Reflections on Chapter 3

There is a wide variety of content in this chapter, with some challenging exercises offering opportunity to explore personal views verbally and pictorially. In Exercise 3.1 I extended the discussion about what is picturesque to creating a picturesque: extending a point made in an Assignment in a previous course of how  photographic manipulation can be used to create an entirely different reality. The following quote by David Hockney has resonated:

"If you really think about it, the single photograph cannot be seen as the ultimate realist picture. Well, not now. Digital photography can free us from a chemically imposed perspective that has lasted for 180 years." (The Times 21 April 2015)

Hockney is not specifically referring to digital manipulation but his intention is evident: use the technology to free ourselves from the constraints of the film. I may be overstating but I sense (and it has come up in different guises in this and previous modules) a sort of disquiet among photographic academics about the use of digital software; a tweak here and there is fine but using imaging software that radically alters the in camera image is not really what we are about. We are not Scott Kelby. Presets are not for us. Yet basically all the filters and other manipulations represent merely easier, faster and much wider ways of altering our images that were used before in the dark room. Is it simply that using dark room techniques were 'difficult' whereas clicking on 'Landscape: Boost Contrast & Colour' is easy and (critically) accessible that makes the difference? Is there a fear that digital software resigns photography to being a Middle-Brow Art, as presciently set out by Bourdieu over fifty years ago? (Bourdieu, 1965). 

Photography as a serious study does of course have to set itself apart from Snapchat and selfies and even (in a Landscape context) the 'calendar image'. Doubtless that is why observation has become more important: take the notes from this course that encourage us to 'incorporate [our] current location and situation within [our] practice'. (p 19 course notes) We move from an objective view to a more subjective, reflective, observational and interpretative view. We use what's there. It encumbers us as photographers to create interesting subject-matter from what might be viewed as more mundane, sublime even (as with the subject-matter of my Assignment). However, that approach may not always chime with producing images that pass muster technically. As I pointed out in the last exercise, there is no guarantee when walking a photographic journey of arriving at a point of observational interest when the light is perfect, or even satisfactory. It is not practical to carry a tripod. Existing conditions are to be used in the same way as the subject-matter: use what you have where you are at that point in time.

Postcards were the subject of Exercise 3.2. Perhaps the main point here is how they have almost disappeared. For those of us who can remember them, there was something rather exciting about choosing a postcard to send to a relative - shall we send one of those multi thumbnail ones or one that has a nice bigger view? - but now they are superseded by social media. Why bother sending postcard when you can tell your loved ones all about it on Facetime, or place a few images on Instagram? The impact of Sherry Turkle's 'always on' society on photography is one I am considering for Assignment 4.

'Late photography' was the subject of Exercise 3.3. There is something about photography that makes the sublimeness of disaster scenery somehow picturesque. Perhaps it is the antidote to the ghastly drama of what preceded, the sense of peace and stillness and of control after what would have been a noisy and uncontrollable event whether that be natural or man-made. 

Exercise 3.4 presented a different challenge: design an image. I have no illusions about my lack of skill as a graphic artist; perhaps that is why I appreciate the covers of  The Economist. The effect is none too convincing but it tells a contemporary story that interests me: the rise of populism in Europe. 

Taking on board the point above about incorporating our current location into our work, Exercise 3.5 (extended into the Assignment) explores the history and site of William Champion's brassworks. It is a story of ambition, boldness, and invention on the one hand; and of naivety, self aggrandisement and incompetence on the other. The site is largely built on now, and, as a secondary aim, the Assignment endeavours to portray the consequent incongruity.

Exercise 3.6 was a deeper review of quite a difficult article. I reviewed it and considered as a possible lead in to Assignment 4.

Overall, this chapter an enjoyable and thought-provoking set of Exercises/Assignment.

Reference:

Bourdieu, Pierre (1965) Photography as Middle-Brow Art. Reproduced in part in Visual Culture: the Reader (1999) Evans, Jessica and Hall, Stuart (eds.). SAGE. London.

Exercise 3.6 : The Memory of Photography

The essay by David Bate was accessed from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17540763.2010.499609 using the OCA database.

