Robert Adams - Beauty in Photography - Essays in Defense of Traditional Values

The book is described by Amazon as "The eight essays in "Beauty in Photography" provide a critical appreciation of photography by one of its foremost proponents. The result is a rare book of criticism, alive to the pleasure and mysteries of true exploration."

Its a smallish book by traditional standards but I found it quite powerful.  It contains 8 essays and Adams in his preface written in 1996 confirms that elements of the book were written or at least started 25 years ago. Its therefore not a modern book but much of what it holds at says is as valid now as it was then i feel

Its very thought provoking book and to be honest at a time when I am struggling to move my work to the next level its actually a little inspirational and contains small little quote gems.

I will review individually the first 5 essays as grouped in his book.

Truth and Landscape
Adams speaks about Landscape photography always being subjective and interpreted by the photographer and therefore the final image telling much about the photographer them self as well as the landscape depicted in the image

"Making photographs has to be, then, a personal matter; when it is not, the results are not persuasive".

"It is the fitness of a landscape to one's experience of life's condition and possibilities that finally makes a scene important or not.

In summary the landscape photograph is better for the viewer if it contains an element of some kind, perhaps an emotion, as opposed to perhaps emotionless reportage style of landscape photography e.g. an image that engages the viewer

Beauty in Photography
"Art simplifies". I think in my better work the simple images are often the better ones and I think it would be good for me to reconsider this quote and use it to guide some of my future work

Adams details that every photograph must have beauty in it for it be worthwhile, though he doesn't use beauty in the literal term. Personally I prefer the term "Punctum" as used by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida, in that an image should have some narrative or ability to generate an emotion within the viewer. I personally find neither in Mu Ch'i's drawing of the six persimmons, yet it is a simple drawing and that in itself can cause the viewer to wonder

Adams states that equates form with beauty and this is true but I feel there is much more.

I enjoyed the quote from Roethke "I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing". Of course we all see things differently with different outlooks and life stories. He also is quoted to say "Beauty is the universal seen" but I think its much more than that. It can be the unseen also, perhaps because of location, perspective or as result of "turning a blind eye".

Civilizing Criticism
An interesting quote from Adams "..it is harder in photography than in painting to establish a recognizable style". My view has been the harder you try to create a personal style then likely the further you will progress away. The should be a naturalness about one's work and it most likely needs to come from within; it will no doubt evolve and it will progressive and experimental. At least thats how I'd like to think is how I will develop my own voice.

Adams describes some "wrong headed bases" for judgment. reason and "..we do not need to fear bad work as much as we had thought." Adams alludes to that it is only the artist who would know to what degree he/she achieved their intent. This certainly rings true for me as I have been struggling of late to reach my intention I think the idea and creativity of thought and intent will continue and I hope to narrow this current gap (or chasm :D)

Art of course is subjective and the critics themselves may look for different elements within an image. Sometimes one's work could be associated with past and current genre's but I also believe that each new genre is created by an artist or artists. Art is progressive.

Photographing Evil
Adams discusses the reasons for seeking to photograph a monument at a mine in Ludlow, scene to a killing of miners and their families by the Colorado militia.

Interestingly though he states he goes with the intent of taking images of the monument this is not what drives him, it his his social responsibility and this act awakens him to responsibilities he feels he has not fulfilled.

Reportage photography has always been a way of revealing the truth which may be to far away from us to see or perhaps putting in front of us what to know we have refused to look at. Whilst photographing evil for a future assignment is not my intent, I do wish to capture within a set of images man's influence on the landscape and let the viewer examine what kind of impact this has or had.

Adams does tend to drift from the title of his essay but I did like his examination of Lewis Hine and Hine's intention to ""....show...what was bad so we would oppose it and what was good so we would value it."

Making Art New
Adams says "..we respond best to affirmations that are achieved within the details of life today..". I suppose the current is always the most important but reflection on the past has the possibility of change in the future. I think this applies to photography and just about everything in life, you can quote me on this.

