The Harmony of Overwhelming and Collective Murder

I think about Werner Herzog a lot.  Seriously.  I've been thinking recently about the way nature looks through his eyes (or lens).  In his chapter "Comprehending appearances: Werner Herzog's ironic sublime," from The Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History, Alan Singer makes note of the visual distortions that Herzog makes use of in several films: the heat waves that blur a figure and the collapsing of space created by a long lens.  Herzog lets the camera linger and spin nauseatingly around violent rivers, wind-torn trees, billowing eddies of oily smoke and flame, and grey clouded Andean mountains.  Watch this clip of Herzog discussing the Amazonian jungle during the filming of Fitzcarraldo (a film largely about hauling a ship through the jungle, in which the crew actually hauled a ship through the jungle).  Really, watch the whole thing, it's great.

It's worth noting that he made these statements during some incredibly difficult filmmaking, and it's understandable that he speaks of the jungle with such a snarl.  During the making of Fitzcarraldo, several members of the cast and crew were seriously injured, and Klaus Kinski, with whom the director had a tumultuous relationship (they threatened to kill each other at various points), starred.  Despite Herzog's apparently foul mood, I think he believes deeply in many of the things that he says here, because they show up repeatedly in his films.  His view that nature is wild, opportunistic, amoral, and ultimately unexplainable resonate throughout his oeuvre, and when he says, "But I love it.  I love it against my better judgement," he means that.  Herzog is always trying to come to terms with these contradictions: that he both loves and reviles nature, that humans both conquer nature and are conquered by it.  

Richard Misrach, from the series Hawaii, 1978

In this early Misrach, somewhat uncharacteristic of his work, I get a similar feeling about nature.  This tropical scene, which should seem like paradise based on our expectations of Hawaii, instead is terrifying, like Lost meets Blair Witch.  We get a sense of the violence of the flora, both in its immediacy in front of the lens and in the wild, leggy roots and vines.  I like this picture so much that I appropriated it for the banner at the top of this blog (the colors are inverted).  For me, this image illustrates Herzog's idea of "the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder" quite nicely, the leaves turning into daggers and the vines into snakes.  

Here's a picture that I made a few months ago.  It's currently untitled, but I call it Spidertree in my notes.  I'm very interested in the apparently uncontrolled and uncontrollable forms that nature takes, and my thoughts about this have definitely been influenced by Herzog and Misrach's Hawaii series.  Though in many of his films Herzog pits man against nature, he always understands humans as a part of nature and looks to plants, animals, rivers and rocks as a way to gain insight into what kind of universe we live in and what kind of beings we are - or rather what the nature of being is.  

Old Topographics

While reading this week's selection of articles about and written by the New Topographers, I was particularly struck by how deeply they questioned the practice of image-making and the production of meaning. 

Ben Lifson, in, what I assume to be an introduction to one of Frank Gohlke's monographs (but can't be certain because the reading was unlabeled), writes "he [Gohlke] tries to rid himself of position and to become, in relation to the land, an accumulation of receptivities. "  This is a pretty interesting statement, and is worth dissecting.  The thought of ridding oneself of position suggests striving to make an unbiased picture, which had, I think, a much different meaning in the 1970s than it does now.  Anyone who has been in grad school at Columbia knows that not having a position isn't looked upon too kindly around here.  All of us are asked at one point or another (or in every crit) what our point of view is, what position do we take.  In 1970 though, ridding oneself of position meant not making an Ansel Adams picture.  It meant leaving in the power lines and the trash and the trailer parks.  It meant not cropping out the tourists and their cars.  It meant photographing things as they were.  To become "an accumulation of receptivities" implies that Gohlke's role is to listen to, absorb, and translate the world around him, rather than imposing meaning.  

Lifson ponders on the construction of meaning in landscape photography, saying "Do these pictures originate in nature?  Or are they the invention of a collaboration between the eye and art, and imposed by perception upon nature, which in itself has neither pictorial order nor pictorial style?"  Do Gohlke's pictures, in which he strives to eliminate his own position, rely on the subject of the image for meaning, or it the content formed through the photographer's interpretation of what it there?  

