I have started scoping for a large format photo session with the Cambo 5x7 monorail. This pink gum (Eucalyptus fasciculosa) in the local Waitpinga bushland is one possibility:
Posts for Tag: Waitpinga
quartz: an imagined historical site of violence
This picture of the appearance or shining forth (Schein) of the quartz form amongst Cambrian Kanmantoo rocks along coastal Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia is part of a long term, ongoing littoral zone series in my local area. This particular location is near a natural spring of fresh water that flows through the coastal rocks into the Southern Ocean.
Unfortunately, the picture is yet another example of me, as the large format photographer, making mistakes on location. The scanned digital file is over-exposed and the bottom half of the picture is out of focus. I cannot recall why or how I slipped up, as the file is from the archives, and I have no explicit memory of this photo session.
I've reworked the file into something that is ok as a place-filler for the absence of any memorials of the violent, early 19th century encounters along the coastal region of Encounter Bay; ie., one between the white sealers from Kangaroo Island and the first nations Ramindjeri people.
Waitpinga Hill
This is a local southern Fleurieu Peninsula view that I see on those days when I drive up Willunga Hill from Encounter Bay on my way to walk in the local Waitpinga bushland with one of the standard poodles. We are looking across the grazing land of a local farm to rain falling on the southern ocean.
I had scoped the view a number of times with both a digital camera and a 35m film camera --- an expired Velvia 50 version can be seen on this post . I chose an overcast wintry day for the large format photo session using the 5x7 Cambo S3 monorail as I wanted some atmospherics.
I have struggled with a poorly developed/underdeveloped colour negative from the professional lab. The colour was all washed out. The initial scan looked awful -- the post processing has a substantial amount increased saturation and contrast whereas I normally do the opposite.
Waitpinga bushland + the Anthropocene condition
Living on the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia has meant that I've become familiar with both the local, banal or unscenic bushland that is considered unworthy of aesthetic attention, and making large format landscapes of this region. Since the past three decades have witnessed a growing awareness of climate change and its impacts on people and the natural environment, photographing nature needs to take this impact into account. How to do that with a camera and a lens is something that I struggle with without resolving.
The two pictorial realist photos in this post are ones that look at the non-human world in the context of what is happening to nature in the context of the background climate heating. A first attempt, as it were, to link landscape photography and climate heating, to push the traditional centre of the human experience and the human aesthetic preferences aside and to initiate a photography of mourning within the tradition of landscape photography.
This has made me aware of my unease with the views of those who hold that we live in a post-natural world. A post-natural world means that nature is no longer independent of human activity. The world we inhabit is the one we humans have made.The cultural concept for this new planetary epoch is the Anthropocene condition in which the geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. This cultural concept is used by many to describe an era of accelerating human impacts such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
However, if climate change is the emblematic crisis of the neo-liberal Anthropocene, turning the world’s climate into a joint human-natural creation, then nature is still ontological independent of humans --- it existed before us and will likely go on existing after us. Though the world we inhabit will be one that we have helped to make, and in ever-intensifying ways, there is no need reject terms such as the natural world. By “the natural world,” we mean the material structures and processes of the non-human world. So we should say nature is no longer unaffected by human activity. Humans are dependent on nature but nature is not dependent on humans. Nature will continue to exit without us and will produce new species and forms of life without human intervention. .
trying to avoid tourist photography
I find it difficult to make colour photos of the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula that avoid the all pervasive tourist style of imagery.
The power of the visual image has long been employed to great effect by the advertising industry to sell product. The tourism industry is no exception. It sells leisure, fun and the holiday experience in extra-ordinary locations away from the world of work. Hence the idea of the tourist gaze and the pictures of landmarks, waterfalls, animals, and empty beaches The relationship between commercial photography and tourism is extremely close, if not fundamentally integrated.
How is it possible to make an effective photographic project around climate change and the environment in the era of the Anthropocene is a question I keep stumbling over. It is a question that I have yet to find an answer to.
One option is to photograph in black and white. Another option is explore is to experiment. One possibility here is to harm or damage the image in some way-- eg., in the form of multiple exposure. My double exposure didn't really work. My second experiment was to move the camera slightly during the exposure of this photo of the coastline to Kings Head and Beach in Waitpinga:
Another possibility in harm intervention is mark making in the form of scratching and wounding the surface of the images to speak to the negative impact that climate change is having on nature --- forests, coastlines, wetlands, rivers etc Multiple exposure and camera shift enable me to step outside the tourist style.
Waitpinga: roadside vegetation + reactions
After I left living in Adelaide's CBD and moved down to live on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula in Victor Harbor I started to photograph the remnants of the local roadside vegetation. The bushland and the roadside vegetation in this region largely consisted of pink gums (Eucalyptus fasciculosa) and grass trees (Xanthorrhoea). I was finding the remnant bush and the sporadic road side vegetation hard to photograph as it was so messy and dense.