He also says that the "classic proof of work of art is major - that it outlasts its own age - .."
To a degree this can be true. However the artist trying to influence, it would be disappointing to not see this happening for one's work.

Adams quotes painter Mark Tobey "no young artist can grow unless he emulates someone bigger than himself". I'm not sure I agree with this, to emulate or to be influenced by, I prefer the latter as it suggests the work remains personal to the artist. To be able to position one's work can be important but should you produce work to fit in, or produce work because it comes from within?

Adams speaks about contempory art e.g. art within our lifetime and my lifetime will differ from Adams and many other people's no doubt. Should current art be new, should we feel safe in adhering to old principles and styles or should through our own experimentation generate new work?

I like Hyatt Mayor's quote "The really original artist does not try to fin a substitute for boy meets girl, but creates the illusion that no boy ever met a girl", This resonated with me and I think to the title of this essay.

Summary
I particularly enjoyed reading these essays from Robert Adams; they are small, bite size and with much to reflect on. Though perhaps dated they hold true still today and lives up to the billing from Amazon that I quoted at the start. I think this book alone will progress me much more than most books I have read to date

Exercise 4.6: Proposal for the self-directed project

I am tasked to write a project proposal for the self-directed project that you’ll submit as Assignment Five - the limit is 500 words.

The purpose of this document is to formulate and communicate your ideas to your tutor, for 
them to approve and provide comments, suggestions and any other feedback.

The project proposal is not a binding contract. It is quite acceptable for it to evolve and 
perhaps shift direction; this is part of the creative process. However, you may find it helpful 
to think of the document as a real-life professional application for funding, or for permission 
to photograph at a restricted location.

Your proposal should include:
• The project brief: What, where, how and why are you photographing this subject? Your 
motivation is important. What is the wider context around this subject?
• Influences and research: Which photographers, writers or other creative practitioners 
have you looked at/will you look at during this project? Include a reading list if 
appropriate.
• Likely treatment: How will you photograph this subject? What special techniques or 
equipment will you use? Do you need any further training? Do you need or have you 
got a ‘plan B’ in case something doesn’t work?
• Potential outcome: Note any (realistic!) ideas you have for resolving this body of work 
(e.g. book, gallery or site-specific installation). 
• Budget/resources: What will you need to spend, or what other resources will you 
require to complete the work? How will you access these?
 • Estimated schedule: Identify the different phases of this work and set realistic deadlines 
to achieve them by. It is often helpful to do this by identifying the final deadline and 
working backwards. 

You should also explain if or how this project builds upon your previous projects and research. 

If you’ve already worked in a related area, or if you’ve already begun the preliminary work, 
then include some photographs, if they are relevant to the proposal. 

My brief is detailed below:

The Project Brief

The brief is to photograph “Man’s Influence on the Landscape” selecting areas around my local area in the Forest of Dean where they are impacted in either a positive or a negative by the actions of individuals or groups.

On an individual scale we each contribute both positively and negatively in our own small ways and influence our local landscapes - a lot of a little can soon add up.

Influence and Research

Man’s influence on the Landscape can viewed as both positive and negative and the work of practitioners such as Salgado highlight that a decision by man to take no action can have a positive effect on the Landscape. I particularly enjoy the emotion that I find in his black and white images.

Much of what we see has been so ingrained in our lives that we take it as normal yet David Maisel using a viewpoint that is beyond most people can bring home the truth of man’s impact on a wider scale. Alex MacLean also demonstrated areas of Wales impacted by Man also on an aerial scale.

Sometimes things are right in front of our eyes yet we fail to notice them and a simple different perspective can bring them to light

Likely Treatment

I would like to work in black and white, I enjoy the contrast and shades of colours between black and white plus the simpolicity of mono. I will give this some thought. I enjoyed my experimentation for Assignment 2 in trying to replicate / develop a type of emotion within an image. I will need to read up on black and white photography and technique and consider using high dynamic range treatment within my images

Potential Outcome

I want to create a set of individual images but bound by the local of my local area and I want to demonstrate both the negative and positive impact of man on my local landscape

Budget Resources

I will need access to specific areas perhaps some achieved at a small cost and some through a simple request

Estimated Schedule

Given my current position regarding work and being away from home mid week I estimate around the end of February 2017 / Mid March

Exercise 4.5: Signifier – Signified

We are tasked to find an advert from a magazine, newspaper or the internet, which has some clearly identifiable signs.