We are asked to read the essay, make note of key points and consider research into areas that interest me. This is apposite, as p122 on the course notes refers to thinking about the critical review to be submitted for Assignment Four. One possibility (of two) is to consider some contemporary challenges and opportunities for Landscape photography presented by alternative media

The brief for Assignment Four is clear that the subject should be 'relevant to [my] own practice'; this subject will be relevant as post processing and use of smartphone photography are practices I adopt; in addition I would consider more forward-thinking ideas of how photography - specifically Landscape Photography - will change to embrace the fact that photography is just simply 'easier' in execution than it used to be, and, critically, how this pace of change has accelerated so fast that photography textbooks do not keep up. The subject has been discussed in books, but, in my reading, has not considered the most up to date technology.

How does this impact on The Memory of Photography? I would suggest in two ways:

• Firstly, Bate considers how photography is an 'external technology' that impacts on the psyche, quoting Benjamin and Derrida. This is an area that can be expanded to consider the work of Sherry Turkle on the social impact of contemporary technology: Alone Together as she calls it;
• Secondly, Bate discusses collective memory, specifically the significance of iconic public monuments and photographs.

Bate asks whether photography 'as a device for remembering' is impacted by the availability of digitil storage devices as a different from remembrance. He begins with Freud's quote that 'photography revolutionizes memory' - it democratizes and preserves it'.

Collective memory
 

Jacques Le Goff concept - modern collective memory manifested by public monuments and photographs,

Bourdieu (1990) commented on the family album: 'the truth of social remembrance'. In fact, it was part of his general theses of photography as a Middlebrow Art' more suited to the needs of the working classes than aspiring to the higher echelons of artistic practice, such as painting and sculpture. 'Without doubt', he continues, photography (and colour photography in particular) entirely fulfils the aesthetic expectations of the working classes'. 

Bate considers that the 'acquired characteristics' of a group or family photograph may apply equally to photographs produced by the state, media, arts, and independent social groups. There is a sense of unifying purpose represented by the collective image. This may apply also to landscape photography as manifested by the 'sense of place' - perhaps we can adduce a sort of 'acquired characteristics' from these too.

Meta-archive
 
Bate alludes to Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature and comments on on photograph taken of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square, an example of the double 'device for remembering'.

Prosthetic memory

The camera as a sort of reprogrammer of memory (Foucault) - 'people not as they were, but as they must remember having been'. I am not sure about this - you could equally argue the opposite - an image does have an element of factual objectivity that later events and thoughts might wish to eradicate.

Mnemic traces

Freud discusses 'screen memory'. 

"Freud used the term "screen memory" to denote any memory which functions to hide  another, typically unconscious, mental content. Freud distinguished between three types of screen memory: those in which a recollection from childhood "screens" or conceals some event contemporary with it, those in which a later recollection stands for a memory of a childhood event, and those in which a childhood recollection represents a later concern." (Smith, 2000)

 Childhood memories are not therefore as straightforward as they might seem: there are several confounding factors in the background that cloud the memory. Photographs too can be screen memories - we cannot verify the original experience of the photograph 'but the image provides a scene in which we may bring voluntary (studium) or involuntary (punctum) memories to bear upon it.'

Bate gives an example of a photograph can be an 'empty shell' for a favourite story, claiming that he remembers being very interested in the Navy as a child so the finds the Talbot image evocative of his childhood, an involuntary reaction.

Photographs, Bate concludes, have a 'sharpness and innocence that belie meanings that have far more potential significance., they should therefore, 'demand analysis rather than hypnotic reverie'.

The article led me to reread Bourdieu's article again, and also to read Martin Lister Photography in the age of electronic imaging, again considering the possibility of discussing further in Assignment 4. The essence is to challenge the view of childhood memories by the simple fact of accessibility - that democratization of photography as a simple, cheaper occupation open to all, and the prevalence of alternative socail media make the concept of 'childhood memories' as screen memories more difficult to understand in an imaging concept, partly because we cannot now even define what an image is; what is the reality behind the concept of the image as we can now have many alternatives. As with so much of photogpraphy literature, Bate wrote at a time before the internet; that changes a lot.

