Eric Meola article

[Isaac]

Bullshit! Landscape is a completely natural environment as opposed to the totally arificial, congested and bustling environment of the city.

A completely natural environment? I think you just excluded two thousand years worth of pastoral landscape paintings.

A completely natural environment? I think you just excluded most places on Earth for the last several thousand years (see for example, "Australia’s Original Landscape Gardeners").

However, I am struggling to understand why we would describe some image as a landscape if the intention was not to express the 'intellectual and emotional' essence of a place.

[Isaac]

I think the term landscape can be used in a way that has nothing to do with subject matter and more to do with the feel or scope of a photograph.

Do you mean more than a broad view rather than a narrow view?

[Isaac]

@Eric Meola "...nearly always accompanied by tepid images of golden mesas, moss on trees, and fields of flowers—all with horizons cutting through the middle of the frame."

None of that! Luminous Landscape forums are strictly rule-of-thirds! :-)

@Eric Meola "The giraffe loping across a violet and iridescent red landscape in Pete Turner’s 1963 breakthrough image..."

Here's that image -- “The Giraffe”

"A whole world lies before us, we feel its heartbeat, it pulsates with life, beauty and strength -- we can't have people simply telling us: this is as far as art goes."   Edward Steichen

[Andy Ilachinski]

What about (as I've posted on a parallel thread) using photography to transform a decidedly "non-natural" reality - in my example, a "colored wine glass" - into an apparently "natural" one, such as a traditional landscape, or seascape, or desert, or...?

Here are some snippets from an ongoing series I call "synesthetic landscapes" (a few links below). Synesthesia refers to "crossed senses", as in "tasting" what one sees, and is a very effect, now well documented with MRI scans. I had a visual-color form when I was young, seeing numbers and letters in different hues. More recently, I've started playing with using "color abstractions" to evoke a synesthetic experience of "landscape." So it seemed quite apropos given the discussion swirling around the recent color essay.

Examples:

1: http://www.sudden-stillness.com/Portfolio/SynthWarm/index.html

2. http://www.sudden-stillness.com/Portfolio/SynthCool/index.html

Story behind the series:

http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-else-thing-is.html

[Isaac]

What about...

Isn't that about "what a thing is, is-not, and may-be", rather than about some place?

[Andy Ilachinski]

Isn't that about "what a thing is, is-not, and may-be", rather than about some place?

I certainly agree, its about all three of those things, as well as just about anything else the creative mind can conjure as an alternative "interpretation." There is no more one "type of photograph" than one "reality" or one "idea." I've always believed in White's credo to *start* with finding ways to express "what else a thing..."

[Isaac]

I think using the term "landscape" when it is not a traditional landscape photograph can be part of the artistic expression.

Irony?

[Rob C]

Curator-speak. There's lots of it about. It's often much more entertaining or even, dare I say it, creative than the artwork; perhaps it is the atwork.

Without curators whispering their words of commercial magic into the ears of the half-opened chequebooks, would art survive? Would there even still be such a concept? Probably not. Cave drawings? Nobody knows why - maybe even they had curators...

Rob C

[Isaac]

Curator-speak.

Which are the words you wish to say are curator-speak?

[Rob C]

Which are the words you wish to say are curator-speak?

To quote directly would be invidious; just reread the thread.

;-)

Rob C

[David S]

Mmm...I don't agree. I think the term landscape can be used in a way that has nothing to do with subject matter and more to do with the feel or scope of a photograph. I am working on a series of photographs of natural objects that I think of as portraits. That is the feel they have.

Sharon

Others would appear to agree with your feeling-definition.

Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings and structures,...
-from Wikipedia.

Now one might like or not like where he is apparently going but it does seem to fall under a general use of landscape or "cityscape" if you must.

Dave S

[Isaac]

To quote directly would be invidious; just reread the thread.

Not to quote directly is invidious -- your remark may be applied more widely than you intended.

Please just be clear instead of hiding behind obscure remarks.

[Rob C]

Not to quote directly is invidious -- your remark may be applied more widely than you intended.

Please just be clear instead of hiding behind obscure remarks.

But that would then make me obvious. Hiding isn't the name of the game; observation is. If someone feels they fit the cap, then by all means, please wear it.

Rob C

[Ray]

A completely natural environment? I think you just excluded two thousand years worth of pastoral landscape paintings.

A completely natural environment? I think you just excluded most places on Earth for the last several thousand years (see for example, "Australia’s Original Landscape Gardeners").

However, I am struggling to understand why we would describe some image as a landscape if the intention was not to express the 'intellectual and emotional' essence of a place.

The word "completely" may not have been the best choice of words in the context. To express it another way, I'd say that for me, the completely natural elements in a landscape, that is, those elements in the scene that have not been created by man, are the elements that tend evoke the emotional essence of that place, if it is defined as a landscape.

If the main feature in a landscape is a building, for example, then there would be good reason to use the term architecture rather than landscape to describe the scene.

Words have to have agreed meanings for us to communicate, or confusion reigns.

For example, if I were to ask my wife to buy a few landscape photos or paintings to decorate the walls of our new house, and after a day's shopping she returned with a handful of works that looked like Eric Meola's abstract patterns of neon lights, I would exclaim that those were not landscapes. I would probably say, "Don't you know what a landscape is?", whereupon she would probably slap my face.

[Rob C]

For example, if I were to ask my wife to buy a few landscape photos or paintings to decorate the walls of our new house, and after a day's shopping she returned with a handful of works that looked like Eric Meola's abstract patterns of neon lights, I would exclaim that those were not landscapes. I would probably say, "Don't you know what a landscape is?", whereupon she would probably slap my face.

Brave lady! I would never slap the face of the hand that stroked the tiger!

;-)

Rob C

[Ray]

Brave lady! I would never slap the face of the hand that stroked the tiger!

;-)

Rob C

But what if the lady also strokes tigers? Anyway, sometimes tigers are just like big, soft pussy cats. 

[Rob C]

But what if the lady also strokes tigers? Anyway, sometimes tigers are just like big, soft pussy cats. 

I'm thunderstruck: there is no answer that allows the retention of my dignity!

;-)

Rob C

[Ray]

I'm thunderstruck: there is no answer that allows the retention of my dignity!

;-)

Rob C

Well, you could pose the question whether or not this is a landscape.  The tigers are enclosed in a small canyon with steep walls. 

[Dave Millier]

That's a striking image!

I've not seen that before (I remember another Turner image, a primary colour plastic waste bin on a beach).  It's pretty good.

However... if that image started a Flickr craze, there'd soon be 20,000 similar shots and variations, plugins to reproduce the effect, and before you knew Pete Turner would be the new HDR. 

There's no avoiding it, you can make well composed traditional landscapes forever and while nobody may think of them as high art, they won't complain either, but if you go down the route of something striking and different like this, it can only be done a handful of times (maybe once?) before it becomes derivative and derided....

@Eric Meola "...nearly always accompanied by tepid images of golden mesas, moss on trees, and fields of flowers—all with horizons cutting through the middle of the frame."

None of that! Luminous Landscape forums are strictly rule-of-thirds! :-)

@Eric Meola "The giraffe loping across a violet and iridescent red landscape in Pete Turner’s 1963 breakthrough image..."

Here's that image -- “The Giraffe”

[Isaac]

But that would then make me obvious.

That would be a welcome change from schoolboy innuendo.