David Ward - Landscape Photography - Into The Light

I want to take this opportunity to say how much I've enjoyed our discussions in 2008 and how much I look forward to talking to you all again next year. I wish all my readers a happy, prosperous and photographically productive 2009. May you all find the inspiration and light that you deserve!

I would like to apologise for my long absence from this blog but this entry has probably been the hardest for me to write. My mother died on the sixth of September 2008: an event that has precipitated a review of my sometimes-stormy relationship with her and a wider reassessment of my life and my art. A common enough reaction I’m sure and one whose repercussions will no doubt be wide reaching and long term.

Sadly life goes on and commitments still have to be met. Less than two weeks after my mother’s death I flew to the USA to lead a photographic tour to one of my favourite regions, Death Valley and the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada.

I made a number of images during the tour and, upon my return, waited for the delivery of the developed test sheets with the usual mixture of anxiety and eager anticipation. As I studied successive images a sense of deepening gloom enveloped me. Not one made me silently go “wow”, not one had “surprised” me. I consoled myself with the thought that whilst I had just been to one of the most amazing landscapes on the planet the events immediately preceding this journey meant that I hadn’t been in the best place mentally.

But, two months later on, I'm still struggling. I cannot honestly assign my creativity problems solely to the fallout from my mother’s death as I’ve begun to realize that my sense of dissatisfaction with my work preceded recent events. More often than not this year I've had the feeling that I've already "done" a potential image, already explored that set of tones or those forms or the underlying structure of that composition. A passing comment by a fellow photographer on the California tour served to reinforce this feeling. Looking at a composition that I had set up he casually remarked, “That’s how I would have expected you to make that image”.

Photography and what I write about it defines me to a large degree, so I always feel very despondent when I can't see images to make or when those that I can see I find unfulfilling. Having to struggle so hard to find and make images that satisfy me is an extremely discomforting experience. Don’t misunderstand me, I’ve never found it easy to make images that please me. In fact I’ve never felt entirely comfortable with my images (either for technical or compositional reasons) feeling that there’s always room for improvement. But how I feel now is different from this normal and artistically healthy self-critical attitude. On the past my habitual mild state of discomfort was always balanced by the joys of exploration and the possibility of making new visual discoveries. This time around it just feels like I’m revisiting familiar territory.

A couple of questions about my current predicament keep popping into my head… Should I actually be so worried about revisiting subjects and familiar compositional approaches? Do I really need to keep reinventing myself and/or embarking on explorations of new regions?

Photographers are both composer and performer of our art; a heady, concentrated mixture of creativity and craft. Many photographers – and many singer/songwriters – place as much, if not more emphasis upon craft than art. Their goal is to hone their “performances” in order to get as close to perfection as they can. They don’t worry that they are revisiting themes or subjects; they just want to do it better this time than last. I envy them their belief that this is such a worthy goal. I know from conversations with fellow photographers, and particularly with Joe Cornish, that one can get a great sense of achievement just from trying to perfect one’s craft. However I’ve always felt that this was the least interesting part of photography. I’m much more interested in vision than craft. To (badly) paraphrase Edward Weston, I believe that I need only be (just) a good enough technician in order to achieve my photographic goals. Obviously craft is important; a gross technical failure would make an image unusable. But the key for me is that I’ve only very rarely felt that I couldn’t make an image because I didn’t have the technical expertise whereas I have frequently felt that I couldn’t make an image because I didn’t know how to visually express a concept. There were a number of occasions on my recent trip to California where I was desperate to make an image but couldn’t find a composition that I felt did the subject justice. My vision was failing me rather than my craft. I could have made any number of visually acceptable images but these wouldn’t have satisfied me because they wouldn’t have challenged me or, I believe, an audience.