References:

Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) Photography: a Middlebrow Art (Polity Press) pp73-98

Smith, David (2000) The Mirror Image of the Present: Freud's Theory of Retrogressive Screen Memories. Available from http://www.psychoanalytischeperspectieven.be/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screen-memories.pdf. Accessed on 8 August 2016 

Exercise 3.5 Local History

This is a somewhat different exercise: to research into an historical aspect of an area of which I am familiar and use resources to set out a brief account of what I have found.

As a testimony to the varied history of land use in Britain, there is near our house in Warmley, Bristol - an area that is now suburbia personified - the site of what was, according to Wikipedia, the largest metal processing plant in the world in 18th century and is now the Kingswood Heritage Museum. A section of Googlemaps highlights how the site is between a soft play centre and a series of roads and close of housing, unimaginatively named after golf courses.

An aerial view of the environs of Kingswood Heritage Museum in the top left of the image demonstrating how what was most likely the largest industrial site in world 250 yars ago is now rather incongruously situated in suburban development (source: Googlemaps)

The history of the works is set out in detail well in a section of 'Bitton families' by Reg Harris, an online account of historical families who have influenced the local landscape. 

Briefly, William Champion's father had a trading relationship with the rather better known industrial figure of Abraham Darby, the inventor of the method of using coke rather than charcoal to smelt pig iron. Darby, along with other Quakers, established the Bristol Brass Company in 1702; he left and Nehemiah Champion took over the plant. Nehemiah established a works in central Bristol that caused an early case of nimbyism as local residents complained of the nuisance caused, and also enraged monopolistic local traders who had been selling imported spelter at high prices and now faced local competition.

Having lost an estimated £4,000 in an ensuing price war with Bristol merchants when employed in the family Bristol Brass and Copper Co, William exacerbated the political situation by himself developing a method of making spelter from calamine and, in 1746, establishing a new company in Warmley to exploit the patent. This distanced him from the founding firm, and caused further disruption in the market; Champion was undeterred with a typical early industrial zeal to prove everyone else wrong. Harris sets out as follows:

"a new steam engine was installed to return water, used by the waterwheels, to the mill pond, and a bigger dam was constructed to hold more water. .... The new engine cost £2000 and used £300 worth of coal a year. William by now had the most complete works in the kingdom....In 1761 ... there was a windmill for crushing ore and two horse mills in addition to the waterwheels and steam engine. There were 40 furnaces erected and also 25 houses, for the imported workers, and shops on the premises. In this year another steam engine was installed, the parts being bought from Coalbrookdale for £600."  

Apart from his unpopularity among peers, Champion was also a poor financial businessman. He sought, only partially successfully, further investment is his partnership and extensions to his patents, but unsuccessfully and he was declared bankrupt, dying 20 years later.

Within the grounds, there are relics of the ice house, windmill tower and clock tower from the industrial plant. But the estate also comprises Champion's former home - Warmley House and surrounding gardens. The garden is a rare example of an 18th century industrialist's garden and includes many unusual features, such as grottos, echo pond, former 13 acre lake, and a  statue of Neptune, some of which are constructed using recycled waste from the works. (source: http://www.radisol.co.uk/districtweb/main-site/history-zinc.htm). This is a richer source of photographic material and will form the subject of Assignment 3. As well as highlighting the unusual features, an attempt will be made to contextualise the estate within its surrounds. I have an interest as demonstrated in previous Assignments, of the contiguity of disparate land uses; this is a non-coastal example.

Exercise 3.4 A persuasive image

The exercise is in two parts:

• Find three examples of landscape photographs (or a set thereof) being used to assert a particular ideological point of view look for advertising as well as documentary and fine art;
• Consider an issue you feel strongly about and design an image that will have a persuasive effect upon a viewer.

 Ideological point of view

I selected three very different types of photograph (one a series), as follows:

Persimmon Homes image. Available from https://www.linkedin.com/company/persimmon-homes

House builders are one of the least imaginative sectors in advertising, mainly because their product is usually oversubscribed (except in times of economic woe) and there is no brand loyalty. People buy homes rarely; they are far more likely to buy based on location, availability and price than the particular builder, and many new home sites are in any case an amalgam of the product of several builders so an advert for one that draws in potential buyers is inevitably as much an advert for the others. House builders simply perceive little need to try very hard.

