Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Goldilocks on March 13, 2008, 05:49:57 pm
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Riding along the switchback roads of the mountains of California, in the bay area of San Francisco, Mill Valley, Marin to be exact, I encountered a piece of property on the top of the mountain where a multi-million dollar house was being built by the owner whom is an engineer. The workers commented to me that this was an extremely difficult house to build. While I drove past many of the these properties in a completed stage, it was this one that was still being built on "prime" property, that caught my deeper conscious to ask "Why is man so fascinated with landscapes and views, that he will conquer any challenge to attain that view?"
Believing that I can't be the first person to ask this question, I tried searching on the web for someone else's view on this. While I found information, books and essays on landscape photography and landscape in art I realized that my question was much more universal. Yes, we say there is a spiritual element in Chinese landscapes, a connection to nature in paintings and photography, a controllng power element for military-- the forts and castles, the highly appraised market value for real estate, but why? Why is man so drawn to this?
Why do we pay top dollar for the land? Why do we battle to climb, hike, engineer, conquer and own just for a "view". Why do I struggle to conquer the challenge of capturing the time and space of a view in painting and photography? These are not just serparate questions, but one big complex question.
I have been a landscape painter and photographer for 40 years. Past 10 years I have been unable to physically engage in this challenge do to an injury. Finally starting to recover and begin the challenges of travel, hiking and capturing nature, I am now beginning to ask this universal question. I realize it is not just me and my preferences in life of what I like, but rather something that almost all of mankind shares.
Anyone who would like to join me on on a journey to understand man's fascination with landscapes and the challenge to conquer them (physically, artisically, militarilly, and financially - did I leave something out?), I'd be happy to hear your point of view. Please feel free to provide links to books, blogs, videos etc. Maybe someone has already come up with a really good answer, and I just haven't heard it.
Linda
(Goldilocks)
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Hi Linda:
I'd suggest reading 'Biophilia' by Edward Wilson. You may find some answers there...
Mike.
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Linda,
My first response, as a long-time lover of landscapes, was to repeat the quote attributed to Satchmo about Jazz: "If I have to explain it, you ain't never going to understand it." It's definitely a raw emotional thing with me, but I don't have any good answers. I hope this thread will generate some.
Eric
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No doubt it is an emotional thing. Those of us who live in large cities (DFW in my case) in less than interesting topography can use photography to revisit areas that inspire and refresh.
There is also the educational side, visiting lands too far and too time consuming to engage on a first hand basis.
Video also works the same magic.
Refreshes the soul.
bob
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I don't see a need to understand it, overthink it or analyse it. It's primal. We like it and we need it. It makes us feel good so enjoy it.
Michael
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A couple of thoughts related to your questions, though not necessarily related to each other:
Regarding why people seem to want so much to live where the best landscapes and views are, I believe it must be related to cultural traits from back in the days when most people were farmers (I'm including livestock raising here), and having good land to farm was of vastly more importance to one's prosperity than it is today to urban and suburban dwellers. This led to an almost irrational (at least to us urban moderns) attachment to one's land, and a desire to have the best land possible. It becomes "my land", and the land is permanent in a way that houses, cars, and other things inhabited by people aren't.
For the importance that landscape holds for cultural identity and human history, there's a marvelous book called "Landscape and Memory" by Simon Schama. Since you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend it.
Lisa
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I think that the question is very wide and not really part of any homogeneous whole as the OP suggested it might be.
Regarding the prime site for a house, supposedly up on top of a hill, that is, I think, far more connected to one´s own nature and the need to proclaim that one is king of the castle: the higher I go, the better than you am I. Where we live, there is a range of mountains running along one side of the island. Planning permission is now (thank goodness) getting very tight and those houses already built up on the lower slopes of these rises are changing hands for millions of Euros a pop. It is all about income and status. Value for money is not a consideration, because the percentage of total cost in merely creating the underpinnings for what becomes the habitable space above makes a nonsense of the maths.
