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: bushland
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. .
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.