Joe believes that the landscape is different every time he visits it because there’s a different sky, a different light and a different angle to explore. I’m afraid that I don’t often find these differences compelling enough to hold my attention or make me want to make another image at a particular location. What excites me is the feeling that I have discovered a different way of seeing something. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I’ve actually found anything completely new, that honour only falls on the shoulders of a tiny number of artists in any particular generation. No, the novelty I’m seeking is a personal one; I’m trying to find new ways for me to see. This is the essence of landscape photography for me. It’s not about a time and a place except in so far as they provide raw material. I strongly agree with Garry Winogrand that, “Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.” And in order for me to feel satisfied, how it looks photographed must be sufficiently different that it surprises me. This distinctiveness isn’t a simple matter of different clouds or different light. My delight doesn’t come from merely chasing the weather or the light or crafting something more elegantly; my delight comes from chasing elusive visions and capturing them.

That vision is only very rarely pre-formed. Rather, the subject spontaneously suggests the vision. My photography is perhaps more akin to jazz than to classical music. I enjoy extemporising rather than performing from a score. Okay, you could say that all landscape photography requires improvisation. After all we need to adapt to the weather and light in order to use them to our advantage. But I think that there is a basic difference between this approach and my own. For a lot of landscape photographers these adaptations to conditions are not fundamental. They don’t start, as I do, from the position of studying the conditions and then deciding on what they will shoot. Instead, they start with a subject in mind and adapt how they will shoot it to accommodate the prevailing conditions. The excitement for me is to discover an image not to make better something I have already seen.

So I guess my current fear is not about revisiting subjects so much as it is about me losing spontaneity

I have recently voiced my present dissatisfaction with my images to my peers and received a sympathetic but generally incredulous response. To be praised for one’s work by one’s peers is, of course, always gratifying. In fact, I understand that such recognition would for many people be enough. Sad to say, I haven’t found it so. I cannot escape a feeling of staleness despite the positive feedback that I have received about the photographs in my latest images gallery. Please don’t think that I’m fishing for compliments here. I’m absolutely not and any comments on this entry that simply say, “the images are great”, won’t be published. I have found it very hard to square my audience’s opinion of my recent work with my own. I am aware that this mismatch in perception might just be due to my state of mind though I feel it to be more fundamental.

So, have I reached the end of one voyage of visual discovery and, if so, what does this bode for my photography? I’m not sure that I can answer either of these questions. If I have truly reached the end of one journey then you might expect a change in my photography, either in style or content or intent. I hope that this will be the case. If not I may reach an accommodation with myself so that I achieve more satisfaction from craft and don’t feel so frustrated about a lack of vision. Time will tell. For Roland Barthes the death of his mother was the impetus for perhaps his greatest work, Camera Lucida. I’m afraid that for me, at least at the moment, bereavement has only deepened an existing crisis.

I've recently finished Alain de Botton's interesting book The Consolations of Philosophy and it got me thinking about what the consolations of photography might be. You may be wondering why would I wonder at all about the consolations of photography? Surely photography doesn't produce or require consolations, surely it's just a simple pleasure (a past-time akin to gardening) or, at most, a simple desire to create. But for us to go to the trouble and expense of travelling across the globe and getting up at a seriously unsociable hour to make an image, surely there must be more to it than that. Conversely, for a viewer to be attracted to a photograph there must be something in it that rewards them – either emotionally, or intellectually, or aesthetically, or all three. Might an image do more than this, might photography alleviate the pains of a viewer or the woes of a photographer?

As a photographer, it has seemed to me for some time that my relationship with photography exhibits many of the same traits as an addiction: I need regular 'hits'; as time goes on I become inured to my level of 'exposures' and 'need' bigger hits; I experience extreme lows between receiving my doses of photography; I spend a disproportionate amount of my life thinking about making photos; I don't think about the costs (social or fiscal) when I'm getting a hit. All sure signs of an emotional addiction though, thankfully, not a physical dependency – I say thankfully because if it were a physical dependency I am surely doomed. I fear that my body will soon rebel against the 3:00am starts and the effort of dragging 20kg up a hill as I approach my sixth decade. Perhaps this is why playing with a digital compact is beginning to seem so appealing!

