I had not read ahead to this next part of the course material while working on the last exercise and taking a typological approach to photographing my road so did not realise that this is what we would be getting into next. A happy coincidence though as increasingly I find my thoughts on landscape photography focusing more and more on collections of images, typologies, and the accumulation of meaning over time. Because I have already been thinking in these terms some of the material discussed here is already, to an extent, familiar.

Farley & Symmons Roberts (2012) is a book that I read when it first came out. I was not at the time, and to an extent I am still deficient in this regard, well acquainted with their poetry, though I am sure I had come across the odd piece, and was not really sure about the subject matter, though I had previously read some of Iain Sinclair’s in a similar, psychogeographic vein. I found though that I enjoyed it greatly, particularly the way they bring their poets’ eyes to these marginal, liminal, landscapes. I particularly remember the reference to the Bechers: as I did not know their work at the time I went in search of it to learn more, and in the process realised that I had in fact seen some of their collected images in galleries without properly registering it, or them, or appreciating its importance. The poets’ observations very much echo my own thoughts: the single image does not necessarily communicate its meaning adequately. Juxtaposing a series of images though sets up dialogues, reflections, clashes, synchronies, that bring out much more meaning and significance. This is why I still prefer, as I have written elsewhere, collections of related images to the idea of the singular image, the salon photograph.

There is an interesting parallel on the previous page (page 193) extolling the virtues of not just the individual wind turbine but serried ranks of them: “How majestic it would be, on our way into or out of our cities, to drive past strips of giant white daffodils blowing in the breeze.”

An interesting coincidence is that after the Bechers they mention the work of John Davies. One of the things that attracts me to his work is the use of the repeated view, particularly when separated over time, as exemplified by his latest book, Retraced 81/19, a copy of which I have just bought, with its pairs of pictures of the same place but separated by decades.

I have not been able to track down a copy of Cruel and Tender but David Company’s essay is at least available on his own website. Though he makes a number of points, it seems to me that the most important one is about the way photographs have come over time to be seen more in book form than in exhibitions and that the enables them to communicate their meanings more fully and effectively. As he puts it, showing series of images collectively gives them “the chance to articulate each other. In this way photography doesn’t simply show but ‘shows itself showing what it it showing’. The straight image is made self-conscious and reflexive …”

“The isolated picture/artefact is given a depth of meaning through the structure and orchestration of the group. Art is largely effaced from the image but returns in the act of assembly.”

The other important point for present purposes is his observation about the ‘snapshot model’ which “has had its own tendency towards accumulation that is very different from the archival straight image. Essentially chancy and speculative it works by taking many images then editing the large haul for revelations and epiphanies.” Here we have the photographer as collector and one of the underlying strengths of the typological approach.

“Veracity and voracity became almost indistinguishable.”

Here is another of those coincidences: while reading and thinking about this issue I have been looking again at some of the work of Rinko Kawauchi and reading about her working practices in Sasha Wolf’s new book (2019).

Whilst her approach is not invariably the same, particularly when working on a specific project such as Ametsuchi or The River Embraced Me, where the work is produced with a single subject inn mind, I understand she often collects and juxtaposes individual images that are sometimes made years apart. As she puts it in her interview in Wolf’s book (at pages 108 and 109):

“An individual photograph is like a single cell, or a single voice; I think that a body of work comes into being when those individual elements constellate and resonate with one another. “

“… In a way different from viewing a single photograph on its own, another world comes into view when lining up photographs of varying subjects. The overall ‘countenance’ of a work can be expressed in a variety of ways depending on how one arranges these components; as such the editing process is crucial. It is also an entertaining one, as elements I had not been conscious of while shooting often come into view when editing.”

The last mentioned work in this part of the course material, Donovan Wylie’s typological work, raises some interesting issue about power and control, and the role of photography in those regards, is, I think, worthy of looking at separately so I will deal with that in another post. I will also include a brief reference to Sontag who I see crops up again in the context of collection and possession.