This was one of my first large format photos of roadside vegetation in colour:
I showed this image, and the companion one over the page, to colleagues in Adelaide. They were quite scornful and dismissive; a reaction that was made without giving any considered reasons for why these images needed to be rejected as of no interest. Was this because the images were in colour? Or that they mediocre, images lacking creativity? Formless and pretty? The subject matter was unfashionable? The subject matter was regional and not universal? I had to guess the reasons.
I did suspect that making landscape photography was a no no in art circles as straight landscape photography was considered to be culturally conservative as well as being very unfashionable. It was old fashioned and so akin to living in the past. Landscape photography was largely irrelevant in the art world, and there is a disconnect between popular landscape photography and art photography.
an experiment gone wrong
How can you photograph the landscape in the era of the Anthropocene in a way that addresses the future that is already coming?
The photo below was an attempt in 2022 to try and represent the movement of hanging bark caused by the wind within the context of the strangeness of the local bush in Waitpinga in the Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia. It was in the early morning during early autumn, when there was a light breeze gently moving the bark. The blur was designed to step away from the picturesque or the tourist style.
The method chosen was a double exposure of one 5x7 sheet of film and 2 long exposures of around 40 seconds each. The composition had been pre-determined with some earlier scoping with a digital camera.
Alas, the experiment did not work at all. Failure.
The tonality of the photo turned out to be utterly different to what I'd pre-visualized and planned for. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I scanned the negative. "What the hell" was my immediate response. I was dumbfounded. Then, when I realised the scan was okay, a wave of embarrassment surged through me. This was such a long way from the quality standards of the large format culture.
Japanese Zen aesthetics: Mono No Aware
This post on Mono No Aware in traditional Japanese Zen aesthetics picks up on this previous post about wabi sabi and my large format photography. This bushland photography in Waitpinga bushland on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia was a little project during 2002 that was done on the early morning poodlewalks with Kayla.
That earlier post highlighted how Wabi and sabi emphasise contentment and the acceptance of imperfection as a result of the ravages of time. Mono No Aware, in contrast, refers to awareness and acceptance of the ephemeral of life. The “pathos” (aware) of “things” (mono), derives from their transience. The underlying idea is transience and impermanence in life. It is an acceptance of perishability as opposed to the traditional preference for permanence.
The most frequently cited example of mono no aware in contemporary Japan is the traditional love of cherry blossoms of the Japanese cherry trees. These are intrinsically no more beautiful than those of, say, the pear or the apple tree: they are more highly valued because of their transience, since they usually begin to fall within a week of their first appearing.
The fleeting moment in the bushland was the early morning light:
The light was ephemeral: it lasted on this branch of the pink gum for a minute or so before disappearing. I knew the time it happened in the early morning during the early winter months and I would have the 5x4 Linhof Technika IV set up on its tripod waiting. Often I would have the camera set up but the clouds would drift at the crucial moment and there was no light on the branch.
a significant moment
This photo of an old pink gum log lying on the roadside next to the local Waitpinga bushland represented a significant moment for me as a photographer. It was a turning point in the practice of my large format photography, when I really was on the point of giving the 5x7 format away.
It was a a significant moment for several reasons. Firstly, this was when I started to consciously see nature (ie., the bush) in terms of change and transience. Nature was not unchanging or timeless (what has always been); nor was it purely a social or cultural construct. It has its own dynamical processes (eg., decay) even if I couldn't see the processes of things passing away and then them not being there any more.
Secondly, the image is significant because it was with the negative of this image that I finally figured out how to scan 5x7 colour negatives on a flatbed Epson scanner; and then to post process them in Lightroom to obtain a reasonable looking image. One that was other than beauty, and which avoided the problematic mystification of nature in environmental philosophy.
Thirdly, I connected to the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, whose emphasis on the acceptance of transience and imperfection, provided a counter to postmodernism in Australia. The characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, and modesty. History is a big part of wabi-sabi and the wearing needs to come with actual age and the influence of time. The presence of cracks, splintering and decay in things are considered to signify the passing of time and the weather.
in desperation
The picture below of roadside vegetation in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula was an attempt to ensure that the process of making a photos with the 8x10 Cambo monorail was successful. I wanted to nail it down in light of all the issues I'd been having -- with the shutter, the limited lens coverage, vignetting from bellows yaw, poor development of the film and Newton rings when scanning.
My experience was one of a continual series of flaws that got in the way of trying to do something with the 8x10 style of photography. Since nothing was working properly I wanted to sort out the dam problems I was experiencing by getting the technique under control. In desperation I simplified everything down so that I could make a picture that wasn't deeply flawed. It's a bit like being in a workshop or a construction site with being a mechanic.
Hence this representation of a tree in the roadside vegetation in my local neighbourhood:
I wanted to get things working right so that I could start to shift my photography away from a reflection of what exists towards a photography that would start to stimulate us to reconfigure our interaction with the world; to try and develop a photography that leads to new sensations and stimulates new ways of seeing and being.