As well as highs, any addiction always has downsides. For me these include a large amount of time spent away from home and my relative poverty (compared to those sensible people I was at school with who now have proper, grown up jobs and five bedroom houses in Buckinghamshire). But the highs do console, easily compensating me for the lows. I wouldn't swap my life for another. It is very hard to surpass the moment when you place a 5x4 transparency on the lightbox for the first time and, miracle of miracles, find that you have largely fulfilled your vision. Perhaps it doesn't quite achieve the ecstatic feeling that accompanies a religious revelation, doesn't quite compare with the physical intensity of a sexual climax. But the intense feeling of euphoria that I experience when it all goes "right" has kept me coming back for more for 25 years.

Picking apart the causes for my addiction is bound to be only partially successful but I think that I have determined six motivations. I want to:

Record the beauty I find...

I have written at length about beauty elsewhere so I only want to reiterate here that a desire to capture the beauty we see around us is very often the foundation of any journey into art and it was certainly my starting point. I also believe that as we grow as artists so our sensibilities become more honed and so new beauties are revealed to us. This progressive revelation, this expectation of there always being more to find, is also key to my continuing fascination with photography.

Explore the visual realm – not to "express" myself!

I used to think (and say, if asked) that I was expressing myself through my photography, but I'm no longer comfortable with the notion of self-expression through the medium of a single image. My dictionary defines self-expression thus:

noun

the expression of one's feelings, thoughts, or ideas, esp. in writing, art, music, or dance.

The problem I have is with the word 'expression'; it implies a transmission of accessible data, the transmission of a "message". But images, dance or music don't have an agreed set of definitions. They aren't the same as words or even facial expressions; there's no possibility of truly knowing what has been 'said'. There's no direct translation of these art forms into words or emotions, often there's no possibility for even a partial translation. Single images are my métier but I strongly believe that there cannot be a clear transmission of meaning or emotion through a single image. Any image is both a window on the world and a semi-silvered mirror of the photographer. At its best it can reveal something about both, at worst it only tells you what you already knew or weren't interested in finding out. No matter how sharply focused, a photograph is a distorted and indistinct representation of the many signifiers it carries. If one really seeks self-expression then words are the best means.

I do still make images because I am moved or intrigued by the subject, but I don't have an expectation that an audience will have more than a vague notion of these motivations. So, rather than seeking to "express" myself I now think of what I do as an exploration. All I can do is hope that the resulting images might sometimes be a revelation to an audience, or at least resonate with them.

Find the boundary between description and evocation...

This is really another part of my journey of exploration. I want to find the boundary because for me this is the most exciting and elusive part of photography. The idea that one might make an image that is a perfect description of some thing but which evokes something greater, or something else entirely, is intoxicating.

The imperfect nature of message transmission via a photograph means that this process is bound to be a bit hit and miss – but it's fun to experiment. Given that photography is such a poor transmitter, how can we know where the boundary lies? I think only by observing where it lies for us individually and with our own images. Perhaps one of the greatest conundrums is how we might make an image yet find that the result surprises us, that it tells us something unexpected. How can it when we were there from beginning to end? That's such an exciting question for me. I don't think that we can find the boundary with a systematic search. I think that only by innocently playing with photography might we find some answers.

I found my friend Giles Stokoe's recent talk*, "Why we make images", both relevant and very interesting. I was particularly taken by his comments on play and photography as it struck a chord with my own views. I've thought for some time that we take our photography far too seriously (hark at him, I hear you cry!) when we should be playing with it. There is a temptation to stop messing about once we have reached a certain level of technical and compositional competence; to stick with what we know, to "play" it safe. This way we know that we will produce reasonable images. But this way lies stagnation. If we want to grow as photographers, we need to take what we've learnt and play with it with childish abandon. We should strive to see with the innocence of a child, work with a child's disregard for rules and their fearlessness about getting things "wrong".