Davies, J, (2019).  Retraced 81/19.  London:  GOST

Farley, P & Symmons Roberts, M, (2012).  Edgelands.  London:  Vintage

Sontag, S, (1979).  On Photography.  London:  Penguin

Wolf, S, (ed), (2019). PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice. New York: Aperture

https://davidcampany.com/almost-the-same-thing-some-thoughts-on-the-photographer-as-collector/

What I have chosen to do for this part of the exercise is simply to walk from one end of my chosen stretch of road to the other and along the way photographs elements that would mostly normally pass unnoticed: house numbers and other signage; street furniture; drain grids, man-hole covers, water stopcocks, fire hydrants – road hardware. This last group are largely invisible (apart from a couple of the larger covers) unless you pay attention and indeed I could not find one of them (I know it is there, it is the stopcock cover for my house) as it is buried under leafmold, gravel, mud, and other natural detritus!

The house numbers are not complete (and I do not know why, having arranged them carefully in Photoshop, they have not come out in the right order in the contact sheet) as not every house has a visible number (only nine out of fourteen), something that causes no end of trouble for visitors who do not know the area. As with Assignment 5 of I&P I have obscured house names where they would otherwise appear with the number in the interests of privacy – many houses in the village are known better by their name rather than street number.

Which do I think are the most interesting? As a typological set, in the style of the Bechers, I would choose the road hardware, the various covers and grids set into the road surface, simply because there are so many of them, and are surprisingly diverse. The numbers and street furniture do not, for me, offer enough in quantity nor in variety. For the same reason I suspect that a wider audience might similarly find the larger set more interesting, also because it is the more surprising, overlooked set of subjects.

The contact sheets are edited down from the total number of shots that I took (seventy-odd) and do not include alternate takes, other trial shots that did not, for whatever reason, work out quite so well.

Finally, as our little stretch of road is a cul de sac and very quiet, I did not encounter anyone while shooting. Except when I was photographing the stopcock cover outside one of the cottages. To do so I was bent right over to frame the shot. My neighbour suddenly came out to see if I was alright: he and his wife had seen me through their window and were concerned I was unwell. He was also surprised to see me without my dog. Small village life is like that, people expect certain regular behaviours from their neighbours and any deviation from the norm is more likely to draw attention. Many of the people that I see on anything like a regular basis are out because they are walking their dogs and I am walking mine. It is though encouraging that neighbours, even if we do not know each other very well (another characteristic of life in this village, as again my work on Assignment 5 for I&P demonstrated, is that many people tend to be very private, and some positively withdrawn), are ready to come to another’s aid in case of need!

The “road movie” that I have chosen for this part of the exercise is Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker. None of Tarkovsky’s films are what might be called ‘easy’ but that for me is one of the attractions of his work. Although the initial critical reception of this film was poor it has subsequently grown in stature and I have even come across it being cited as the Tarkovsky film for people who do not like Tarkovsky. I am not sure I entirely agree with that – I would suggest The Sacrifice instead – but certainly regard it as one of his best, most immediately engaging, films.

One of the things I find most intriguing about it is how it predated the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. The Zone, a sealed off area affected by some cataclysmic disaster, prefigures the exclusion zone around Chernobyl in an uncanny way. There is obviously no real connection but the parallels are remarkable.

That Chernobyl connection brings back to mind Kazuma Obara’s book (2018) that I have previously written about for I&P. I suspect that this is something that I am going to come back to when thinking about a subject for Assignment 2 as many of the images deal with the train journey between Chernobyl and Slavutych.

So, to the film itself. Looking at it again I am struck by the parallels that can be drawn with, in particular, The Divine Comedy and Pilgrim’s Progress. as in both of those books, the journey undertaken by the protagonists, in this case Stalker, the guide through the Zone (a Virgil to Dante), the Writer and the Professor, is a metaphorical one in which the latter two seek to reach The Room which will grant their desires. The Room is a bit like Paradise/the Celestial City but more ambiguous in that it does not necessarily bring about consequences that are positive. Indeed, as happened to another stalker, Porcupine, who does not appear but whose story is retold, the Room can be fatal for those who seek it for negative reasons. The Room is therefore capable of providing redemption, or perdition. (In this regard the coincidence of Chernobyl is almost overwhelming; the exclusion zone around the nuclear plant has proved to be a sanctuary for wildlife, a redemption; the radio-active contamination on the other hand is still killing people and leading to birth defects and illnesses more than 30 years after the event – perdition.)

