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| Opening Pandora's box! For over 50 years Ansel Adams and Edward Weston have been sitting next to God, telling him what kind of light to offer photographers, myself included. I subscribed to the idea that the best images were seen, exposed in a controlled manner and presented in the highest fidelity to woo the viewer. Looking back it becomes clear that spontaneity, which is part of life itself was absent in many instances. For years I have toiled under the burden of having to carry heavy equipment with me, often to turn what started as a simple visual delight or revelation, into a major complex production. While there were times where this great physical effort paid off, at other times the image - a moment that I so much wanted to freeze in time, had vanished and left me wondering why I even stopped to photograph it in the first place. At the same time I started to look at the work of painters such as Monet, Cezanne and Van Gogh among others. Many years ago in art school I had of course studied their paintings. However, at that time it was not completely clear to me how their artwork reflected and impacted today's world . But that has changed! Now I understand why they were seen as rebellious and avant garde as they moved outside the studio and painted in bold new ways. With quick and intuitive brushstrokes and their pallets loaded with color they let their feelings and ideas flow freely onto their canvasses. I was envious. Not of their skill, nor of their fame but envious of their ability to capture the essence of life. Their work needed not to be rendered in finite detail, which had been an important part of classic paintings. Instead they sought to capture the gesture, the feelings of the moment. Was this possible to do in photography? Would it be possible to somehow use my skills of large format photography and make my work spontaneous and still retain clarity of thought? Landscape photography is to a great extent a medium of love. A love for the subject matter and a desire to reveal the unseen essence of the scene. It becomes important to show the forms, textures and scale of what is experienced. However, often the love and caring that is felt becomes sidelined by technique and presentation, which completely overshadows the basic idea of what was seen and felt. Why does a photographs have to be sharp? Why does it have to show texture? Why does it have to have a long and expressive scale? Why not just concentrate on the very essence and show this essence as an abstraction? Why isn't this approach more relevant and closer to what was seen and felt at the moment of exposure? A great painter and art teacher of mine, Lorser Feilson spent his entire life moving from complex life like paintings, through anthropomorphic images to absolute minimalism. During the last years of his life his mind was occupied by simple forms and colors. He succeeded in proving that a simple line can in fact contain feelings that are close the human heart. If simple lines and forms are capable of this maybe they are part of what makes us feel what we do when we observe a subject matter. If that is the case why not just photograph the basic forms and lines? Why be bothered by technical issues? Why not just hone our vision and learn to capture feelings and ideas quickly and without a lot of physical effort? These are questions I personally want to explore and hopefully find answers for! Elementary truths: When you are ready to shoot a scene you have already photographed it in your mind. When you see and feel a scene and get excited it sometimes feels like being on a first date. You have no clue about what, where, when... You may even feel a certain level of fear. Will I get the image? What if I miss? How do we keep this excitement alive though the generally technical photographic process? To make our photographs come alive it may be necessary to prevent ourselves from being infested by the complex knowledge of photography and our love for the technique. Instead we may be better off by concentrating on our love for the subject matter and on the feelings we hope to reveal. Sensual forms and expressive subject matter may in fact be all around us. We need to look harder at our own lives, what we do, where we live and how we think. Perhaps by revealing beauty and feelings in what appears to be without merit in our own surroundings we may in fact truly contribute to the art of photography? Per Volquartz |
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