There is something slightly contradictory in all of this.  Social concerns were a primary motivation for Gohlke and his fellow New Topographers.  Lifson goes so far as to call Gohlke's work "didactic" (although he doesn't mean this as a criticism), but also stresses that he tries to rid himself of position.  Lifson suggests that the meaning of the work depends on collaboration between what's there and what the photographer makes of it.  Clearly the photographer always make choices in what to photograph, and Gohlke's picture series are often so tightly focused that we can be certain that those choices are meaningful in themselves.  So there is some tension between telling and showing - does Gohlke create the meaning, or is it already there to be had? 

Frank Gohlke, Aerial view: downed forest near Elk Rock.  Approximately ten 

miles northwest of Mount St. Helens, Washington, 1981

Frank Gohlke, Aerial view: clear-cuts and logging roads.  Vicinity of 

Mount St. Helens, Washington (outside impact area), 1982

The above images are part of Gohlke's series on Mount St. Helens after it blew up.  He was particularly interested in the visual connection between the forests downed by the volcano and those downed by clear cut logging.  This particular pair of images, which sit adjacent to each other in a slideshow on his website, reveal a complicated method of the production of meaning.  Without his captions, we probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a forest downed by a volcano (and then harvested), and a forest downed by loggers.  When we realize that human activity has caused a level of destruction resembling that caused by a volcano, the visual similarity becomes enormously disturbing.  Here Gohlke both tells us and shows us what the place means.  The content is carried by both what is there and what we learn from its presentation.  

The contemporary photographer Justin James Reed works in the tradition of the New Topographers.  His work raises the question of whether the style of the New Topographers is suited to current issues or whether it requires modification.  His subject matter, power lines, communication towers, freshly built subdivisions, McMansions, and blank industrial park facades, is highly reminiscent of this forebears' work.  Oftentimes, his style is as well, embracing flat light and neutral compositions. 

  

Justin James Reed, Southampton, New Jersy, from the series Paradise, 2007

Other times, though, his work becomes much more subjective, clearly asserting the photographer's position regarding the subject matter.

Justin James Reed, Thornbury, Pennsylvania, from the series Paradise, 2007

Justin James Reed, Monroe, New Jersey, from the series New Cities, 2006

Robert Adams, Untitled, Denver, 1970-1974

Compare Reed's photographs of suburban development to this image by Robert Adams, made more than 30 years prior.  In allowing the unnaturally rolling lawnscape and the freshly excavated red clay dominate his pictures, Reed places far more emphasis on the his own position.  While Adams' perspective is certainly intentional, revealing the large scale and uniformity of the development, we are much less aware of this image as a photograph than we are in Reed's.  Reed is less reliant on the subject matter to carry the meaning and takes a more active role.  He is less a facilitator and translator than he is a writer.  

It seems as if Reed's approach is common amongst contemporary landscape photographers.  The New Topographers' attempt to rid their work of position isn't so useful in this world.  Now, it seems, making one's position clear, or at least differentiating it from an unmediated experience of the world, is more important.  

Subhankar Banerjee's Propaganda

Subhankar Banerjee's photographs of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge make for moderately effective propaganda.  Put into use as propaganda, first by democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in her opposition to drilling in ANWR, they follow the rules that govern propagandistic imagery to a T.  

1. They have a relatively simple message that most anyone can understand.  Though not explicitly stated, the basic message is "don't drill in ANWR".  The images and the text that accompanies them give several reasons for this: 

a) It is beautiful.   

b) The native people of this area depend on the natural resources there to survive.

c) Many species of animals use it as an important stop on long, sometimes intercontinental migration routes.

d) Exploitation of this area's reserves of coal and oil would mean large scale disruption of one of the few areas in the US that has gone largely undisrupted by human presence.