The fact of and the nature of the journey are central to the film. Again following the established conventions, it is important that the journey is hazardous, that there are trials and obstacles to be overcome: there are guards at the perimeter of the Zone to be avoided, there are perils and hazards, not visible to or discernible by anyone other than the Stalker, along the way; the route is tortuous and circuitous, discovered by Stalker throwing ahead metal bolts tied with strips of cloth to find the safe way.

The process of the journey also importantly provides a literary/cinematic opportunity for the characters to explore their motives for coming to the Zone – the Stalker, apparently altruistically, to help people fulfil their desires (and presumably more mundanely to make a living for himself and his family), the Writer to recover his inspiration, the Professor to win a Nobel prize for scientific investigation of the Room – and reassess their validity. The process of the journey, by bringing the protagonists into such close proximity, and conflict, by challenging their motives and beliefs, brings out the true nature of the Professor’s intention, which is to destroy the Room with a nuclear bomb. (There is a supreme irony here that the zone around Chernobyl, which in so many ways resembles the Zone, was caused by a nuclear accident.) The journey is itself the redemptive process and force. The Stalker comes to doubt the value and purpose of what he does in so far it is no longer clear to him that the Room can provide true happiness; the Writer, who first realises the negative potential of the Room depending on an individual’s desires and intentions (in passing, quite a Karmic notion) loses some of his own arrogance and self-centredness; the Professor gives up his plan and dismantles his bomb.

I could go on, but am mindful of the suggested word limit for this exercise. I will therefore simply add a recommendation of Dyer (2013) which is a scene by scene description of, and commentary on the film. I have written elsewhere that I like Dyer’s writing on photography despite a tendency towards hyperbole and over interpretation. In this case though my view is that he spot on. His book is itself a sort of road movie in its own terms. As one reviewer quoted on the back cover (Sukhdev Sandhu of the Guardian) puts it, Dyer has the ability “… to make pilgrims of his readers and lead them on a journey in search of truths about love and about the nature of happiness…”. How apt!

Dyer, G, (2013).  Zona.  Edinburgh:  Canongate

Obara, K, (2018).  Exposure / Everlasting.  Cordoba:  Editorial RM / RM Verlag

Tarkovsky, A, (1979). Stalker.

Before getting on to Exercise 2.2, in particular the critique of a ‘road movie’, I thought it would be worthwhile first thinking about what amounts to a road movie, its roots in literature, and some common or key themes that I feel I have detected. I will then settle on just one film (I think I have already chosen the one) for further comment as part of the exercise proper later.

A car chase does not a road movie make! I rule out many films in which there might be a lot of action on the road (for example, Bullitt, in my view the greatest car chase ever, The French Connection, the second best, or any of the Mad Max movies, even the most recent, Thunder Road, which has some elements of what might otherwise amount to a road movie). Similarly I rule out movies where travel is merely incidental to the plot but not essential to it: for example two Agatha Christie thrillers, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. In both cases there is a journey but the nature of those journeys are not essential to the underlying murder mystery, whodunnit, plots. They could just as easily have been static, set in a hotel or stately house.

Rather it seems to me the key factor is that the journey, whether physical or metaphorical, is integral to the plot and is part of its development and forward motion. The journey is not necessarily the whole point of the plot but is an inherent part of it. Here I think of the likes of, to make a fairly random selection, Thelma and Louise (which I have to say I have seen just the once and disliked intensely), Easy Rider, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Even Bergman’s The Seventh Seal I would count in here as the journey of the knight is of central importance: it is the journey of the crusaders back to Europe from the Holy Land that helps to spread the plague that carries off most of the characters at the end. Similarly The Blues Brothers. It is not just an extended car chase, though certainly up there with the greats, but the whole film is about a journey, both a physical one while the band is put back together and the concert receipts are run from the ballroom to Chicago, and a psychological/allegorical one as Jake and Elwood effectively grow up and take responsibility for their actions and for the benefit of others. (It has to be included in any event just because it is so funny!)

On a somewhat more serious note I would mention Almost Sunrise in which two US Army veterans return from service in Iraq with all sorts of traumatic psychological problems (PTSD) and seek relief by walking across America. This was a recent choice of the film club run by Tricycle Magazine, a Buddhist review, though not a specifically Buddhist film, and the link below is intended for subscribers to the magazine. It does at least show a brief trailer. The film is also available on DVD, and I guess might be accessible through some of the TV streaming services but I have not investigated. Even if not easily available I nevertheless mention it as it is a fine example of one of the key themes (which I have already touched on in passing in connection with The Blues Brothers and to which I shall return).

