Landscape Photography Repertoire
Reshooting the American landscape—again
Delicate Arch | Arches National Park
Part Three The view at the end of the tunnel
Many photographers spend their careers hopping from one repertoire location to the next. In fact, many of the locations have special times of the year which are considered best, and if you plan your schedule well you can maximize your time with the repertoire while it is in season. If you follow the migratory pattern of the landscape photographer you might spend fall in Grand Teton National Park at the Snake River overlook (next to the parking lot) where Ansel Adams took his photo. In the winter you can swing by Yosemite to make some photos of snow on the rocks in the Merced River, spring in the high desert shooting wildflowers, and summer in Glacier National Park making your contribution to the oeuvre of bear grass photography after which you'll certainly follow the signs to St. Mary Lake for some sunrise shots. If you are new to landscape photography this can be a little bewildering and you might consider attending one of the many workshops set up by landscape repertoire veterans to show you the ropes. You will learn what lens to use, where to stand, what time of day is most popular for the particular location. Since you will be shooting in the company of other photographers you will also be instructed in photography etiquette—an important skill when shooting with the crowds at the repertoire spots. Workshops are advertised as a means of developing your personal vision but are frequently indoctrination into the tradition; like a sewing class that teaches you to make a shirt from a pattern. My advice for those intent on developing personal vision would be to save the $500-$10,000 workshop fee and spend $10 on Emerson's Self Reliance and a trip to the museum.
Because the competition is ferocious and so many people are shooting the same subjects, landscape photographers spend an inordinate amount of time praying for something—anything—to set their photos apart. The prayers normally take the form of requests for peculiar light or odd weather; something like lightning striking Delicate Arch would be ideal. In fact, it was just this quest that led landscape photographer Michael Fatali, known for his fervent assertions that he relies solely on natural light, into an ignominious encounter with the law in September of 2000 when, during a workshop, he lit some Duraflame logs at the base of the arch to give it an unusual glow. It may have given the desired glow, but it also left a difficult to remove layer of waxy soot. Mr. Fatali was fined and banned for a period from the park. While most photographers have good field ethics, the drive to squeeze the most photography from the fewest locations has led to problems. Photographers have been known to uproot plants that interfere with their compositions, bait animals and trample sensitive spots in order to gain an edge on the competition. In the last decade, however, digital technology has made many of these techniques obsolete. It is now possible to uproot an entire tree with the stroke of a mouse. Another noted photographer, Art Wolfe, was heavily criticized when, in 1996, the Denver Post brought to the public's attention the digital alterations in his book Migrations. Some of the animals had been cloned. As the tools for digital manipulation improve and become ubiquitous we can expect to see an increase in unusual weather phenomenon at Delicate Arch and maybe even a jump in the size of zebra herds in Africa. Photographic manipulation is a complicated issue, however. When Ansel Adams significantly alters a photograph in the dark room it is the highest form of photographic art, but when Art Wolfe uses Photoshop, people call him a fake. For now, I am content to simply say it is an interesting question, although perhaps a more interesting question is, why does the market value a digital heard of zebras above real ones?
Among the most popular photography locations in the United States is the 'tunnel view' in Yosemite National Park. As a rule, a location with its own name, especially a name containing 'view' or 'point,' is in the standard repertoire. The tunnel view always has a handful of photographers standing vigil next to the parking lot in case of good light. I wonder what the subject of their art is. It is not really the Yosemite Valley, not directly. Like a musician playing a cover song, they are once removed from the subject. They have not come to the tunnel view to create but recreate, like making a quilt from a pattern or a birdhouse from a kit—an artistic road whose elevation reaches a highpoint at parody but spends most of its time in the lowlands of kitsch. To make this photograph requires some craft, but only a minimal knowledge of Yosemite, its history, or ecology; you simply stop in the gift shop, look at some postcards, and ask for directions. This is nothing new, of course. Leonardo da Vinci warned, "The painter will produce pictures of little excellence if he takes other painters as his authority, but if he learns from natural things he will bear good fruit." But isn't that what is happening here—photographers taking previous work as their authority? If they were following where the subject led them—were taking Thoreau's advice and growing wild according their own nature—it is inconceivable that they would all arrive in this same place, at the same time with tripods in-hand. Casting the argument in his typical Teutonic brusqueness, Schopenhauer denounces, perhaps too harshly, artists whose fundament is the work of others:
…imitators, mannerists, imitatores, servum pecus, [imitators, the servile mob] in art start from the concept. They note what pleases and affects in genuine works, make this clear to themselves, fix it in the concept, and hence in the abstract, and then imitate it, openly or in disguise, with skill and intention. Like parasitic plants, they suck their nourishment from the works of others; and like polyps, take on the color of their nourishment…In every age and in every art affectation takes the place of the spirit, which is always only the property of individuals. Affectation, however, is the old, cast-off garment of the phenomenon of the spirit which last existed and was recognized.
The distinction between exploiting the same source material and imitating the another's finished product is what allowed Ansel Adams to walk into Yosemite—already a celebrated photography subject by the time he arrived—and make it his own. To a certain extent we should bridle our criticism of the repertoire because it still holds promise for anyone willing to take a deep, fresh look at it. Also, drawing from the same material gives art a common language and its continual reexamination provides insight about both the subject and ourselves. Works based on Greek stories such as Sartre's Les Mouches (based on the Oresteia of Aeschylus), or religious themes like Raphael's Alba Madonna attest to this. Consider also the commedia dell'arte, which arose in mid-16th century Italy, and was formed around a set of stock characters used in improvised theatre. Four hundred years later the characters are still familiar: Pagliacco, Perriot, Pulcinella, Colombine, Harlequin. They have been the subjects of operas, poems, television shows, paintings, and plays and although the last four centuries must be littered with redundant and derivative works, artists still manage to breath fresh air into them. Albert Giraud did when, in 1884, he published his set of poems, Perriot Lunaire. So did Arnold Schönberg when, twenty-eight years later, he took Giraud's poems and wrote his own shocking tribute to the commedia. We remember these artists for reinterpreting the original material, not recreating past treatments of it. Molière would bore us if he had confined himself to producing plays in the style of the sixteenth century, but Tartuffe is wonderful, bright and original, even though the characters are derived directly from the commedia. These artists are giants of history and to cast them as examples is somewhat unfair, but in choosing to make the repertoire the subject of your art you are, in a sense, swimming in their pond—whether painting a Madonna or photographing Half Dome, you subject yourself to comparison with a much larger tradition. Creating anything meaningful becomes a Promethean task, not because of Solomon's claim that "there is no new thing under the sun," but because, unless you were raised in a cave, past treatments of this material are so ingrained that is difficult to determine whether your ideas originate from memory or creativity.
So what is a landscape photographer to do? You could follow painter Rockwell Kent's example—pack up all your gear, hop in a boat, and wreck it on the coast of Greenland or some other distant, overlooked place. Or, Schopenhauer be damned, you could unflinchingly step into Yosemite and try to cast a longer shadow than Ansel Adams. Truly, I don't know, but I doubt it matters what you shoot since art is about self-honesty, integrity, and one's relationship with the subject more than subject itself. So instead I take cover behind Robert Musil who noted in his 1934 essay, Serious Writers of Our Times, that, "In the sphere of aesthetic values, a child may easily ask more than nine wise men can answer. It is, nevertheless, perhaps worthwhile for the child to ask—but not decree the answer himself."
©2003 Mark Meyer