Plane of Focus
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Walker Pickering’s “Nearly West” Explores Where South Meets West in Texas
Kudzu from Walker Pickering’s Nearly West, 2010Walker Pickering’s Nearly West hovers somewhere amongst Robert Frank, Walker Evans, and Stephen Shore. He seems to be channeling several eras of Shore all at once: the tight, sharp interiors feel like they could be in American Surfaces and the carefully composed exteriors could be right out of Uncommon Places.
Bulb from Walker Pickering’s Nearly West, 2011
Pickering uses Frank’s repeated symbols, with vintage cars and worn out store fronts showing up throughout the series just as Frank honed in on jukeboxes and the flag. The road trip is there, too, but full of places that feel empty and without a human presence.
Meal from Walker Pickering’s Nearly West, 2009
Pickering seems to be following Evans in a geographic and aesthetic sense. Many of the images feel like he’s revisited the same places as Evans, to give us an update, or to show us that there’s no need for an update, everything is still the same. Nothing seems new or even young in Pickering’s images. They almost seem like static monuments to themselves, a testament to a past that has been fading away since before it was built.
(Source: fototazo.com)
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“The elemental forces and processes that underlie and shape the planet.”
“St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall. 25 and 26 June 2009. Low water 1.15pm, high water 8am”, from the “South-West” section of Michael Marten’s series Sea Change“Recent landscape photography has often focused on human shaping and reshaping of the environoment: agriculture, urbanisation, globalisation, pollution,” Marten writes, “Even when critical and committed, this approach can emphasise — even glamorise — humanity’s power over nature. I’m concerned to rediscover nature’s own powers: the elemental forces and processes that underlie and shape the planet.”
“Worms Head, Glamorgan. 25 June 2005. High water 9.45am, low water 4pm”, from the “South-West” section of Michael Marten’s series Sea ChangeI know exactly what Marten means. In my own work I’ve been struggling with the opposite: how to glamorize the taming of nature by focusing on the assertion of the cityscape into the landscape. This is part of why I’m so terribly intrigued by Marten’s work. Instead of vacuous but beautiful images of a clichéd topic like the American southwest, Marten presents with images of nature untamed. Because of something as magnificent (yet quotidian) as the moon moving oceans, our cities must know limits.
“Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall. 25 and 31 August 2007. High water 4.30pm, low water 2pm”, from the “South-West” section of Michael Marten’s series Sea ChangeIn terms of the photographs themselves, I love how Marten plays so dramatically with perspective. “Perranporth, Cornwall, 28 and 29 August 2007. High water 6pm, low water 11.20am” demonstrates this best, with what feels almost like a portrait at high water contrasted against tiny figures in a sweeping landscape at low.
You can read more about Marten’s thoughts on the work over at Camera Obscura.
If you’re lucky enough to live in London you can see an exhibition of the images at Gallery@OXO this fall, from September 25 through October 1. If you’re not lucky enough to live in London, Marten will be releasing a book of the work this fall as well, so keep an eye out!
(Source: lensculture.com)
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from Aubrey Hays wonderful series Between Dog and WolfI’m really enjoying Aubrey Hays playful explorations of how we interact with the landscapes around us, be they rural nowheres, deserts, arctic tundra, or urban spaces.
You should totally follow her on tumblr.
(Source: newlandscapephotography.com)
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Kyle Ford Documents the “Forever Wild” land of northern New York
“The Hurricane” from Kyle Ford’s ongoing series Forever Wild“In the 1890’s a boundary of 6.1 million acres in northern New York, known as the ‘blue line,’ was placed under constitutional protection forming the largest park in the continental US. Since then, public land in this place has been governmentally sanctioned as ‘forever wild.’ “
“St. Gabriel’s”I’m really enjoying Kyle Ford’s on going series of images taken in northern New York. They remind me of some of our explorations around Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana: while the majority of the land is designated as wilderness, the land is clearly inhabited by people and small towns. The land, though, is more assertive in these protected ares than elsewhere in New York (or Indiana).
“The Flood”Ford does a great job of documenting this wilderness and the people living within it. There seems to be some kind of unspoken but agreed upon balance: towns can exist, people can live in the middle of nowhere, but the land remains the dominant force and to live in it you must play by its rules. Ford captures not only the beauty of this but also its tenuousness.
(Source: flak-photo.my-expressions.com)
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Dara McGrath’s “Boundaries II”: exploring open borders
(c) Dara McGrath, from the “Boundaries II” seriesFor one reason or another I’ve been reading a bit about the two World Wars here and there lately. And while the expansionary policy of the European Union is nothing new to me — I had the pleasure of writing one of the longer papers I wrote in college about the very topic (well, about Turkey’s chances at least) — it continues to amaze me how an integration of trade and common policy can resolve what had been longstanding geopolitical disputes.
Whether or not Dara McGrath shares my enthusiasm for free trade agreements I don’t know, but man am I loving his series on boundaries. While still international borders, thanks to the Schengen Agreements extension to all of the European Union in 2007 it is now possible to freely travel within most of Europe without any hassle at the borders.
(c) Dara McGrathMcGrath playfully toes this line, so to speak, exploring some of the now defunct buildings formerly used for border crossings. The blandness of many of the spaces stands out — deliberately, I imagine — almost as a testament against the importance of the borders in the first place and as a testament to their current virtual irrelevance.
(c) Dara McGrathAnyway, yeah, I love the topic and I love the images.
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Robert Adams has lost hope
(c) Robert Adams, “Sunday School, A Church in a New Tract, Colorado Springs, 1970”From over at Art Forum: “I’ve been asked why I didn’t keep making pictures in the suburbs. I think the answer is that, at some level, I hoped early on that showing what was wrong, what was inhumane, might facilitate improvement. I think I’ve lost that hope. But having said that, I would add that in many ways the whole landscape still seems beautiful. It is inexplicably invulnerable to our bad behavior. Though I also believe that it will punish us for our disrespect. Or maybe a better way to say this is that we will punish ourselves.”
An interesting and somewhat depressing comment, given that Adams is looking back on his forty-or-fifty-something years of work.
I think, too, that he is probably being too hard on himself. Sure, he may have not stopped any particular project from bulldozing over the next untarnished hill or mountain or prairie, but his work has undoubtedly impacted the dialogue of how we interact with and use land — how we view land. Urban centers are growing as the inefficiencies and waste of suburbs are falling out of vogue. Dams are being torn down all across America to return waterways to their natural patterns and restore ecosystems.
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