I see that The Road is mentioned in the course material. I have not seen the film but I have at least read the book. I confess it is not the sort of book that I would ordinarily read; someone lent it to my wife, it was lying around and I picked it up more or less idly. While I cannot say that I was wholly engaged, let alone convinced, by it I found it interesting enough and I guess I just gave it the benefit of the doubt on the basis it won a Pulitzer Prize. However, looking back I can see there is an important link back to much earlier literature that is worth noting and to which I will return below.

I pass over for now Kerouac’s On the Road, simply because I have never succeeded in wading my way through it.

Now turning to earlier literature there are a number of really important works that are built around and upon the idea of a journey and what that means for, and affects, the central characters. These are really the precursors of all modern road movies and set the abiding themes. Whilst I will look briefly at these chronologically I do not suggest that they represent a continuous or congruous tradition. They just happen to touch on the same issues and use similar forms.

Perhaps the very first example of a ‘road movie’ is the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (second millennium BCE). It is really only the last three of the tablets that record the life and exploits of Gilgamesh in his wanderings and quest for immortality so it is really only this latter third or so of the whole epic that might be regarded as fitting the bill here. The key points though are there and in some ways established for subsequent works: the journey in search of a particular goal which either is, or is not, found. (I will come back to this point anon.)

Next Homer’s The Odyssey (eighth century BCE?), the story of the tortured and tortuous journey of Ulysses after the end of the Trojan war to his home in Ithaca. This is much more ‘modern’ in its form and much easier, and more accessible, for a modern reader, not to mention much longer, with a greater number of adventures and encounters on the way.

The Old Testament books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (sixth century BCE) telling of the journey of the Hebrews from captivity in Egypt to the Promised Land, led by Moses. (Does this mean that Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston as an over the top Moses, counts as a road movie?)

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (1320). A metaphorical journey by Dante down through the circles of Hell, through Purgatory, and finally to Paradise where he not only witnesses the Almighty but is reunited with his beloved Beatrice.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (late 14th century). A precursor of all the road movies and books that seek to present a picture of the contemporary country in which they are set. As On the Road is “the great American novel”, so the Tales are a portrait of 14th century England.

John Bunyan (1677-84). As with Dante, an allegorical journey to salvation in the Celestial City. (Oddly, although I have read it, probably more than just a couple of times since I was first introduced to Bunyan while at grammar school. I do not actually seem to have a copy of the book and so have not included it in the citations below.)

From these in many ways disparate sources there are a couple of particular themes that emerge. Each epic involves the main protagonist going through a series of encounters and tests which determine the outcome of the journey, resulting in either redemption or perdition. Gilgamesh fails in his search for immortality as a result a result of failing the test of not sleeping for a week. Ulysses reaches some form of redemption as he eventually makes it back home and regains his wife, Penelope, having largely remained true to his quest, despite his questionable dalliance with Circe. Moses does not cross over to the Promised Land because he failed a test set for him by God on the journey: he did not trust God’s word and struck the rock again in anger when water did not appear the first time. He was not redeemed. Dante on the other hand remains true and comes into the presence of the Divine. The Canterbury pilgrims reach the shrine of Thomas à Becket, despite all their ribaldry and naughtiness. Pilgrim is likewise redeemed by completing his journey despite the distractions, temptations and obstacles along the way.

These themes play out in the modern stories. Thelma and Louise plunge to their deaths at the end of a journey that becomes more and more criminal. The hippies in Easy Rider discover in their search for “America” that it is a place of ignorance, bigotry, isolationism, and hated, paying the ultimate price. The knight and lost of the other characters joint death’s dance at the end of the Seventh Seal, carried off by the plague. The travelling player, his wife and baby though are spared, arguably because of their simplicity and inherent goodness, so we have both perdition and redemption in one story. As I have already indicated Jake and Ellwood Blues both achieve a measure of redemption. In Priscilla Bernadette finds a man who loves and respects her, Mitzi is reconciled with his wife, at last bonds with his son, and finds contentment with Felicia.

The two Iraq veterans eventually find their peace of mind despite challenges and set-backs along the way.