 A semiotic analysis of an image or a piece of film is the quantification of how meaning is constructed or a message is communicated. 
Before writing ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ Barthes wrote the essay ‘Myth Today’ (1972), in which he described two levels of meaning: sign and myth: 

• The first level of meaning, sign, comprises a signifier and a signified – or a denoted object (the actual thing depicted) and the connoted message (what the thing depicted communicates). 

• The second level of meaning, myth, takes into account the viewer’s existing contextual 

knowledge that informs a reading of the image. 

The image I have selected is as follows:

Signifier                                                                            Signified
The dominant colour of yellow                                           A sandy beach
A skinny, attractive and youthful female                            Sunbathing with a slim body

Warm colour of yellow                                                        Heat and thus less clothes worn

The model looking and judging you                                   A requirement so do something   
An assessment of your body                                            


The product is almost lost by the in your face statement that you are being judged and you don't match up to the model contained in the advertisement.  The product needs to be found in the advert and perhaps because of this effort itr will stay in your mind. However very clearly the message most of the population would take away is that they DONT have a beach body and need to do something about it. The product owners anticipate you will buy their product to attempt to achieve the beach ready body.

The advert was very controversial

Writer Naomi Firsht wrote:

"Fashion freebie magazine Stylist practically dedicated a whole issue to it. Its front cover was a mock-up of the Protein World ad, but instead of a super-skinny model there was a smiling model around two dress sizes bigger, a beach ball under one arm next to the proud declaration: ‘Tell me I’m not beach body ready!’ and the tagline: ‘Go on, we dare you. Why no body-bashing ad campaign will ruin our holidays.’The ad-bashing continued inside Stylist, with an editorial titled ‘Your body is not up for judgement’ and then a four-page feature analysing the advert.The feature begins by smugly announcing that Stylist has always been a ‘diet-free zone’ because it wants ‘to give women a break from the relentless pressure to fit that particular week’s body ideal’. Very noble. Except I couldn’t help noticing that within the first 15 pages of the magazine, there were no less than five adverts featuring skinny models wearing bikinis or less. In most of the perfume ads the models were completely naked apart from some strategically placed jewellery.".

                 

Exercise 4.4: ‘Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men’

We are asked to read the within the link below. This text provides a contextual insight (particularly in relation to American photography) and an interesting sense of the climate from which much critical practice has emerged. 

http://www.deborahbright.net/PDF/Bright-Marlboro.pdf

Bright herself summarized her own essay saying: "Probably my most widely known essay, “Of Mother Nature” was an attempt to answer the question: “Why are there no great women landscape photographers?” With twenty years of hindsight, I can appreciate the polemical tone of the essay as an artifact of its time in the mid-1980s (raging gender wars within the Society for Photographic Education where I was active in the Women’s Caucus, an exciting energy as artists and scholars were speaking truth to power in the academy and art world and inventing new critical tools to dismantle entrenched minority privilege.) Those heady days seem distant, now, as conservative backlash has taken its toll. However, the fact that this essay still strikes a chord with so many young people indicates to me that it’s still doing its good work"

The essay per the copy right appears to have been written around 1985 and from this her summary suggests this itself was written 2005.

Key Comments / Points I noted:

1. The term Marlboro man rang a bell with me regarding advertising (I think TV and/or posters) for the cigarette and a manly cowboy puffing on one. A quick Wiki search and I find the following from this Wiki link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_Man
"The Marlboro advertising campaign, created by Leo Burnett Worldwide, is said to be one of the most brilliant advertisement campaigns of all time.^[2] It transformed a feminine campaign, with the slogan "Mild as May", into one that was masculine, in a matter of months. There were many Marlboro Men. The first models were a Navy Lieutenant and Andy Armstrong, the ad agency’s art supervisor.^[3][4][5] Other early models were sales promotion director of Philip Morris, Robert Larking, and others from the Leo Burnett ad agency, Lee Stanley and Owen Smith.^[6] A number of models who have portrayed the Marlboro Man have died of smoking-related diseases.^[7]


2. Bright starts off reviewing I think early pictorialism as the beginnings of landscape as an art form

3. I was particularly taken by the phrase "..whatever its aesthetic merits, every representation of landscape is also a record of human values and actions imposed on the land over time".  I wonder if the human values and actions imposed on the land are those physically or those portrayed in art and photography.