The consequence is that all images are very idealistic. This image from Persimmon is typical. It is  actually a generic image with the accompanying text as follows:

"Persimmon Homes is proud to be one of the UK's leading house builders. We build around 10,000 beautifully designed new homes each year in more than 400 prime locations nationwide. Along with our sister companies Charles Church, Westbury Partnerships and Hillreed Homes, we are committed to the highest standards of design, construction and service. "

The aspect is sunny - it could not be otherwise - and it is noticeable that the image is wide angle so as to invite a sense of space and incorporate more than one type of house - house builders are more conscious these days of not building identical boxes next to one another. A courtyard environment is implied; there are no cars (and no idea where any might be parked) and sop to the environment with the planted trees in the foreground. It is an image about product, the attendant landscape is a by-product; there is no context actual or implied as to the surrounding landscape - it is deliberately a closed image

 

Winner of Veolia Wildlife Photographer of Year 2011. Part of a series by Daniel Beltra on BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill, available from http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/wpy/gallery/2011/images/wildlife-photojournalist-award/4506/still-life-in-oil.html

This image is one of the most haunting I have seen. It is not strictly a landscape image but part of a series that includes aerial views by Spanish photographer Daniel Beltra recording the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Beltra's commentary is interesting: he mentions the beauty of the textures and colours of the spill from above, and how they might not look out of place in a gallery:

"It's a route to understanding that doesn't depend on shock. I think it helps get the message to a wider audience, because if the image is aesthetically appealing, people are more likely to stop and read the caption."

There is a sort of beauty too about the pelicans; it is only once you understand why they are black and huddled together that the horrible truth emerges. The message is explicit but cloaked in subtlety. 

Talhy Stotzer, Shopping Mall, Dalian, China

This image was taken in a Chinese shopping mall. It is an allegory - a photograph of  a landscape photograph -  as described by Giblett (2012, p234) thus:

"I read this photograph in part as an ironic take on the simulation of nature in photographs in unsustainable shopping malls and the kind of crushing impact these malls have on the living human beings who work and shop in them. This is expressed in the photograph by the man’s bowed or lowered head, his downcast gaze not addressing the camera and photographer, and his clasped hands, all signifiers of the abject"

The image can be read on several levels depending on the viewer's point of view - the opening of the lift may be viewed as opening a door on the environment, or alternatively a crack that is opening in the facade of pretence that covering lift doors in a mall with an image of trees is 'environmental'. The man is looking down, hands clasped, almost as if he might be embarrassed if he was aware of the symbolism he is unwittingly part of.

Design an image around an issue I feel strongly about

I am no graphic artist so this will inevitably be rough, I very much like the graphic artistry used by the cover of the Economist each week; almost cartoon but not quite. The most recent edition featured a leader on the parlous state of Italian banks with the following cover:

The allusion to the potential problem for the EU as well as for Italy is added to by the car that has already plunged. The paper employs very skilled graphic artists.

As a very crude copy, I designed this montage. It reflects my interest in EU affairs. Although a 'Remainer', I am sceptical that the EU can survive in its current form; it is too bureaucratic in many ways yet it is not centralised enough within the eurozone; it is not possible long-term to have monetary union without fiscal union, else the tensions between the prudent economies (Germany, Austria) and the profligate (Italy, Greece) will lead to intolerable pressure in the end. The Italian banking crisis alluded to by the Economist will be the latest episode. 
 
Is it an effective montage? Probably not as it is too detailed - it probably needs one liners in the text boxes with a narrative beneath. But I enjoyed the making of it...

Reference:

Giblett, Rod (2012)  in Giblett, Rod and Tolonen, Juha Photography and Landscape. Bristol. The Mill

Exercise 3.3 'Late photography'

The exercise is in two parts: firstly, read David Campany's  essay Safety in Numbness. Summarise key points and note down my own observations; secondly look at Meyerowitz's images and compare with own memories of 9/11, noting my own response to 'late photography'.

Safety in Numbness

Campany's essay is a short well argued case considering why photography may be viewed as the prime artistic response to the aftermath of wars and disasters such as 9/11. His start point is that Meyerowitz was offered the commission of photographing Ground Zero, and that he was filmed while making his documentary stills.