In The Road the outcome strikes me as oddly Biblical, in a way echoing Moses: having guided his son across the country to safety he does not reach their goal, finally succumbing to some unidentified illness. This one stands apart to an extent though in that it is not immediately what his failure, that warrants perdition, actually amounts to. 2001 is also perhaps a little ambiguous. I tend though to favour the view, that I gather was Kubrick’s own, that although Dave Bowman dies, suggesting perdition, he is nevertheless reborn as the Star Child, elevated to a higher level of being, creating “a new heaven”, and so is redeemed.

So, next is my brief crit of my choice of road movie, and without giving away right now which film it is, I will say I have chosen one with a redemptive ending!

Alighieri, D, (Milano, P, ed) (1977). The Portable Dante. London: Penguin

Bates, E S, (ed), (1937). The Bible: Designed to be read as living literature, the old and the new testaments in the King James version. New York: Simon and Schuster

Chaucer, G, (Coghill, N, trans), (1979). The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin

George, A, (trans.), (1999). The Epic of Gilgamesh. London: Allan Lane

Homer (Pope, A, trans) (1942). The Odyssey. New York: Heritage Press

McCarthy, C, (2007). The Road. London: Picador

http://tricycle.org/filmclub/almost-sunrise

Collins, M, (2016). Almost Sunrise

The brief for this exercise says that it is not necessary to make any preparations but it is inevitable that I have at least been thinking about what I am going to do, and why. What I have decided to do follows on from a couple of ideas that I explored in I&P, thinking about the Georges Perec exercise, typologies (the Bechers), and Assignment 5.

With that background what I have firstly decided to do is focus only on a relatively short stretch of the road on which I live, about 200 metres out of a total length of roughly a kilometre, from the dead end at the top of the little cliff above the burn, to the first crossroad. Because this is where I live this is the stretch that I know best, not least because of the number of times I walk it with my dog. It also defines something of a distinctive enclave within the village as a whole comprising, as it does, three of the four oldest buildings in the village (350 plus years old, of which mine is one – there are few houses in most of the village that are much more than 120 years old), and includes a locally well known, and quite picturesque, but unusual, terrace of five former farm workers’ cottages.

Before I get down to actually taking pictures I first want to start with a little exercise in the style of Perec simply listing some of this small area’s characteristics, some of which have turned out to be a bit of a surprise:

Length of road: 200 metres.

Number of houses: 14 (of which one is unoccupied). Oldest, pre-1670. Newest, 2005.

Number of residents: 26 adults, 3 children.

12 retired people (comprising 2 former lawyers, 1 psychiatrist, 1 architect, 2 engineers, 1 cancer nurse, 5 unknown). 2 teachers. 1 lawyer. 2 care workers. 2 airline employees. 1 decorator. 1 dog walker/trainer. 1 full-time mother. 1 supermarket manager. 3 unknown.

10 dogs. 2 cats. 3 hives of bees.

25 cars/vans. 3 motorbikes.

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.

https://www.nadavkander.com

ww.paulgrahamarchive.com

A bit of a ramble, not so much a defined journey from A to B, with some observations along the way…

The idea of a landscape as a number of linked (though not necessarily physically or geographically) locations or places has been with me for a long time and indeed formed the very first assignment I did for this course, EYV’s Square Mile – a series of images showing a walk I do, with variations, almost every day with my dog.

(As an aside, here he is fast asleep on the sofa-bed in my study as I write this, tired out from a walk on that very route.

Admittedly a bit of an indulgence but not entirely inappropriate given the title of Soth’s book, though for us it would be more a case of “Sleeping by the Stocksfield Burn”. It does not have quite the same sense of scale and grandeur, does it? Anyway, I just felt like including it! It is about time the wee man makes an appearance. There is though nevertheless a serious point embedded in the use of this picture about how we interact with and are affected by landscape, the environment in which we I’ve and through which we move. In this case the landscape has simply tired out my dog!)

Alec Soth’s book is also one of my favourites. Oddly though I have not looked at it critically for a while, despite having referred to it a number of times while working on I&P (I think at the time I was probably more engaged by the more recent work of Matthew Genitempo). So it has been quite refreshing to come back to Soth and look at his work more closely again in the light of the article refered to in the course material.