It is all ego. And, I suppose, if you can finance it, why not, even if it does become a blot on the landscape? Another´s perceived blot is your palace.
From the artistic point of view, as in putting images on paper, perhaps the reason it is popular is that it is relatively easy to do. Who can tell if you have effed up? With people shots your errors are immediately visible, so avoid that and shoot something that can´t complain sounds a safer bet. This is not a slur on landscape photographers - some are very good indeed,being blessed with eye. Some even have expensive cameras with which to make that eye shine a little more brightly... but that´s another thread.
Perhaps it´s because everybody else does that kind of thing on holiday that it becomes the normal thing to do when you own a camera. Strange.
Rob C
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A couple of thoughts related to your questions, though not necessarily related to each other:
Regarding why people seem to want so much to live where the best landscapes and views are, I believe it must be related to cultural traits from back in the days when most people were farmers (I'm including livestock raising here), and having good land to farm was of vastly more importance to one's prosperity than it is today to urban and suburban dwellers. This led to an almost irrational (at least to us urban moderns) attachment to one's land, and a desire to have the best land possible. It becomes "my land", and the land is permanent in a way that houses, cars, and other things inhabited by people aren't.
For the importance that landscape holds for cultural identity and human history, there's a marvelous book called "Landscape and Memory" by Simon Schama. Since you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend it.
Lisa
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Yes, but...
The landscapes that appeal to farmers have essentially nothing in common with those we photographers love. For example, I live in the western Finger Lakes region in rural New York state. Around here the good farmland is the photographically uninteresting valley-bottom land. It's extremely fertile glacial runoff, but flat as a billiard table, and cut off from any appealing vistas by the low valley walls hemming it in. On the other hand, the hilltops have beautiful vistas; but the soil is absolute garbage- gravel, rock and clay.
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I can't comment on the practical or historical reasons for valuing land, but for general appreciation of landscapes (viewing), it seems to have something to do with symmetries, which are also used subconsciously in mate selection. There are technical studies of symmetry in relation to human perceptions - I expect there's something relevant at Google.
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Linda
(Goldilocks)
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I guess I'll bite. The landscape to me is a compelling aesthetic presence. You come over a rise, and in front of you is a backlit vista of hilltops and forest in the morning sun, a little fog still in the low spots. It's simply gorgeous, one of those perfect little moments you wish you could preserve forever. And you can! Master the craft, and you can capture it on film or digitally, and render it as a print that can convey to folks who weren't there at least some fragment of what you experienced. That is a big part of what drives me to photograph landscapes. It's such a beautiful planet we live on. Maybe showing a few other people how beautiful it is may encourage them to help slow the rate at which we're destroying it.
For the last 19 years we've lived in rural western New York on an east-facing hillside overlooking a valley and more hills beyond. My wife found the place, at the time a decrepit unfinished shell. She's not a photographer, but she told me "you have to see the view", and (God bless her) didn't bat an eye when I immediately made an offer to the owner. The landscape changes with the seasons and the weather; it's never the same two days in a row. We watch the sun come up every day. Okay, at least the 20% of the time it's not cloudy. The beauty of the place is such that we're willing to put up with the miserable sulphurous well water and being snowed in with some frequency in the winter. Worth it!
I want to draw a distinction (probably self-deluded) between our home and what I saw the last time I went hiking in West Virginia. Our place is tucked into a fold in the hillside, and you have to know where to look to see it. We don't really "own" the 99 acres we live on. We're encouraging it to revert to mature forest because it'll still be here long after we're gone. In West Virginia last year I saw literally dozens of brand new gigantic McMansions defacing the mountaintops. Most were unoccupied, obviously weekenders & "vacation places" for wealthy absentee owners. Most were surrounded by an acre or more of manicured lawn that stood out like a bald head. This selfish desire to "possess" a mountaintop vista ruins the view for everyone else in the region. Over the course of a week of hiking I spoke with quite a few residents; their comments about the "rich lawyers from Washington" building those mountaintop eye-sores were often unprintable.