4. "The red blooded pioneer life" she refers to has been the subject of many films of the 50's and 60's and many of which I think I likely grew up watching with my parents. The strong male pioneer fighting of the Indians I think must be the Malboro men that Bright refers to. Actors portraying the masculine cowboy types were seen by the film goers as strong and red blooded and their woman often portrayed as the emotional homemakers in the big dresses. I note a few real life strong women of this era existed such as Cattle Kate and Calamity Jane.

5. Much of the scenery depicted in the stereotypical films I refer to above had been captured on canvas or as photographic prints. The real life pioneers brought in the rail-roads and to a degree facilitated travel and views of these locations and "lured tourists into making the journey to find the Real Thing."

6. Bright mentions "Returning to landscape, what can photographs of landscapes tell us about how we construct our sense of the world and its relations?" . Does this mean our views of landscape images are shaped by how the photographers interpret them since people both current and past may have no personal access or access to an unbias view of that particular landscape. There have personal views of the landscape and fitment within entirely shaped by the photograph. I expect the black and white cowboy type films did exactly the same when describing the red-blooded male and home making women of that era.

7. Following on from 6 above this most certainly would have been the view of male and female photographers in early landscape imagery with just a few Cattle Kate's / Calamity Jane's being accepted among the red blooded pioneering male landscape photographers

Exercise 4.3: A subjective voice

Write an entry in your learning log (around 300 words) reflecting on any current and previous circumstances and experiences that you think may influence, or may have influenced, your view of the landscape. Describe how you think these factors might inform your ideas about landscape photography or related themes.

Born in 1964, I grew up in Wonersh, in Surrey. I recall it from some research at the time it was Ognersh in the 16^th Century but wiki tells me it was called Wonherche in the 14^th century. It felt good to live in small rural village, especially with history and mystery. The eldest of 4 boys with many cousins living within the same village it’s fair to say I had an active, fun, and adventurous upbringing and childhood.

I never had the distraction of computers, consoles and probably not even television. In the evenings possibly TV encroached and I recall favourites such as the Goodies, Two Ronnie, Blakes 7, Benny Hill and of course Dr Who.

As a youth and young teenager weekends were filled with sport and very much the exploration and fun that can be had living in the countryside. We would roam for miles, never felt scared or isolated and I was completely at ease with my surroundings and most definitely I had a sense of belonging.

My view of the landscape was and remains influenced by freedom that comes with space yet has connections, perhaps a sense of grounding, attachment and is one of space, freedom and exploration.

I currently live in the Forest of dean in a small village called Lydbrook. I’m 30 yards away from the woods/forest, another 30 yards into them and you won’t see a house. The seasons have a wonderful effect on the landscape and the light at different times of the day and also in the different seasons always creates a different look, a different feel.

My influences growing up and how they’ve developed my views of landscape now mean that landscape photography, more importantly my landscape photography needs to capture the feeling of space, ability to explore but somehow a sense of belonging. A picture of the same image at a different time in the day, on a different day in a different season show and reveal something different in the landscape, something not there yesterday, but here today.

Changes in the landscape can be subtle, and generally those of nature are. Changes can also be dramatic and these are normally man made changes. Capturing these changes both subtle and dramatic can be both beautiful and sublime. 

If we can consider how the landscape changes with the weather we have an endless combination of possibilities.

It would be interesting to try and capture images of the landscape that reflect my emotion or feeling at the time expressing emotion through photography.