So far as the book itself is concerned, one of the first things that strikes me, again, is the sharpness, the detail, the depth of field, that he achieves. This is no doubt a result of the use of a large format film camera (I understand he uses a 8×10), something that I have experienced myself with my 4×5. I am not quite sure why but it seems to me that this sort of effect is not so easily achieved with a digital camera, but it is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to film; 35mm, medium 120, and 4×5 large format. The other thing that I get this time round (no doubt the next time I go through it again it will be something different) is the sequencing of the images. Although the book is ostensibly record of a journey (or series of journeys) along the river it is not entirely sequential. There are diversions and on occasions it doubles-back on itself: just like the river itself. This question of sequencing, which I feel is what sets apart the best photo-books, is something that Soth addresses in the interview.

Turning to the interview in the link below (doesn’t the interviewer talk too much and ask over-elaborate questions!) there are a few points that I would like to reflect upon, not necessarily all related specifically to landscape photography. Almost random but all nevertheless personally important to me.

“The lesson I learned is that great pictures are all about luck, and anyone can take a great picture. But very, very few people can put together a great collection of pictures … the art, for me, is in the collection and interplay of images.”

This resonates very strongly with me. I am not, as will be apparent from other blog posts, a fan of the ‘salon’ approach to photography, the individual image, no matter how arresting or striking. Much more interesting for me is the sequence that builds and carries meaning and significance, that contains or creates some sort of narrative of its own. That does not though necessarily mean that there needs to be a clear narrative thread, that the sequence of images needs to have been created specifically with that in mind. I think here in particular of the work of Rinko Kawauchi whose genius, it seems to me, rests in her ability to bring together otherwise unrelated images, sometimes made over not inconsiderable periods of time, and find resonances, connections, coincidences, and combined meanings and significances within them when they are brought together.

Speaking of his project to record a version of the river: “… but I was shaping my own river. This is what photographers usually do, right? They create their own vision. I’d love to see how other photographers would approach the river. I’m quite certain that each approach would be entirely unique.”

Something else that speaks clearly to me and one of the reasons I get so annoyed, or more to the point, simply bored by the repeated, hackneyed images of the same things, the same places – whatever is fashionable or trending on Instagram or Flickr – the same view, from the same viewpoint, that says nothing about the photographer and what this place actually means to them (not much in most cases, I suspect). I would rather take a picture that is not that good so long as it actually means something to me, and possibly to some other hapless soul who happens to come across it and find something in it of interest.

Referring to Joel Sternfeld, whose work I am afraid I am by no means familiar with enough, yet: “He showed me that this life of serious looking was possible.” That is surely what photography is really about; not taking pictures alone but observing the world, attentively, critically, mindfully, and then choosing to record some element of that. Although not by any means a fan of the idea of the Decisive Moment I am very much in agreement with HCB’s view that this business is, at root, all about looking.

“… I really didn’t need all of the theory, critiques and assignments. I did’t begin to find my eyes until I was away from all of that. … I’m much more comfortable with the idea of apprenticeship than I am with the classroom.”

This is something of an existential question that I continue to ask myself as I work through this course. What really is the purpose or value of this degree? Why, indeed, am I doing it? What ultimately do I hope to get out of it? Is it actually going to make me a better or more thoughtful photographer (not necessarily the same things)? Not all of these, and any number of other, questions can necessarily be answered at any given time or consistently over time. I am not going to try to address any of them now. They are nevertheless always there, constant companions, always worth at least being aware of. Always worth bearing in mind, but not in themselves reasons, in so far as any of the answers might be negative, when not otherwise simply equivocal, not to continue with what at root I regard as a journey, an exploration of myself and the world around me.

“I don’t want to have to photograph water towers or Weimaraners year after year.” (Whoever put this interview together clearly cannot spell the dog breed’s name properly, and presumably has no idea what it actually means! I have used the proper spelling, curmudgeonly old pedant that I am.) I think this is a bit unfair on the Bechers whose typological work, though not something that I would want to do all the time myself, is serious and important. I do though agree about the dogs. I find Wegman’s work twee, pointless, self-indulgent, and utterly meaningless, not to say demeaning so far as the poor dogs are concerned.

Finally, “Words can easily ruin pictures.” I have banged on any number of times about my mistrust of combining pictures and words because of precisely this point. Not so much that words can “spoil” a picture, mar in it some aesthetic way, but that they can if used improperly subvert, manipulate and distort what the picture is really about. I would very much rather let an image speak for itself, even if that means that the message that the picture transmits is unclear, ambiguous, or open to different interpretations. Unravelling an image is something I would rather leave to the viewer than seek to trammel it with a written commentary.