2. Almost all of the images are aesthetically pleasing.  Some are romantically beautiful, some rely on abstraction and formal balance, and some use traditional compositional tropes.  The images are not at all far removed from those you see in nature magazines, in calendars, and in nature documentaries and television programs.  They are not surprising, visually challenging, or difficult to look at.

3. The imagery itself does not do a whole lot (this is why it is only moderately effective).  Much of the content of the work is contained in the very long captions.  The images get your attention, and if you stick around and feel like doing a little work, the captions do the heavy lifting.  This is a problem - I'm sure many viewers of this work don't read the very long captions.  More on this later.

Let's look at one of his pictures as an example.  This is a screen shot from his website (which can be seen here); click on the image to enlarge it so that the text is readable.  

Ok, so this picture, Snow Geese I, is pretty typical for Banerjee.  It is quite nice to look at - the golden yellow and the deep blue are a complementary and traditional color pairing, we see lovely curving abstract shapes punctuated by countless points of while, it depicts an unpeopled landscape (which we like), and the landscape pictured is vast (we also like that).  The text tells us that we are looking at migrating snow geese in ANWR, that they are one of ninety bird species to spend part of the year there, and that the US government wants to drill for oil there.  The text carries the content.  It tells us what we are looking at, how we are supposed to feel about it, and why it is important.  The image tells us that the place is beautiful and big and has animals that move through it.  

This is basically the format of a National Geographic image (though oftentimes NG pictures do much more).  As someone who has always been in a household with an NG subscription (including now - you can get a year for only 12 dollars!), I'm pretty familiar with how those pictures function.  It seems that the main difference is that Banerjee's pictures are usually presented on the wall in a museum or gallery, that they are much much bigger, and that, perhaps, they are formally stronger, with more careful and controlled compositions. 

Here is a National Geographic example from their website (see the image in context here): 

Not a whole lot of difference.  Aesthetically pleasing image, caption that warns of the destruction of the landscape.  The caption is shorter, but this image is part of a long article about drilling for oil in Canada.  Of course, I chose an image and topic that would easily compare, but it is not at all out of character for NG.  

More of Banerjee's work:

Our readings this week rave about Banerjee.  Kelley Wilder, in Resource Wars (available here), says, "These are thoughtful and intelligent pictures, made to please the senses in an almost tactile way.  But their raison d’être, their main purpose, is to compose a powerful argument and to feed the intellect."  Wilder argues that his photos depict a "subtle ecology" and counter ideas about wilderness popularized by typical nature photography.  In Reframing the Last Frontier: Subhankar Banerjee and the Visual Politics of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (available here) Finis Dunaway argues, "...Banerjee's exhibit and catalog offer a different way to see the Arctic, a perspective that challenges not only the worldview of conservative politicians but also the prevailing wilderness motifs deployed for a long time by mainstream environmental groups."  

While Banerjee's photos are far more nuanced than the "white nothingness" that proponents of drilling described ANWR as, I completely fail to see how these images challenge traditional wilderness motifs.  Both writers argue that, by presenting a lovely picture accompanied by text that describes the location's ecological importance or the doom that might ensue if Republicans have their way, Banerjee is doing something unexpected.  He's not.  These images are expected and unsurprising.

I'm glad these pictures exist.  If they can help protect habitat or change one person's mind about whether or not we should drill in ANWR, they have served their purpose.  During the Bush years and the "Drill Baby Drill" of the 2008 election, this type of imagery should have been plastered on billboard and buses, published in every newspaper, and shown in every museum.  In a world where anyone is uninformed enough to actually think that ANWR is a white nothingness, the environmental movement needs all the propaganda it can get.

The story of the controversy over the Smithsonian's censorship of the captions is a testament to how dangerous the political climate is for the environment.  But it also indicates how little power the images have on their own.  Perhaps it is really the text we should spend the most time talking about.  