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Linda: I think you've got at least two different questions here. Why a rich person would build a house on a property with a vista view is one thing and why an artist would be moved to paint or photograph the land is another. As per Geoff's observation, rich people have been known to spend money on what they perceive as status value; the owner of the soon-to-be mansion you refer to might look upon the view as little more than another status symbol in his/her collection and only notice it through the eyes of a complimentary guest. Your Marin county sighting simply confirms that this is not an exclusively east coast phenomenon. (Another incomprehensible preoccupation of the well-to-do is motoring around in elongated hearses, but that's getting off-topic.)
Beyond that special case, not all people even share the feeling some of us have for the natural landscape. Many people thrive on city life, sharing photographer Walker Evan's sentiment when he said "Nature bores me". Carl Jung discovered that extroverts recharge their psychological batteries in the bustle of a crowd or a party, while introverts do the opposite, decompressing in quiet and solitude. One aspect of the pleasure an introvert derives from a natural vista is thus likely to be the elation of her spirit having new-found elbow room to expand into.
At a deeper level, humanity inherits 450 million years of evolution that has systematically engineered a highly distorted perception of reality, emphasizing an apparent separation of the individual from the entire gestalt of being. For most of us, our day-to-day experience takes us from inside one of the familiar boxes we call houses, through the inside of one of the mega boxes we call towns and cities, to the inside of yet another box we call an office or shop or factory, then back again. On those relatively rare occasions when we seek out an open expanse of the box-less biosphere, the sudden disjoint can serve to temporarily sidestep the customary illusion of ego isolation. But not to worry - your nervous system is always on the alert and will quickly rush to restore the four illusory walls of selfhood.
Of course, as an artist, you're wondering where beauty (literally) comes into the picture. But the previous Dale has already addressed that little matter quite handily. About all I can add is that both the psychological decompression of the introvert and the spiritual decompression from sidestepping habitual alienation are both beautiful things and may well temporarily ramp up the serotonin uptake in the pre-frontal cortex.
Enjoy.
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What are men to rocks and mountains? - Jane Austen
Seems others have wondered along similar routes.
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I believe that the reason why people like landscapes is because of their desire for silence. Not necessarily silence in the meaning of no noise but rather in the meaning that you want something to look at that doesn't change too fast. It just lays there, silent. It helps people to come down from their busy work but that's just my opinion
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Simple
There are too many people in this world and wo/man is forever in search of a place to sit and watch the day pass by without the presence of other wo/man in the frame.
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Tim,
What are men to rocks and mountains?
Fleeting.
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And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We will know where we have gone—we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarreling about its relative situation.
Oh! I'm commenting on a different discussion! ;-)
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"landscapes we find pleasing (https://books.google.com/books?id=D15gBwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT379#v=onepage&q=%22landscapes%20we%20find%20pleasing%22&f=false)" in "The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography".
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Landscape vistas humble us and give us a sense of awe that connects us with a Supreme Power of the Universe. Our egos recognize how powerless we really are. They also inspire us to artistic beauty and aesthetic wonderment. Anyone who's been to Inspiration Point in Yosemite understands why it's called Inspiration.
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Isaac,
Oh! I'm commenting on a different discussion!
Is this aimed at me?
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I didn't mean to talk for you, Isaac. I was expressing, in a third person way, my own feelings of what landscapes do for me.
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I'm not very good at grammar, but wouldn't your own feelings be expressed first-person?
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Is this aimed at me?
I was mocking myself (for some carry-over from "Ignacio Palacio - Image Manipulation").
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Isaac,
Ignacio Palacio - Image Manipulation
A thread with thoughtful, eloquently written posts.
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Take your best looking or favorite landscape photo and place it next to the photo of Earth seen as a blue dot amongst the backdrop of an infinitely vast uninhabitable dark universe shot by NASA's Cassini space probe's flyby of Saturn and ask yourself how can a heavenly body that tiny have so much beauty.