Soth, A, (2017).  Sleeping by the Mississippi.  London:  MACK

http://www.seesawmagazine.com/soth_pages/soth_interview.html

Rather than just read Joel Snyder’s essay “Territorial Photography” in isolation using the example on the student website, I have gone back to Mitchell (2002) itself, particularly the introduction and Mitchell’s own opening essay “Imperial Landscape”, as I think this helps to put Snyder’s thoughts into context. That context is one that I have already looked at in the earlier modules of this course, not least in the final assignment for I&P, as one of the things that interests me about the idea of landscape, whether as a noun or, as Mitchell seeks to reclaim it, as a verb, is its social and political implications: ownership and exclusion in particular. As Mitchell puts it (at page 2):

“What we have done and are doing to our environment, what the environment does to us, how we naturalise what we do to each other, and how these “doings” are enacted in the media of representation we call ‘landscape’ are the real subjects of Landscape and Power.”

This resonates strongly with the views that I expressed on what landscape is in the first exercise on preconceptions. Ownership and exclusion are also elements of that thinking and these are perhaps, for me at least, the two most important points that I get from Snyder’s essay.

Snyder’s first main point, as I read it, might at first glance appear to be on a slightly different tack, discussing the way that landscape photography in the middle of the nineteenth century moved away from a pictorialist, artistic, approach towards on that was much more scientific and manufactured, thus establishing a sense of the truth and reliability of the photograph as a record. Linked with this he discusses the processes by which a mass audience and market for photographs was developed, quite different from the means by which “art” was distributed and seen by the wider public. It nevertheless strikes me that this is an important precursor to the two there main issues that Snyder discusses with his consideration of the work of Carleton Watkins and Timothy O’Sullivan respectively. As Mitchell writes at the start of his essay, the first of his “Theses on Landscape”: Landscape is not a genre of art but a medium.

The first main point that I take from Snyder, with his discussion of Watkins, is that landscape photography, at least in the US at that time, was effectively an imperial exercise. It was a way of saying that the great American landscape was that it was already “owned” by the (implicitly) white, western population of the continent. It was a relatively benign, though often imposing – awe inspiring, sublime – landscape that “belonged” to the modern Americans, that was already familiar and known. As with earlier landscape painting, such as the work of Bierstadt and Moran, both of whom I have looked at earlier, many of the places they painted had already been named by the new, non-indigenous, Americans.

What is more, as a concomitant of the ownership, Watkins depicted the landscape as something that should be exploited for its commercial and economic value. Not only did he take ‘picturesque’ images but, for example, he took pictures of railroads that blended into the landscape, and other industrial developments as if they belonged naturally in the environment. Ownership.

In the case of O’Sullivan, as Snyder presents his work, we also get a sense of ownership but this time of a more exclusionary nature. Watkins was employed by the mining companies, by the railroads, to promote their interests. O’Sullivan on the other hand was employed not to carry out precise, surveying and recording photographs (a task left to specialist surveyors and draftsmen) but simply to take pictures that could be used on an interim basis by his employers, the scientific (as opposed to the military who had hitherto carried out such exploratory work) explorers of previously unexamined territory.

This is the point at which the earlier discussion of a market for landscape photographs comes back into play. Watkins was producing work that was intended for wider dissemination, as part of the promotion of the ideas that the landscape was “your land” (at least that of the industrialists, mining, and railroad companies, something with which of course Woody Guthry disagreed with vehemently in his song “This land is your land”) that it was right and proper should be exploited. O’Sullivan’s work on the other hand was intended only for a much narrower audience, the scientific community that employed him, who were effectively saying that at least the knowledge to be derived from and about the landscape, if not the land itself, and the rights and means of its publication or distribution, was theirs alone. Exclusion.

Another point that Snyder draws out is that much of O’Sullivan’s work is the antithesis of that made by Watkins as its hows not a familiar, inviting, landscape, but one that is unknown and hostile. This is a sort of “keep out” sign, again part of the scientific attempt to retain ownership of knowledge. More exclusion.