Console myself with a glimpse of the possibility of perfection in an otherwise imperfect world...

Salvador Dali reputedly said "Don't worry about perfection... You'll never reach it" but for me a 5X4 image that I make that both excites me visually and is technically good is as close to perfection as anything that I will ever encounter in my life. It is also the most direct translation of my imagination. That is why I feel that the tranny is the embodiment of my vision; it is both a near-perfect object in its own right and the closest I will ever get to a perfect realisation of my vision. Not perfection but damn close.

I'm obsessed with form as is photographer Robert Adams. He asked the question, "Why is Form beautiful?" and answered, "Because, I think, it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning." This might seem a little melodramatic, perhaps even quasi-religious. Adams isn't suggesting that Form is the meaning of life but just that it suggests that there might be some meaning. Part of my motivation for photography is the desire to reach an imperfect understanding of the world, to glimpse order within the chaos that surrounds me. Without photography there are so many things in life that I would never have truly seen, perhaps never have even noticed. Photography provides for me a way to dissect the world, to distill a visual essence, and in the process to begin to understand.

Create...

Cecile B. DeMille said "Creativity is a drug I cannot live without." What can possibly be more satisfying than making something? Enough said.

Please myself...

All of the above combine to make photography a pleasurable experience for me. But more importantly photography is an area of my life where I am in control(?), where I can do as I please without having to worry (at least at the moment when I release the shutter) what others think!

* At the Light & Land Discovery Day

I spotted this dinky little digital compact in a local Tescos. Apparently Linhof's foray into this fiercely competitive market sector failed almost as soon as it began as the camera has been discontinued... Can we expect a similar offering from Ebony to appear in the timber section at B&Q?

A casual critical comment made by someone I've never met has had a quite profound effect on me. Given my defence of my right to critique the work of others, those of you who took an opposing stance could be forgiven for a feeling of schadenfreude. I should point out, though, that I defend this anonymous critics right to criticize. What they said didn't wound me, I'm not feeling persecuted, I just don't agree with what he/she said. Perhaps I should start at the beginning...

A participant on one of my recent workshops said that an acquaintance of hers had dismissively remarked that, "David Ward, oh, he only does one thing..."

First of all I'd like to point out that it's simply not true that I only do one thing. A line from The Blues Brothers seems apposite, "Oh, we have both kinds of music here – Country and Western!" I do both kinds of detail shots – doors and windows! To be a little more serious, I want to ask a couple of questions; what exactly is the one thing that the critic thinks that I do, what's wrong with doing only one thing and why has this comment annoyed me so much?

Well, I can't for the life of me think what the one thing is – unless it's what one might loosely term landscape photography? As well as the aforementioned doors and windows I also "do" ferns, rocks with lichen, fences, snow, trees, ice, running water, leaves, reflections, cloudscapes, seascapes, boats, sand dunes... oh, yes, and grand vistas and any other subject that appeals to me at a particular moment. These all fit within a loose genre but are nowhere near as narrow a field as the "one thing" remark would suggest. Unfortunately the critic didn't elaborate so I don't know what she/he was thinking of and can only conjecture what the reasoning behind the remark might have been. Perhaps the critic was lazily expressing the thought that I shot in a particular style, that I had an easily recognised approach to my subjects. Surely that's a possible mark of someone who has found their artistic "voice", something most artists would aspire to. After all we don't wish to be seen merely as plagiarists. Granted, a consistent approach might also be the mark of someone who is making images by rote, by the rigorous application of a formula. Of course I'm bound to say that I don't make images to any predetermined formula but one could argue that any artist who has found their "voice" is working within a set of self-imposed parameters, whether these be conscious or unconscious. Would my critic also have a poke at Rembrandt for only painting moody portraits or JMW Turner for painting sunsets or Pablo Picasso for painting funny faces? It's evident that the original remark is based upon a degree of typecasting. All these artists actually produced other kinds of images yet we know them for a particular type of output. We must remember that an individual piece of an artist's work sits within the wider context of the entire history of their work. Turner didn't always paint impressionistic work, that work appeared as a result of many years of artistic exploration. It's a common human weakness to want to pigeonhole people and their work but this reductive approach doesn't help us to a rounded understanding of an artist and their body of work. Artists are understandably known for their great works but these didn't miraculously spring to life fully formed. These artists worked hard, often for decades, before these masterpieces "appeared". And they often went on to produce different, less well know work after their famous pieces.