In the long run, these pictures don't do anything different.  Tossed around on the internet, they will become unattached to their captions.  Visitors to exhibitions will neglect to read the text, or will forget it as soon as they leave.  Some certainly will be profoundly affected by it, and they will write their senators and protest and pursue careers as ecologists.  But in the end, these images contribute to the myth of the vast wilderness, valuable for its beauty and for the animals it harbors.  They contribute to the notion that humanity and nature are separate things (except for the primitive natives).  They don't ask us to deeply reconsider how we visualize nature.

       
  

Phoebe Washburn

In reading "The Comprehensivist: Buckminster Fuller and Contemporary Artists" by Elizabeth Smith from Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe, I was reminded of the work of Phoebe Washburn, whose piece Regulated Fool's Milk Meadow, was featured at the Deutsche Guggenheim in 2007.  The piece is a room size installation, really a self-contained factory made from found materials, which produces grass for its own sod roof.  A conveyor belt shuttles small trays of grass seed through stations that provide water and light.  After the grass is fully grown, a "gardener" transfers it to the roof of the factory where, deprived of light and water, it eventually whithers and dies, completing a full life cycle.  See the images and the unfortunately uninformative video below to get an idea of the installation.  

       

Like Fuller, Washburn is particularly interested in comprehensive, sustainable life systems. Influenced by modernist ideas, Fuller envisioned these systems as elegant and efficient, practical despite their seemingly extravagant forms.  His designs were meant to be used (many of his domes still are in use); he believed that we could better our lives and world through good, thoughtful design.  Washburn's work on the other hand is remarkably, notably impractical.  Its construction is ramshackle and seemingly random - inelegant but functional, though its function is not necessary.  

In discussing the piece, the artist often notes that she is interested in "making do" with the materials she can find, clearly removing herself from the realm of modernism.  A modernist never "makes do."  A modernist uses the material best suited to the job, the material that works most efficiently, gracefully, and tastefully.  Perhaps this impulse can be blamed, at least in part, for our current crisis of sustainability.  What's the use of making do with an old building when a new building can be built better?  Why patch the old jacket when a new one can be easily bought?  The modernist rejects the homemade, the recycled, and the repurposed, which Washburn clearly embraces.  The design of Regulated Fool's Milk Meadow, references more the shantytowns of third world slums, where modernism isn't even an option, where any material, no matter how ill suited, can be made to provide shelter.  

Also

I also wanted to briefly mention something else from the Manifest Destiny/Manifest Responsibility catalogue that didn't really fit into my last post. In his essay Hogue says, "Indeed, there is a significant connection between moral attitudes toward nature and intercultural relations, especially in the way dominant groups treat the oppressed and marginalized." (pg. 11) He seems primarily interested in the way early American settlers treated Native Americans, but I think his assertion stands outside of this context.

It's quite closely related to how I have been thinking about my own work, particularly after last week's presentation. I've been trying to sort out exactly what connection I am trying to draw between nature and men going to the woods to have sex. (If you happen to be somebody not in this class and want to see the work in question, go to my website jenniferray.net.) In my photographs, I'm hoping to present nature and sexuality in a complicated way that dislodges idealistic notions of both. A culture that holds to a rigid interpretation of what nature is and isn't is likely to have rigid views of sexuality as well. If we imagine nature to be pure, comprehensible, and inherently moral, we may extend that to ideas of what is natural human behavior.

One of the most common arguments that homophobes use against gay sex is that is isn't natural because it doesn't result in reproduction, as heterosexual sex often does. I hope to counter this argument by identifying places in nature where homosexual sex happens and depict the natural world as complicated, sensual, and aggressive. Perhaps nature is amoral, functioning without regard to what is right or fair or as it should be. Likewise, human nature doesn't play by the rules our theologies and ideologies set; these moral codes are artificial.

Tommy, 2009

Shelf fungus, 2008

Hips, 2008

Impression, 2008

Strangler fig embrace, 2009

Go west, young man, and put solar panels on your McMansion!