And then know that ONLY humans could provide that level of perspective in a comparatively evolutionary short period of time. Is it REALLY all about ego or is it about the question that gnaws at all our souls asking just who, what and why we're here on this tiny blue dot.
Outer space smells like burning metal according to this interview I saw last Friday...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-astronaut-scott-kelly-on-life-aboard-the-space-station/
Landscapes remind all of us we're the most blessed and luckiest living and breathing human carbon forms in the universe.
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The space station smells like...
Landscapes remind us that there might be something beyond the urban agglomeration.
Isaac, on the Friday TV interview Scott Kelly describes the smell during opening of the space station bay doors to receive supplies where there is a brief exchange of outer space atmosphere and space station air of having the smell of burnt metal after Scott Pelley asked about the smell of the space station. IOW not a pleasant environment to live, a point I've gathered you missed in my initial post.
Could you possibly temper your obtuse observations toward folk's comments here who clearly appear to have invested a little more time and thought to pen something of meaning over your one liner comebacks? I mean you really don't know how to read a room or it could be my English that is confusing you.
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A sudden flurry of activity after seven years. Interesting.
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The pressurized (http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/17/spacex-supply-ship-joins-up-with-space-station/) supply ship smells like...
"The principal environmental characteristic of outer space is the vacuum, or nearly total absence of gas molecules … In space, the pressure is nearly zero. With virtually no pressure from the outside, air inside an unprotected human's lungs would immediately rush out in the vacuum of space (http://quest.nasa.gov/space/teachers/suited/3outer.html)."
There are dust particles in space that are comprised of metals, rock and pick any other periodic element that gets burned by radiation and heat from the sun that can enter the space station cabin. That's got to smell pretty bad.
Ever accidentally burn dust within the electrical heater element of a hair dryer or furnace? It's not a pleasant smell depending on the type of dust accumulated like dust mite shit, skin particles, pollen, etc, etc.
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I remember seeing a very moving Japanese movie a few years ago. The movie is about Alzeimer disease. It starts and ends with a beautiful sunset scene captured from within the house of the man suffering from Alzeimer.
The house is located in the Japanese countryside, away from the busy life in Tokyo. The man is alone with his wife and the landscape acts as a reference points for their fleeting life, its grandeur somehow enables them, his wife in particular, to make sense from an impossible situation when their very existence, through the memories that they built together, is threatened to vanish.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Beyond that special case, not all people even share the feeling some of us have for the natural landscape.
Incidentally, Chapter 10 "The Psychology of the Compelling Landscape" (in "The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography (https://books.google.com/books?id=D15gBwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT379#v=onepage&q&f=false)") has a short discussion of people's physiological responses when shown landscape images -- some have a physiological response and some don't.
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Incidentally, Chapter 10 "The Psychology of the Compelling Landscape" (in "The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography (https://books.google.com/books?id=D15gBwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT379#v=onepage&q&f=false)") has a short discussion of people's physiological responses when shown landscape images -- some have a physiological response and some don't.
Just that short passage from the book already tells me it's mostly comprised of a lot of unscientific intellectual sounding verbal padding and filler especially for a book on landscape photography. I'ld rather just look at the pictures.
I was hoping the discussion revealed that some feel an emotional response (not physiological) when shown a landscape and some don't. Some things in this world just can't be explained or put to words but leave it to hardline scientists to find a way to ruin it for everyone by explaining it to death.
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Just that short passage from the book…
The passage I referred to has not been shown on Google book preview any time I've looked.
I was hoping the discussion revealed that some feel an emotional response (not physiological) when shown a landscape and some don't.
A strange hope given I wrote "a short discussion of people's physiological responses".
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I was hoping the discussion revealed that some feel an emotional response (not physiological) when shown a landscape and some don't. Some things in this world just can't be explained or put to words but leave it to hardline scientists to find a way to ruin it for everyone by explaining it to death.