The idea of an artist's voice raises an ancillary question; what's wrong with an artist concentrating on a particular field of the visual realm, what's wrong with an artist being a portraitist or working exclusively on landscape? Or, what's wrong with being a specialist and what's great about being a generalist? Apart from in the hands of a few noted geniuses, true Renaissance men such as Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo Buonorotti, the non-specialist approach has tended to the production of work characterised by its mediocrity. True polymaths are very rare individuals and it seems self evident to me that to excel at anything one needs to fully apply oneself to that particular thing. A parallel with Olympic sport springs to mind. Participants in the Decathlon compete in the same prescribed ten events – 100-metre dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400-metre dash, 110-metre hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and 1,500-metre run. These incredibly talented athletes are rarely if ever world record holders in any of these individual events. If they were good enough to be the world record holder in any one of them their time would more fruitfully be spent concentrating on that individual sport. But their specialism is the decathlon not the individual sports, the context of their efforts is the performance of other decathletes not that of specialists. A similar choice might be made by an artist; the choice to explore many different artistic fields with the concomitant risk that one might never achieve the highest level of achievement. There's nothing wrong with this per se but a decision to diversify cannot possibly be a justification to criticise someone who chooses to specialise. Of course the rarified heights of ultimate acheivement are only ever reached by a few talented and committed practitioners so one could argue that it's not worth the effort, why waste years trying to be the best when the chance of getting there is so slim? Well, personally I can't see the point in pursuing an artistic endeavour if one doesn't want to make the effort to do it really well. I might not reach the highest heights but it will be an interesting and eventful journey.

Time is limited so an artist needs to use it wisely and effectively. In any artistic endeavour a fairly large percentage of the time available first needs to be assigned to understanding the technicalities, mastering one's craft, and only then can one concentrate on any artistic exploration. One could argue that once one has mastered the technicalities of photography the same techniques could be applied to any kind of picture making. This is far too simplistic a view. Photography perhaps has more specialisations than any other art form. These specialisms haven't arisen by chance. Economics obviously plays some part in the diversification but the depth of technical knowledge needed for each specialized field is of greater importance. Apart from a few shared fundamental principals – the aperture / shutter speed relationship being the most obvious – there is very little in common between say a landscape photographer and a sports photographer or a wedding photographer and still life photographer. Each area of specialization has its own canon of arcane knowledge, the little wrinkles in the field of photographic knowledge that need to be fully mapped and understood in order for one to excel in that arena and not trip and fall flat on one's face.

So why has the anonymous critic's comment annoyed me so much? Because it was a lazy comment with no substantiating argument. If one wants to be globally critical of another's work then one must make the effort to learn about what they do in a rounded way, not simply to caricature their work. The point of criticism is not merely to traduce another's work, criticism isn't just a chance to "have a go", not merely an outlet for spite. Properly used it is a way to apply critical thought to the work of others and to learn lessons that one can apply to one's own approach in the process. A global dismissal of a photographer's work is not criticism it's completely pointless. I have been critical of some of the work of a certain Harry Cory Wright but I think that some his seascapes are absolutely incredible. I would never assume that a photographer could only do one thing nor dismiss all their work with such a thoughtless comment. It is incumbent upon any critic to consider what they are saying not merely to say the first thing that comes into their head.

Anyway, time to get back to my one thing...