Why, Campany asks, was photography given the primacy here? Why was television, video - the moving image - not used to record the scene for posterity? He notes the tendency of 'late photography' (or the trace of a trace of an event as he alternatively calls it) to be the prevalent medium in this rather special set of circumstances.

The common features are that the images frequently contain 'no people, but a lot of remnants of actvity. The medium cedes primacy of reporting of events to the moving image, but then turns up later as the 'undertaker, summariser, or accountant'.

Campany argues the still photograph in this context is a 'simple signifier of the memorable'. He could develop this further with more explicit consideration of Barthes' thesis of signifier and signified for surely what is represented is similar to what Barthes saw in his famous thesis of the black soldier on Paris Match (see previous discussion). The key difference is that Barthes argues that the signification of the black soldier was to reinforce reactionary notions of race stereotype whereas the signification of late photography is more reflective and subtle, aimed at imbuing a sense of sadness and pointlessness, almost despair at what man can do to man. Images of bombed towns in Syria are of the same genre:

Aleppo post yet another bombing campaign. The desolation is inherent in the damage and absence of people. Available  from http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2014/11/crumbling-bombed-ruins-aleppo-syria/. Accessed on 10 July 2016

Campany instead goes off in another direction, suggesting that the still image is somehow more memorable than a moving image; perhaps but I think there may be a more prosaic answer: a still image works precisely when there is little activity because it invokes the sense of stillness in the audience; it is a more representative of reality than a photograph of a busy street, which is no more than a freezing of what is by definition a dynamic scene. It is the same reasoning that means landscape photography 'works': the subject-matter is by definition still. And, I would add, it is QUIET. Camping neglects the aural side of video but it is key to the difference: sound is part of the experience in the present immediacy, it is less so (indeed extraneous arguably) in the contemplative aftermath.

 Company implicitly accepts this as he considers the three phases of events- before, during and after - both in the literal sense of event ordering but also the evolution of photography as a medium. Before the advent of video photography was the only method of visual recording so took primacy by virtue of this fact alone: video is of the present, photography of the aftermath: the 'still cameras  are loaded as the video cameras are packed away' in Campany's words.

And there is something more generic in this binal approach. Consider sport, for example, where 'live' sport is by definition a moving image and the experience of which is enhanced by sound, yet reports of matches contain still images.  Cinema (generically including TV and video, surely) , Campany argues, not only invented the moving image but also the 'invention of stillness as a sort of by-product'. It is surely only natural that the camera should move towards a genre that more suited stillness and lack of sound, albeit as Campany points out, that many still images are actually only ' 'frame grabs' from video. That presupposes that 'frame grab' is not photography to which I would argue, why not?

Photography is therefore less of a technological pursuit, Campany argues, than a cultural pursuit. 'Photography is what we do with it'. Late photography has a distinctness from other media - it is a very photographic form of photography. And, I would add, so is landscape photography. Perhaps Campany is saying no more than that late photography is a response of the practice to other media challenges: retreat to that at which you are best equipped.

He concludes by pointing out the danger of an aetheticized response when viewing photographs: mourning by association that mitigates against social or political will by flattering the viewer's ideological paralysis. In simpler terms, we have done our bit by looking at the pictures. Maybe, but one must consider what other responses there might be; one has only to think of teenagers leaving the UK to operate with IS to realise that ideological paralysis may not be such a bad thing. We cannot all be activists for all campaigns.

Meyerowitz: Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive (2006)

The four images below give a flavour of Meyerowitz's work on the World Trade Center:

How do these images differ from my own memories of the event? Probably more because they are the 'Aftermath' rather then anything in principle. I certainly recall images such as the one below of rubble with merely iconic parts of the structures remaining:

Available from http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/9-11-iconic-images?articleId=USRTR2QTU4. Accessed 10 July 2016

But inevitably the late photography does not address the immediate human tragedy, captured by images such as the one below:

Available from http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/9-11-iconic-images?articleId=USRTR2QTU4. Accessed 10 July 2016

Photography also seeks not to address the wider issues of how and why the attack occurred; I recall being mesmerised by the sheer audacity of the attack; how terrorists learnt to fly and hijacked the aircraft. Also absent is the related attack on the Pentagon, and the crash of one aeroplane in a field after, reportedly, passengers attacked the terrorists on board. It is important to see photography of events as a part of a multimedia experience where the moving image and written word also have a large part to play.