Exercise 4.2: The British landscape during World War II

Reading the short extract from ‘Landscape for Everyone’, published in John Taylor's (1994) A Dream of England: Landscape, Photography and the Tourist’s Imagination we are asked to summarise the key points:

• Taylor suggests it was conventional to visualise the English landscape in the past and in literary times something Masterman helped bring the reader from historic past to modern day through century intervals. 

• Public fears that the industrial revolution once started threatened to spoil the landscape were re-focused on the threat of invasion in 1940 from Nazi Germany. However despite the threat from abroad and a mechanised army superficially spoiling the small villages countryside, journalist Henry Warren in his book "England is a Village" suggested the strength of the English landscape could never be destroyed

• Interestingly this threat of invasion to a degree resulted in the landscape being "damaged" from within with signposts, distance markers, location names etc being removed with a view to hindering an invading army

• Displacement of people, unaffordability and inability of travel due to poor finances and petrol shortages prevented many people visits to the country and thus remembrance of the countryside as was could only be dreamed about. Interestingly my maternal grandmother was born in London but moved to the countryside due to the fear of bombing. this was also true for many families / children for whom the countryside had never before been seen

• For those that couldn't return to the country, or see it as it once was Batsford's topographic books issued 10 years before were re-published allowing people to see the countryside unspoilt as it once was allowing people to dream of travel once again

• War and the threat of invasion helped people realise the value and beauty in the landscapes within their country they had taken for granted. Value was placed in images of the country side and photographers and writers encouraged to promote it. Interestingly picturesque type images became less popular an those with more narrative encouraged

• The countryside became popular with a British public that grew an affinity to it, understood its value and regarded it as "theirs" and patriotism increased, available commodity in war time with fear of invasion

• The exaggerated and not so exaggerated differences between German and English locations helped promote and therefore increase value in what the British people called freedom both in spirit and way of life

• The threat of invasion changed Dover from a coastal resort to a defensive position. indeed the British propaganda machine even inspired civilians to look optimistically toward the skies whereas the underlying theme was to help spot enemy planes

Reflection
In life in many ways, things we take for granted that are around us all the time can sometimes only have their real value fully understood at a time of potential loss. A phrase that best examples this is "you don't know what you had until you lost it".

Our landscapes, our countryside changes around us all the time, both for the good and bad. We all notice how the seasons change our landscapes. Walking regularly in the woods each year reveals a bit more of what was hidden in the winter time when the leaves and pine needles fall from the trees making a floor of a different material to the one we walked on most of the year.

Local to me history is all around with remains of castles and even an Abbey. I've lived in several areas in England and have always been amazed at the concrete machine gun type bunkers that are around, some obvious and some harder to discover. Kent was a good location for spotting these and an example how events in the past continue to shape the current and act as a good reminder of what could have happened and what we as a nation could have l

Exercise 4.1: Critical Review Proposal

I've submitted my review proposal to my tutor who kindly advised it was a good subject but reminded me to focus the review as a critique rather than an observation of photographers work.

I've also inserted some text from the course work as an extra reminder to myself:

Things to remember when researching and writing:

• Keep track of your references; don’t try to compile them at the end of the writing process.

Use the Harvard referencing system; you’ll find a guide to this on the student website.

• If possible, look back at feedback on any previous essays to identify areas of improvement.

 • Writing fluently takes practice, so keep up with your learning log to help you develop this

skill.

• The more you read, the better your writing will be.

• Don’t start writing your essay without some sort of plan, however rough it may be.

• Divide your essay into three or four sections. Work out approximately how many words

you’ll devote to each part.

• Don’t try to explore too much territory. More in-depth analysis on fewer topics is better than

discussing many different topics briefly.
Stick to the specified word count (2,000 words).

• The critical review will count for 10 per cent of your final mark if you decide to have your
work formally assessed, so it’s worth putting in the time and effort to get it right.

• If you can, start thinking about, and preparing for, your critical review at an early point in
the course. This will maximise the opportunities for support from your tutor and make it less
likely that you’ll be pushed for time later. It may take longer than you expect to access some
of the resources that you’ll need, for example.