It doesn't seem entirely surprising to me that looking on scenes of nature appeals to us. We evolved on the savannah looking at them, so maybe they feel like "home" to us. I know that some therapists use walks in the woods as part of their work with some patients. The exposure to nature (even in a man-made park) has the effect of lessening their stress and anxiety.
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Would it be surprising to you that looking on scenes of nature doesn't appeal to other people?
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No, I've met a few. There's a lot of variation in humans.
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The passage I referred to has not been shown on Google book preview any time I've looked.
A strange hope given I wrote "a short discussion of people's physiological responses".
The screenshot below shows what I read from your posted link, Issac.
I had to assume that was the "short discussion of people's physiological responses" you were referring.
As for how I feel when I go out in the woods and view landscapes is primarily affected by the need for fresh air which of course science indicates has an elevated amount of oxygen from plant life compared to living in paved urban areas with very few trees. I have no thoughts or feelings of wanting to return to the primitive life of my ancient ancestors that's for sure.
Shooting landscapes for me is much like writing a love letter or poem to life on Earth in general for all to appreciate including myself. At least for me it's more spiritual than what religion used to provide in the past when I was a child.
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The screenshot below shows what I read from your posted link, Issac.
And that is not the passage I referred to - it does not discuss people's physiological responses.
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Isaac,
The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography (https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Art_Science_and_Craft_of_Great_Lands.html?id=D15gBwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y).
Thank you.
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Am I brave enough to admit that landscapes, either real, as a painting or photograph, don't really excite me?
Not on a site named Luminous Landscape I'm not!
Tom
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Incidentally, Chapter 10 "The Psychology of the Compelling Landscape" (in "The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography (https://books.google.com/books?id=D15gBwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT379#v=onepage&q&f=false)") has a short discussion of people's physiological responses when shown landscape images -- some have a physiological response and some don't.
That seems quite an insightful book, Isaac. Thanks for the link.
I don't agree with Tim Lookingbill's opinion, when he responded: "Just that short passage from the book already tells me it's mostly comprised of a lot of unscientific intellectual sounding verbal padding and filler especially for a book on landscape photography. I'd rather just look at the pictures. "
It seems pretty obvious and undeniable to me that we are a product of our landscape. We could never have evolved into human beings without the interaction over millions of years with our landscape. We are totally dependent upon our landscape. We cannot exist without it. However, the landscape can exist just fine without us.
In fact, there's a case to be made that without our presence, the landscape would be better (ie. healthier and more vigorous). We're gradually ruining the environment (landscape) with noxious pollutants, deforestation, and farming practices which tend to diminish the quantity of natural nutrients in the soil as well as the amount of carbon and the degree of soil biodiversity.
Of course, we are now so clever we can create our own artificial environments, such as concrete jungles (cities), and space stations. Perhaps in the future we'll eventually be able to colonize Mars and create massive greenhouses to live in.
I suspect anyone who is out-of-touch with that deep emotional connection or heritage with the landscape, is emotionally in trouble. ;)
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That seems quite an insightful book, Isaac. Thanks for the link.
I don't agree with Tim Lookingbill's opinion, when he responded: "Just that short passage from the book already tells me it's mostly comprised of a lot of unscientific intellectual sounding verbal padding and filler especially for a book on landscape photography. I'd rather just look at the pictures. "
It seems pretty obvious and undeniable to me that we are a product of our landscape. We could never have evolved into human beings without the interaction over millions of years with our landscape. We are totally dependent upon our landscape. We cannot exist without it. However, the landscape can exist just fine without us.
In fact, there's a case to be made that without our presence, the landscape would be better (ie. healthier and more vigorous). We're gradually ruining the environment (landscape) with noxious pollutants, deforestation, and farming practices which tend to diminish the quantity of natural nutrients in the soil as well as the amount of carbon and the degree of soil biodiversity.
Of course, we are now so clever we can create our own artificial environments, such as concrete jungles (cities), and space stations. Perhaps in the future we'll eventually be able to colonize Mars and create massive greenhouses to live in.