But news is news. Even an event as significant as 9/11 disappears from our front pages and TV screens relatively quickly; there is an airing every now and again on anniversaries but life for the vast majority moves on. This is the value of projects such as Meyerowitz: they aid reflection, deepen the sense of tragedy and loss, and emphasise the desolation. I think as well the photographs add a time dimension lost by the immediacy of other media. Much is made of the emergency services (and many New York firefighters lost their lives in 9/11) but theirs is an instant response; within hours, days at the most, they are gone, to be replaced by those clearing up, in this case replacing the Twin Towers with Ground Zero. The second image emphasises this in particular reminding us that the clear up was a 24 hour response for many months afterwards.

Aside from presenting the enormity of the task, and the desolation, Meyerowitz uses icons to present defiance and hope: the flag on the building in the first building, and the implied line of the gaze of the construction worker to the lag atop a relic in the third. These are examples in my view of the value of late photography: it helps us recall in times of ever more and ever speedier responses to news events that there are many unwritten experiences those who remain, whether victims or, as in this case, property.

There is a danger, though, of late photogpraphy becoming a genre - a template that is used in many similar situations. The image of Aleppo has much in common with those of Ground Zero but the story behind is very different: a civil war lasting years as opposed to a terrorist attack lasting a few hours, and, one might add, one that is ongoing with little cause for optimism as this is written in July 2016. Rahter like sunsets over rocky coasts, or shipwrecks there is something seductively photogenic about post disaster scenery. Campany concludes similarly when he says that late photogpraphy is a 'very photographic form of photography'. It is what the medium is good at so we seek to provide it to the audience without, if we are not careful, of adding the context.

Exercise 3.2 Postcard Views

The first part of this exercise is to evaluate the merits of the images on 6-12 postcards (there are 8 below) and consider whether the images bear any relation to our own experience of the places depicted.

 

Guatemala

  

 

Tutankhamun

 

 

Victoria Falls, Zambia

  

King's College, Cambridge

The eight postcards are set out above. They have one thing in common: I have been to the places. But, in a way this is strange because the idea of sending postcards is to show people who may not have been to those places where you are. To a large degree this function has been taken over by use of smart phone cameras to take images - typically 'selfies' so one and one's friends/relations can be IN the picture and actively participating in the 'scene' - and post using social media. This has advantage of immediacy and personalisation. Instead of 'we arrived yesterday, hotel is lovely, went for walk, tour guide is great' written on the reverse of a postcard the front of which has a nice image of our destination and received not infrequently after we returned home, we send selfies of us in the hotel room, on the city wall, and grinning next to the local guide. Those clearly do, by definition, bear a lot of relation to our experience of the places. It might not be quite 'experience' in the sense Godwin was referring to, but it is personal...

One has therefore to question whether an exercise in contemporary photographic practice that focusses on what is a de facto old fashioned method of communicating is of relevance. The notes to the exercise give it away: 'if you do not have any [postcards] borrow some from other people'. Says it all, really.

But let us rewind 10 years or so to a time when the main form of communication from holiday destinations was the scenic postcard, as above. 

Let's deal with the trivial first; evidently the images will not necessarily reflect our experience because of the weather. We saw in the previous exercise how drab low cloud skies do little for the scenery; Iceland doesn't have a lot of sunny days so we can safely say the first postcard is the exception rather than the rule, though the day I was near a geyser was fine. Also, the Golden Gate image and Victoria Falls postcards are actually very similar to images I took, as follows:

I could of course posted my images on social media instead of buying the postcards...

The Crete and North Devon postcards are of a slightly different genre: the mini image of several scenes on one postcard. These hardly reflect my experience because some of the images are not of places I even know in Crete, or have visited in North Devon. But that is hardly the point: they present a rounded picture of the area to the recipient. The North Devon images go a step further as they are taken some time in the past, thus evoking a sense of the 'soft, warm blanket of sentiment' that Godwin refers to.

The aerial view of King's College chapel is another sub genre: the image that ordinary person cannot take - the unique perspective almost. And that is just about the beginning and end of its contribution to the subject: the unusual view.

