There is so much material packed into this little corner of the course that there is almost too much to respond to adequately so, having concentrated for now just on Alec Soth, I will pay a little attention, just a few brief notes, to the works of Nadav Kander and Paul Graham that are also referred to. I find these two particularly interesting because of the very different ways they approach the photographing of a particular geographical line through both time and space.
Until now I have tended to think of Kander more as a portrait artist so it has been interesting to look at this more topographical work along the Yangtze River, not least just because of the sheer scale of the project.
This is in many ways quite a literal depiction of the river. It is there, or not far off, in most of the images. The series leaves you in no doubt that it is about following a specific route. Soth’s work on the other hand is I think rather more impressionistic and discursive (which is part of its charm for me). We see little of the river. It is not always evident that there is a river nearby in many of the shots. Were it not for the captions we would not know. More attention if focused on people, and places peripheral to the river itself, although no doubt in many ways shaped, informed, and affected by it. What they both do though is show the impact of human intervention on the landscapes defined by these river-sources. Soth does this, I might say, more benignly and less judgmentally than Kander who does not spare us the naked truth of the appalling environmental impact of people. If nothing else Kander has just put China even more firmly on my list of countries that I do NOT want to visit!
Graham’s work is similarly impressionistic in so far as the road itself does not appear directly a great deal. Again he is more concerned with the people encountered along it and places either side of it. The environmental issues are still there but they are not as ‘in your face’. What I find most striking though is what comes across to me as his sympathy for the people he encountered. He does not come across as judgmental and is much more respectful than, for example, I would expect someone like Martin Parr to be if he photographed a similar project. In a way it is quite a gentle work.
It is also interesting from the point of view of how the road has changed over the years. More of it has become multilane since the 1980s, much elevated to motorway status, and is of course very much busier. Not long after Graham made this work, just two years later, I used the A1 a lot once I had moved from London to the North East and I still remember how quiet (apart from a few notorious bottle-necks) certain stretches could be. Odd as it might sound – we are dealing here with a busy and far from attractive road that is really quite boring to drive along – this work evokes in me a strange sense of nostalgia.
Perhaps I will reflect a bit more on other work, or indeed the same stuff, as I start to work on the next exercise, once I have formed some idea of how I actually want to approach it.
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 