In Manifest Destiny/Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape, a catalogue for the 2008 exhibition at the Loyola University Museum of Art, essays by Michael Hogue and Peter John Brownlee trace the evolution of American attitudes toward the environment from the days of the earliest European settlers to the mid-20th century. Through the lens of relevant art produced during this time, particularly landscape painting, both essays draw similar conclusions. They assert that the settlement of America was founded on the belief that cultivation (of nature and of other people) was of moral value, rooted in Christian religious doctrine. Over the next 250 years or so, these beliefs gradually morphed with political and cultural trends, from the agrarian populism under Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson's aggressive removal of Native Americans from their land. The story told by these essays ends with the perception of nature as a place for metaphysical discovery and mysticism, worthy of protection, delicate and finely balanced. This brings us to the modernism of the first half of the 20th century, filled with abstraction and color - simplified.

Brownlee and Hogue both legitimately suggest that we can learn much about where we are today by understanding the history of our cultural relationship with the American landscape. This is quite true, but much has happened since 1950 and this moment of environmental crisis in 2009. As scientists issue increasingly dire predictions about what might happen and just how soon that might be, it's worth taking a look at the last half century to see how we got here. I can't really do this justice in the space of this blog entry, but I'll try to connect some dots.

Along with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 came a new public awareness of interconnectedness of nature, and out of this came the modern environmental movement. We realized that it was important to not only protect pockets of wilderness, but to also protect the larger ecosystems. It seems that over the last 50 years this understanding has fallen by the wayside, undermined by the explosion of suburbia and the urge to own a piece of nature. Our lives are busy - convenience and willful ignorance allow us to fill in wetlands and flatten mountains without a thought.

Suddenly though, the environment, this delicate thing in need of our protection, now seems a little more threatening. With Katrina at the helm, this current string of natural disasters has shaken us. Nature no longer seems quite so simple or harmonious - the unbalanced nature doesn't simply shatter and die off passively, it seems poised to take us with it. The way we position ourselves in relation to our environment seems to be changing. We've discarded the purity of modernism, where nature is nature and human is human, and replaced it with a new kind of hybridity. It's not the touchy-feely Gaia/Mother Earth interconnectedness of the 1970s; it's a kind of pragmatic, unromantic hybridity - a recognition that nothing is pure or untouched. Our metaphoric hand has even touched the far reaches of the arctic, melting ice that has been frozen for millennia.

There is something of that hybridity in the Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus' pictures from an ongoing series called The New Painting.

Elina Brotherus, Der Wanderer I, 2003

Elina Brotherus, Der Wanderer III, 2004

Elina Brotherus, Der Wanderer IV, 2005

In this series, Brotherus, herself the figure, stands looking out over vast landscapes, recalling the heroic explorers that populated Romantic paintings of the 19th century (see below). Instead of appearing heroic, these figures are still and quiet, as if contemplating a loss. In comparison with the Romaintic paintings, the expanse these figures survey doesn't seem wild, mysterious, or terribly dramatic. Between the land and the figure, there is no longer the dynamic of conquest and conquerer or protectorate and protector. Both seem rather impotent. The title of the series, The New Painting, reflects the hybridity of the work itself - she has taken the language and subject matter of these old paintings and recontextualized them with a new medium.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818

Art, activism, and propaganda: what's an environmentally concerned photographer to do?

In Storming the Gates of Paradise (2008), Rebecca Solnit quotes the nature photographer Eliot Porter as saying, "Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment...Photographs are believed more than words; thus they can be used persuasively to show people, who have never taken the trouble to look, what is there. They can point out beauties and relationships not previously believed or suspected to exist." This statement characterizes well how Porter saw his own photographs - as a tool to persuade people that the environment is worth protecting, and as a way to re-visualize the world in order to convince people that it is beautiful. Although his images generally described a pristine nature, or a least one in which human intervention is not apparent, Solnit considers them to be politically charged. Though rarely fitting into the dramatic model of Ansel Adams sublime landscapes, they showed an environment worthy of protection by virtue of its subtle beauty and delicate ecological relationships.