I suspect anyone who is out-of-touch with that deep emotional connection or heritage with the landscape, is emotionally in trouble. ;)
I think you are right, but I wouldn't say that required an interest in photographing it. At least, not beyond the personal souvenir level. The buzz is in being in it, and whenever one can manage that, especially if a city dweller, it can recharge the batteries. But even there, I think it's the change in landscape that counts: I loved driving up and down France, especially the Dordogne, but in the end, it wasn't that different from Perthshire, where I inevitably ended up for most of the time back in the UK. I didn't enjoy Perthshire much; Mallorca is just as beautiful, in a different nway, but then I hardly see it anymore after all these years.
I suppose that's why people are often unfaithful: nothing wrong with where they are, just lookin' for something different.
Rob
P.S.
Just watched a great programme on BBC4 about Scandinavian art. Yet again I came to the subconscious, and then very conscious conclusion that cinematographers have a better understanding of landscape than do stills shooters. Yet later, I realised the advantage they hold: the abilty to slide seamlessly from one shot of the subject to an immediate other one of the same thing seen, as an example, through a net curtain, in a single, unbroken movement which carries memory of the first glimpse along with it. Stills can't compete with that, and a diptych ain't the same, no way.
Also, the cinematographer's use of longer lenses gives a look far more interesting than seems the stills man's norm.
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I think you are right, but I wouldn't say that required an interest in photographing it.
Of course not! For most people, photographing a landscape is incidental. The main subject is always themselves, or their partner, friend or family member, or their face juxtapositioned next to someone famous. Never mind if a face obscures an interesting part of the background, or spoils the composition. Ego and vanity trump everything. Slobodan knows this. ;)
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Of course not! For most people, photographing a landscape is incidental. The main subject is always themselves, or their partner, friend or family member, or their face juxtapositioned next to someone famous. Never mind if a face obscures an interesting part of the background, or spoils the composition. Ego and vanity trump everything. Slobodan knows this. ;)
But what of the mind seeking, in photography, that elusive thing called truth, or perhaps, essence?
I believe that only when you can get to the point of losing conscious self a little bit, can you get to the place where the thing you seek allows itself to be seen. Perhaps that's why some people thought/hoped hallucinogenic substances could offer a key.
With people pictures, I know it's the province of the muse. There, there is very little of self and very much a lot of what our mental fusion can be. As has sometimes been remarked, it's even better than sex, and all your babies can be beautiful.
Rob
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...Ego and vanity trump everything. Slobodan knows this. ;)
Huh!? ???
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Huh!? ???
Oh! I am sorry. I didn't realise you didn't know that. Perhaps I've mischaracterised you. ;D
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I am flattered that my character occupies such an important part of your mental efforts. By all means let me know, in no uncertain terms, your final diagnosis. So far your findings are too subtle for me to get.
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I am flattered that my character occupies such an important part of your mental efforts. By all means let me know, in no uncertain terms, your final diagnosis. So far your findings are too subtle for me to get.
C'mon now, Slobodan. Your photo of 'Mannequins' in the critique section is a blatant display of ego and vanity. You seem proud of it, and also claim that you have achieved some degree of wealth and fame as a result of the publication of that photo.
Surely it's clear that it doesn't require much mental effort to deduce that you are aware of the great appeal of 'appearance and fashion' and their association with ego and vanity.
Whether or not ego and vanity literally trump all, is debatable of course. Freud seemed to think that the 'sex drive' was the ultimate, motivating force behind all pleasurable activity. ;)
However, Freud is now out-of-fashion.
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I saw the start of the title and supposed it was going to be "Man's fascination with women." Freud didn't get everything wrong. Landscapes mostly do little for me, and my favourite Ansel Adams is of Georgia O'Keefe.
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I saw the start of the title and supposed it was going to be "Man's fascination with women." Freud didn't get everything wrong. Landscapes mostly do little for me, and my favourite Ansel Adams is of Georgia O'Keefe.
Ay-men (or, better yet, Ay-women!)
Rob