The last two images do, I think, work at a more subtle level. Tutankhamun's death mask is the symbol of the experience of visiting the Upper Nile; it is the ultimate touristy viewing experience, similar perhaps to the Crown Jewels. It is not about place at all, but entirely about what the place (Luxor) means in ancient history. 

The Guatemala image is, I think, a fine picture that is quite evocative. Cynically, one could say that someone has got a family to put some traditional clothing on and stand close to a peaceful lake so that a postcard of 'traditional Guatemala' can be produced. It might bear little relation to what I saw, but it looks good and, importantly, it could be what I experienced. It actually wasn't but I experienced plenty that was very similar. The postcard works because it provides a flavour of the experience; selective and possibly contrived to be sure, but you don't sell the country by taking images of gun battles  in Guatemala City, or the appalling litter problem in many villages. And therein is, I think, the problem with Godwin's approach: postcards are not really designed to reflect an experience but to give a favourable taste of the area to an audience that is most likely unfamiliar with it. 

 Secondly, we are asked to comment on Graham Clarke's quote:

“… the landscape photograph implies the act of looking as a privileged observer so that, in one sense, the photographer of landscapes is always the tourist, and invariably the outsider. Francis Frith’s images of Egypt, for example, for all their concern with foreign lands, retain the perspective of an Englishman looking out over the land. Above all, landscape photography insists on the land as spectacle and involves an element of pleasure."

This is clearly a memorable phrase, as I knew exactly where to find it in Clarke's book (Clarke, 1997, p 73) and had highlighted it myself when reading on a previous course.
 
Clarke is a perspicacious writer; he understands the deeper essence of what photography is about and this quote is typical. A problem with quoting short pieces is losing the context, or even implying a context the author did not mean. Not in this case, as Clarke (ibid) continues that:

 "The image is an analogue of of those attributes we associate with a rural existence, so that to look at a landscape is often to enter precisely into an alternative world of possibilities"

Back to alternative reality again - it is uncanny how often this theme has arisen already in this course.

The problem of course is reconciling Clarke's view with the Edgelands philosophy, or the work of The New Typographers that were discussed in the previous section. Remember Baltz:  

"For me, a work of art is something that is interesting to think about, rather than to look at".  

And his monochrome images of suburban landscapes is aimed at engendering thought  - he leaves beauty to others, in his own words. In one sense they align: both approaches seek to discover an 'alternative world' but Clarke's is an idealistic, pleasuarable alternative that is accessible because it is unusual, exceptional in some way, whereas Baltz seeks to find meaning from  the everyday, the mundane: 'make use of the hand you are dealt with' (Baltz, 2012).

What Clarke is driving at is that landscape photography has a nuance that is its own, that landscape photography 'is framed within its conventions and codes' (ibid). These codes distance the photographer from his or her subject and imply an element of formality and, presumably, objectivity; the photographer can therefore only ever be on the landscape, never in it, and hence will seek the landscape as a spectacle as this approach is where the codes come into force.

I agree with Clarke here, for the reason that photography has to be a little distant from merely being subject-matter. Or at least if it is the latter, then form goes. The previous Assignment is a good example. Tutor says: Port Talbot Steelworks is an excellent choice of subject matter, giving you plenty of scope to explore some of the themes outlined in the learning log. But adds further: The variety between angle of view and focal length across the set compromises how well the images work together in depicting the journey.....From the images I can see via Flickr, some of the shots look either a little too saturated, de-saturated, overly processed (sharpened). 

Comments were taken on board, but still raises the broader question of which has primacy: subject-matter or presentation. They are not mutually exclusive but raising the issue of presentation at all suggests landscape photography does indeed have some 'minimum' codes that its serious practitioners must adhere to; or at the very least, cannot ignore entirely. As a former human geographer, though, I would argue that photography has to compromise somewhat if it wishes to broaden its reach. It is all very well quoting Doreen Massey, but she was an acute observer and interpreter of the human landscape, not a photographer. 

There is a risk of doing neither what I would call 'interpretive observation' nor 'photography' very well because of a perceived need to do both. I explore this dilemma in a reflective post at the end of this chapter.



References:

Baltz (2012) Tate Shots, video accessible from http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-lewis-baltz. Accessed on 29 June 2016.

Clarke (2007) The Photograph. Oxford University Press. Oxford.