinated with contemporary landscape photography or landscape which includes traces of human activity. It might be Edward Burtynsky’s image of a huge copper mine or the subtle and delicate image of a simple signpost embedded in the winter landscape as seen and crafted by Jan Töve.

I think that the examples, and related comments in his piece, make his meaning fairly clear.

By the way, Mr. Sztaba publishes two magazines, Medium Format and Elements. The latter focuses on landscape photography.

Note: Ned Pratt's website seems to focus entirely on his commercial work and portraits. In this context, that's too bad because Newfoundland and Labrador, where he lives, is a really good example of a place where a landscape photographer has a choice between untouched nature and nature with a human element.

[neil poulsen]

Without meaning to offend, isn't this conversation kind of irrelevant? With or without elements of landscape, with or without elements of human involvement, isn't it all about what makes a worthwhile image? The "strongest way of seeing?"

What the heck does "pure," mean?

It strikes me though, what is almost totally human, is the ability to appreciate a photographic image, to see worth in an image.

[Tin Can]

Every human endeavor is fast becoming irreverent

Our Earth will heal

We will not

Cheers!

Without meaning to offend, isn't this conversation kind of irrelevant? With or without elements of landscape, with or without elements of human involvement, isn't it all about what makes a worthwhile image? The "strongest way of seeing?"

What the heck does "pure," mean?

It strikes me though, what is almost totally human, is the ability to appreciate a photographic image, to see worth in an image.

[Jim Jones]

The Japanese woodblock artist Hokusai often placed tiny humans in expansive prints, perhaps to remind us of our insignificance in the universe. His famous "Breaking Wave at Kanagawa" shows the wave towering over boatmen who may be about to die, while in the distance a stylized Mt. Fuji serenely reminds us of eternity. Perhaps Hokusai was reminding us of the Japanese saying, "Though nations may crumble, the mountains remain."

[r.e.]

Without meaning to offend, isn't this conversation kind of irrelevant? With or without elements of landscape, with or without elements of human involvement, isn't it all about what makes a worthwhile image? The "strongest way of seeing?"

What the heck does "pure," mean?

It strikes me though, what is almost totally human, is the ability to appreciate a photographic image, to see worth in an image.

You'e essentially saying that one should regard the content of a photograph, when assessing it, as irrelevant. That's a perspective, not universally shared.

I have no interest in traditional landscape photographs. That includes Ansel Adams's work. Post #4 says "Even Ansel Adams photographed from parking areas..." That's the problem. Adams was in the business of creating a fantasy America, which is why he made photographs from the parking lot, not photographs of it. Apart from the obvious technical merit, I think that Adams's work is not ageing well, and that his reputation is largely propped up by Americans who put him on a quasi-religious pedestal. I see him as a landscape photography version of Norman Rockwell.

Ed Burtynsky directly challenged this fantasy portrayal of the world. Post #3 mentions Christopher Jordan, a former participant in this forum from Seattle. Jordan picked up on Burtynsky and went in the same direction with his own projects. Look at Jordan's early photographs and the influence of Burtynsky is patent. That said, Jordan has certainly gone his own way, and carved out his own identity, since. For this forum, Jordan is an exception, and note that he stopped participating here long ago. In 2022, almost all of the participants in the forum who make landscape photographs remain in the traditional mode. I see American landscape photographers going to the same exact spots at the same small list of national parks to make the same images over and over and over, like a pilgrimage. I wonder, "Why are they doing this?"