Not touched upon by Snyder, at least not explicitly, but something that caught my eye was another element of this approach. In part it is perhaps explicable by the fact that there had been little previous non-indigenous exploration of some of these places, but it seems to me that fewer places have names applied to them that refer to modern Americans. For example, see Snyder’s quotation of O’Sullivan about Shoshone Falls (at pages 198 – 199), comparing it unfavourably with Yosemite. Many of the well known sites in Yosemite were then not named after indigenous peoples but American luminaries (such as Washington) and explorers, or Spanish imperialists. “Yosemite is a grace.” The falls on the other hand are named for indigenous people and are reached across “a waste”, are a “chaotic brink”, “a frightful glimpse of the unknown Inferno”. Yet more exclusion, and naked imperialism.

For the two further examples of photographs that the exercise calls for I have turned to Sandweiss (2002) as her book covers the photographing of the American West in more detail. From this I have chosen one work from each of Watkins and O’Sullivan as again their work was being used in different ways, consistent with the distinctions identified by Mitchell.

Staring with Watkins, here is a determinedly pictures view of the Yosemite Falls, a vista artfully framed by a stand of trees.

This picture falls clearly into the category of works that were demonstrating the ownership of the landscape by modern Americans and the propriety of using and exploiting it. This photo was included in a book published by Josiah Dwight Whitney following an eight-year survey of California and as Sandweiss puts it (page 276) it “exemplified the twinned spirits of scientific inquiry and unabashed boosterism”. The book was explicitly authorised and supported by the state legislature to act as a guidebook for travellers, a sort of illustrated Baedecker. Put to this use, whatever Watkins’s original intentions in making this photograph might have been, in the context of Whitney’s guide book, published in 1868, it becomes an invitation not only to visit the National Park (which had been created, or at least given protected status just a few years earlier in 1864) but to stand in the same spot and admire this particularly picturesque view of the falls. The visitor can “own” the view, and by extension the Yosemite park area, by standing on the same spot or simply by owning the book (of which only something in the order of 250 where produced with original photographic prints which effectively made that “ownership” more select and exclusive.)

For a further example of O’Sullivan’s work I have chosen not a straightforward landscape picture but more of a portrait, a group portrait, of Native Americans in their environment.

This was taken while O’Sullivan accompanied an Army run expedition, headed by Lieutenant George Wheeler that explored the area west of the hundredth parallel. This work is again exclusionary in that it was intended for the US Geological Survey and not for a wider, popular, audience, at least initially. It does though also have an ownership function in a similar way to Watkins’s work. What I find particularly interesting about it though is the uses to which it was put, how it was recontextualised by the texts that accompanied it in the survey reports and how its meaning was changed by those texts.

The composition of the image itself is fairly simple but still laden with significance. The central feature is a loom. It is still possible to see people working with looms like this today making the famed Navajo blankets and models of this sort of thing are offered for sale to visitors wherever you go in Navajo reservation towns. (I have travelled round the Four Corners area and saw, and was pressed to buy, any number of these things, temptations that I have to say I resisted.) The native Americans are in this way depicted as crafts-people. It also shows cobs of corn being dried, showing they are a rooted (forgive the pun), agricultural society. The figure to the front left though holds a bow and arrow, a nod to their martial past (the Navajo had been “pacified”, for which read defeated militarily, divested of their ancestral lands and confined to reservations, since the end of the 1860s).

When the album in which this image was included was first published in 1874 the accompanying text, as quoted by Sandweiss (page 191) described the Navajo as “an intelligent and fierce people by nature…[who have made]…good progress towards civilization”, all of which can be clearly read in the picture. It also supported the idea of modern American ownership of the West (Manifest Destiny) by reassuring settlers that this area was safe, while conflict continued on the Norther Plains and far Southwest. This ownership function was developed still further when the report was reissued, and presumably made more widely available in 1889, with the Navajo now portrayed as “quaint figures, dependent on government rations, whose glorious past had long since disappeared. And words that had once depicted them as industrious farmers now portrayed them as exotic anachronisms”. (Page 193.)

Paradoxically I cannot escape the feeling that in a way the sellers of the model looms on the reservations are perpetuating that same imperialist view of themselves.

Mitchell, W.J.T, (ed) (2002).  Landscape and Power.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Sandweiss, M, (2002).  Print the Legend: Photography and the American West.  New Haven:  Yale University Press