Eliot Porter, Reflections of Cliffs, Lake Powell, Utah, May 1965

Eliot Porter, Cottonwood Tree, Moki Canyon, Glen Canyon, Utah, April 8, 1963

Eliot Porter, Ferns, Moss, Dripping Water, Redbud Canyon, San Juan River, Utah, May 25, 1962

Eliot Porter, Scum and Branches, Moki Canyon, Utah, September 23, 1965

Though Solnit often repeats her assertion that Porter valued truth more than beauty (by photographing unexceptional things and places, using flat light, filling the frame without a central subject), he clearly does employ beauty. His pictures helped redefine what we find beautiful in nature and create new ways of imaging nature, but also exploited this beauty in support of a particular political agenda.

Solnit's take on Edward Burtynsky's photographs in her article Creative Destruction (2003) suggests that his photographs are driven by quite a different motivation. She notes that Burtynsky shies away from claiming his photographs to be political statements, though, rightly, she also notes that "facts themselves are political" - the act of putting information into the public sphere via photography is political. While his work has clear political overtones, the artist himself is reticent to account for those overtones, not wishing to hypocritically attack industry. Though I think Burtynsky's reticence may have been motivated more by a drive for self-protection (if you don't stick your neck out your head won't get chopped off), his pictures speak even if he won't. (I think he also has become more politically outspoken in the last few years as environmentalism has become more in vogue.)

Edward Burtynsky, Nickel Tailings No. 31, Sudbury, Ontario, 1996

Edward Burtynsky, Rock of Ages #4, Abandoned Section, Adam-Pirie Quarry, Barre, Vermont, 1991

Edward Burtynsky, Inco-Abandoned Mine Shaft No. 13, Crean Hill Mine, Sudbury, Ontario, 1984

Though the scale of the subjects of Burtynsky's photos is often much grander than that of Porter's, many rely on similar formal strategies, particularly his earlier pictures. In the pictures above, of mines and the runoff from mining, the landscape appears beautiful, as in Porter's images. Color is clearly important in creating beauty, as are the patterns in the rock surfaces and ground. Both photographers made use of flat light and compositions that encourage the viewer to look at the entire picture from corner to corner. Burtynsky seems to draw on Porter's legacy in making this work, using visual seduction as a way to get the viewer to see processes, perhaps otherwise unnoticed.

I would argue that, whether or not he likes is, Burtynsky's work can be situated as environmental propaganda, just as Porter acknowledges his own to be. Porter uses beauty as a strategy to add value to nature, while Burtynsky uses beauty to call attention to subjects we may bypass otherwise. An interesting question then arises: is beauty the only, or best, way for environmentally concerned photographers to push their agenda?

In the 2004 manifesto, The Death of Environmentalism, the authors Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus describe the failures of the modern environmental movement and a path toward effective policy-making. It makes for a particularly interesting read in the first few months of Obama's presidency, given that many of the strategies it proposes were used during the campaign. Shellenberger and Nordhaus generally conclude that, for environmentalism to make real steps forward, it must be a part of a positive liberal message, calling upon core values (freedom, equality, ect.) and presenting a hopeful future.

I'm interested in where art fits into this agenda. Does art have a role in propagating an environmental message? Although Porter called photography a "propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment," his work was more complex than mere propaganda. Perhaps his work fits into Shellenberger and Nordhaus' stratagem: it draws upon something we fairly universally value, beauty, to promote the protection of nature.

But for today's world, this seems like a weak strategy for contemporary artists. Beautiful nature has lost its punch. In the wonderful world of the internet, I see new potential. Its egalitarianism offers us a change to see nature in a way that is not mediated by the values of professional image/film-makers. It offers us a chance to re-think the way we understand nature. To see it as something clumsy, messy, and awkward, just like us. Maybe if we can embrace this complexity, understand it as something real, instead of virtuous, pure, and beautiful, we can learn to include ourselves in nature.

I'll leave you with this touching meditation on the futility of life.