‘Pure’ Landscape Photography Versus Including the Human Element

[Drew Wiley]

Hardly. I haven't sold any invisible digital images yet for $18,000 or whatever that was. In fact, I don't even have any digital images to show. Mine are all real and tangible, something people long long long ago happened to call prints.
I guess something different will be necessary on the walls of those survival huts on Mars. But I think they'll be tire of red and yellow ochre pretty fast, and by then even money won't be green anymore but lost somewhere in cyber bit-space just like themselves It will all be about recycling everything, so Soylent Green should be the popular hue there. But the graffiti crowd will probably beat them there, just like everywhere else. Time for some spray can painted canals on Mars.

[jnantz]

...I don't even have any digital images to show. Mine are all real and tangible, .

You sure about that ? I thought you have a website full of images, or is that a different Drew Wiley ?

[pjd]

https://www.theguardian.com/artandde...-earth-ukraine

This thread came to mind as soon as I saw this.

[Tin Can]

Just before I saw this post, I was thinking

We forgot

https://www.theguardian.com/artandde...-earth-ukraine

This thread came to mind as soon as I saw this.

[willwilson]

Why do you care so much? Is there not room for everything?

Honestly, Merg ended the thread earlier and everyone just kept on...me included I guess.

If it's interesting to you take a photo: people, buildings, trash, trees, who cares. Do it because you love it and maybe you will make some art.

[r.e.]

Why do you care so much? Is there not room for everything?

Honestly, Merg ended the thread earlier and everyone just kept on...me included I guess.

If it's interesting to you take a photo: people, buildings, trash, trees, who cares. Do it because you love it and maybe you will make some art.

He may be referring to the Guardian article in particular. In any event, he's in the U.K. Maybe have a look at today's news about what's happening with the weather in the U.K. and on the continent. I'd be surprised if he didn't care, and quite a lot.

I'd like to know more about the film he was involved with.

[Tin Can]

When I wrote, include the Human Element

that was an instruction to our future robot overlords

we will not be forgotten

they will study our failures

but we will not get a second chance

[_tf_]

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.

This resonates with me, though I like Adam's landscapes a lot, and am drawn to traditional landscape. In recent years I have been more conscious of how much the typical Scottish landscape photography (FWIW mine included) goes into great lengths to avoid and/or eliminate any obvious signs of human activity. But landscape, as a genre, is never purely about aesthetics, implicit in the genre is the assertion that it's a depiction of a tangible place, it's always 'a photograph of' (somewhere). Obviously, a photograph always 'lies', but that doesn't mean that it cannot, and therefore doesn't, make assertions about what is out there (same as while language is always ambiguous, it remains an effective means of communication, making lying possible). The heavy collective skew of landscape photography toward the 'pure' means we have constructed a myth of a land that doesn't exist, and that myth shapes a general perception of the land as it is (not). The problem, of course, is that it's difficult to photograph those human intrusions into landscape in a way that make trully compelling photographs, Burtynsky is atypical rather than representative (and it seems to me the examples in the article that started this thread are are on the minor, tame side, not that much of a departure from the norm). But the question I am asking myself is whether there is a point at which 'pure landscape' becomes 'unethical landscape'?

[Vaughn]

We are social animals. If we see an image with a human in it, the viewer will tend to assume the image is about the human(s). They focus on the figure that is in the landscape...and the relationship between the figure and the landscape.

Thus the figure, as well as color, can be 'distractions' when I work with light. Light as the subject can take the backseat when the viewer's eye hits one's image. The viewer's first impression of the image changes dramatically, and how they then approach the image also. Rarely are my photographs specifically about humans.

The act of having a figure-less ('pure' is BS) is a conscience, valid, and wholly ethical artistic decision.

And yes, Virginia, there is no 'wilderness'.

[Sal Santamaura]

...The heavy collective skew of landscape photography toward the 'pure' means we have constructed a myth of a land that doesn't exist...

Of course it exists. It is, however, surrounded by parking lots and other crap. Nothing's changed in the three and a half months since I posted in this thread:

We are surrounded by parking lots and much other equally ugly human-created detritus. Adams, like many of us, sought to photograph beauty. You are correct: even when he was actively photographing, the small slices of earth he committed to film were essentially fantasies in the larger context of a planet polluted by and with homo sapiens. He saw, and many of us see, no reason for committing ugliness to photographs. It's everywhere to observe constantly; why bother...

Photographs are almost always viewed indoors. Many seek to "bring the outdoors inside" either via windows or by displaying landscape photographs. Bringing in humanity and its infrastructure defeats the purpose: