Aaaargh! I thought that the season of goodwill and a few mince pies might have finally turned David into a pussycat.....
Humbug!
Going back to JC, I have to admit that I look at some of the images in Scotland's Mountains and I am, quite simply, awe struck. Firstly that he managed to get out there, and up there, with all his gear to put himself in a position to make those images. All done on film, although almost certainly then scanned and processed as a digital file for printing. But also such a master of technique and such a clear vision. You can say what you like about him and the many who try to emulate him. His results will stand the test of time. I have no doubt about it. And if you read what he says he is an ardent conservationist, although I find there's a disconnect between the views and opinions offered by landscape and wildlife photographers and their lifestyles. But that's another matter altogether.
I think I need to contextualise my remarks regarding Mr Cornish. I appreciate he's not crap. I can see that. That's not where I'm coming from, nor have been coming from in previous comments. I used JC as an example merely because he's probably the most visible and well known currently. Although his work is flawless technically, and despite the fact the majority of what we think of as JC is shot on film, (although scanned and sometimes quite heavily manipulated) it has now become so easy to reproduce that it's undermined by the very genre itself. I'm not saying JC is crap, I'm saying that the genre is becoming crap because what JC does is essentially so emulated, reproduced and plagiarised.. no.. that's the wrong word... let's stick with emulated, that it almost makes his work insignificant now. If I were him I'd be very concerned that something I spent so many years honing to perfection was so readily demonstrated by those with much less experience and skill to such an equal level. Since starting this thread and the other one, I've found so many examples of landscape work that is easily demonstrated to be as good, if not better, yet when you look at the profile of the person posting it, it becomes apparent that they've only been shooting for a fraction of the time JC has. There's a reason landscape is so popular amongst hobbyists now I think, and it's the digital medium itself makes life so much easier. SO much skill and care taken in exposing a shot in film can be wiped away with a D810 and the highlight slider it's incredible. You just can't do that with film. Whether JC shoots on film or digital is irrelevant - its the digital medium that's ruining landscape, which was and always has been my point. It makes it very easy. Not just landscape either. I can guarantee you that the majority of people who feel they are proficient in landscape, but never shot film, will produce extremely poor work if you handed them a 5x4 camera and a handful of dark slides loaded with colour film.
I recall that Fay Godwin was on your approved list, David. I'm quite familiar with her work, indeed my own has been compared to it.
I don't think I've ever seen your work, sorry. I don't actually know who you are beyond a name on this forum. If I have seen it, I apologise in advance. If you are someone I should have, or indeed have heard of... again.. apologies but Jerry followed by a bunch of numbers doesn't exactly narrow it down
Despite what I may have been arguing on these threads I have also argued that traditional landscape photography almost always gives us a rose-tinted view of the world. Viewpoints are chosen deliberately to exclude any man-made structure or activity, and if that is impossible..... easy....clone it out!
Not exactly what Godwin is doig though. One of her books is specifically about how pointless doing that is, by shooting things like standing stones and neolithic monuments, she's discussing how we've been marking the landscape for millennia. She's not trying to show wilderness... she's discussing how it never never existed while we've been here.
I have argued here and elsewhere that landscape photography always has a documentary element to it and the best images have both that ("content") and aesthetic values.
That's where I disagree. The vast majority of landscape, especially amateur landscape hos b****r all documentary in it
Unless of course you describe documentary as merely photographing something as documentary. Most doesn't discuss anything at all.
But I will also strongly argue that it is still possible to document relatively unspoilt places and show them as if they were wilderness.
Very hard to do in the UK as stated above. We've changed the British landscape beyond all recognition over the past 2000 years... longer actually. Since the last ice sheets withdrew around 20,000 years ago, we've set to altering the landscape quite extensively. It should be predominantly forest... but it isn't. BEsides... showing it as it WAS is not documenting, or shooting wilderness. It's taking something that is not wilderness, and presenting it as wilderness. Unless that is the reason for taking the work in the first place, I'm not sure why you'd do that.
That is still an important documentary value. It's a bit of a paradox really. The landscape is one thing, but it is also another. Both are true.
Explain? It either is, or it's not.
I agree that wilderness hardly exists any more, although it is still possible to find the odd little niche here in the British Isles which is only affected by , say, air pollution. Locally there are some oak woodlands, complete with woodland flora, but barely a few feet high, on almost vertical sea cliffs a few miles from where I live, which will never have been visited or grazed. On a small scale, that is wilderness. There is woodland in steep sided ravines which are pretty close too.
You can't say "only affected by air pollution" as if it's not important. Because it is. Count the species of insect, and flora.. even fauna that are extinct now through environmental change. Yes, there are isolated pockets of woodland that are still indigenous, but they're still not wilderness. Peopel will visit them and traverse them regularly, and there's always something to indicate our impact. Will you still see red squirrels there? Nope... probably not, and that is just one of many things that's OUR fault, not a natural occurrence.
There genuinely is no wilderness left. Even if something eventually re-takes land back from us and develops in a completely natural way, it is not wilderness.
For your information, my own first book, published in 1987, was all about that. It was titled "The Lie of the Land" which kind of suggests my intentions; although having only been published in Wales, it didn't exactly take the photographic world by storm! My most recent book, about the Welsh coastline, was littered with pictures that were far from the unspoilt seascapes that one might expect. Welsh publication again unfortunately. Any way, my point is that these two aspects of the landscape still exist alongside each other, and to photograph both is valid. Which brings me back to Fay Godwin, because isn't that what she did? By showing the really s***ty aspects of the landscapes that we have created alongside the grandeur and beauty of natural landscapes that we can still find if we look for them her work was all the stronger.
Yep! However, we're not talking about Godwin, we're talking about the cookie cutter, formulaic landscape that seems to be the predominant form of landscape that drives most work I see these days - there's none of what you just describe in it at all. It's people taking pretty pictures, which leads me back to my main point. The only reason this happens is that it's easier to achieve now than ever before, so people are producing it because landscape always has been heavily dependant on aesthetic, and is therefore an easy target for amateurs to emulate it, get credit for very aesthetically pleasing work and therefore praise as a photographer.
It's a pity Amazon doesn't give previews or pages to review, because I'd like to see your work.
You might be right about Flickr; I never look at it.
Damned right I am!
. But there are reasons other than digital why much landscape photography is the way that it is. Firstly, the landscape is very popular, people love getting out in the landscape and they love photography. It's a bit of a no-brainer really.
Indeed, which is why it's ALWAYS been popular amongst amateurs, but now there are SO many more amateurs because digital has vastly increased photography as a hobby. It's no longer a long hard slog up a steep learning curve. You no longer have to be able to process your own film and print your own images to take control, and it's just so much easier to control all the things that made landscape technically difficult, such as controlling contrast for example... now you just shoot on a camera with a 13 stop dynamic range, and whack the highlight slider all the way to the left. That was impossible when shooting on slow E film... and still bloody difficult on C41. I'm sure there are other factors, but digital has made photography comparatively easy. You must know this, as you've done both.
There's Velvia, which, by its success amongst landscape photographers, showed us what we/they wanted. There's the example showed by the acknowledged leading mainstream photographers. There's the popular photo magazines which largely follow the same trends. There's the internet, of course; There's the honeypot locations publicised everywhere which everyone wants to go to. It could be Bamburgh Castle or it could be somewhere in Iceland (at the moment). And there's probably dozens of other reasons. If the established masters DO look at Flickr they might think....oh my god.....there's some damned good photographers out there.
Of course there are, there's LOADS of them out there, which is y point. They;re all producing work that is indistinguishable from each other in the main. Landscape was always something heavily features in Photo mags like Amateur Photography and Practical Photography et al, but it was limited to hobbyists... now it's so easy to get into photography, and so accessible, and comparatively to easy compared to how it used to be... AND.... so easy to publish your work that the world is awash with this imagery. It never used to be. It is now. All this means that traditional landscape as a medium is exhausted, becoming tired, and over-seen. So back to my original point again... digital has ruined landscape, and this is why you don't see it in contemporary art galleries: It's just too commonplace and too indistinguishable from itself to be of interest to anyone except other photographers and perhaps people with an emotional attachment to the land in question. Your book on Wales... I'd be interested to know who bought each copy. I know there's no way of finding out, but I bet it was mainly photographers and a certain demographic of people who walk or live in the areas you've depicted. The wider appeal (ironically) has been lost the more people shoot it.
But I refute any suggestion that traditional landscape photography died with Ansel Adams.
I never said it died... I said it is now dying through the overuse and dissemination of such digital imagery.
Or as you are suggesting, long before he died. So many people have built upon what he did and taken it that much further.
Yes... of course they have. I've been mentioning people who have been taking landscape further throughout this thread and the other one too. I'm saying traditional landscape is pretty much dead, and relegated to amateur endeavours and a few die hard names that will endure through fame and notoriety.
I find it terribly sad that the "arts elite" are so focussed on finding the latest gimmick that they fail to see what is going on under their nose.
That's one way of looking at it I suppose, but the other would be why should they feature work that's so overdone, over-disseminated and clearly becoming a parody of itself and the reserve of the hobbyist? The "art world" as people seem to want to call it, always HAVE looked for the new, the original and the challenging. Why should they feature stuff that's so well represented elsewhere, and all over the internet for anyone to see any time they like? You may think it's sad, and in a way, I agree with you. However, amateur photography and the digital mediums used to propagate it are to blame... not the art world.
If you are interested in exploring landscape photography any further rather than continuing to be dogmatic about it, I suggest again that you have a look at OnLandscape. Somewhere there there's a piece by Joe Cornish on Burtinsky. I'll see if I can find it and post the link.
I'm pretty well versed in most genre of photography, as I've studied almost everything there is to study. I have to... I teach at graduate and post graduate level, so I can't do that unless I know what I'm on about
I do wish people would stop thinking I know nothing about it because I choose not to shoot it. I can discuss any aspect of photography, with anyone who chooses to discuss it with me.. at any level they wish to discuss it. Except weddings and sport... not much to discuss there. I'm sure you may be able to list more landscape photographers than I can, but I'm far from ignorant about it's history, development and where it sits in the current canon of photography.
EDIT: to add to my list in the 6th paragraph....
Current equipment trends and fashions promoted by all and sundry, eg 10-stop ND filters, golden-hour light........
10 stops, grads and golden hour light are not current... they've always been overused.... but we never had the internet to showcase all this "cool" stuff before. There's a whole generation of photographers rediscovering stuff already tired 20 years ago, which just compounds the problem actually.
- I used to hate the Velvia look , most of the time I used Provia 400F, but i quite liked the painterly look you got from Sensia
Grose Valley from Govett's Leap by Richard Taylor, on Flickr
