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Michael Allan
My first camera was a half frame Leica with a fixed lens that I would take backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains when I was in high school. I graduated to a Pentax K1000 and Kodachrome when my boys were old enough to backpack in Colorado with me, but when they were teens with a life of their own, the camera went into a drawer. Several years ago I picked up an all in one Sony and started backpacking again. One thing led to another and I bought a Sony A7r, then upgraded that, bought a printer, and I never looked back. I now mostly shoot black and white with a focus on printing.
The last three articles: Personal Photography, Resonance, and Spirituality, are philosophical, laying out a foundation for a photography rooted in connection to the landscape. I now want to explore photography as an art. My inspiration is a combination of examining the consequences of the philosophy and considering the inspiration of poetry, but it does not attempt to classify poetic modes or aesthetics; it describes the conditions under which a poetic practice may occur. Questions of poetic modes, aesthetics, and form will be taken up separately.
Fall: Crags Trail, Colorado
Photography as “art” has always been problematic because it relies on a machine rather than tools. A painter uses her brushes and a writer has his pen, both tools, but they don’t have mechanisms: they don’t use indirect action or contain an internal energy source.
A camera that records light can support a range of purpose, from documentation to art, but a painter can paint a commercial sign with nothing other than words saying: you need to spend your money here. Intent and mindset have a lot to do with whether this gadget we carry around and point at the land tends to the art end of the spectrum. It’s not the tool or machine that determines the result, it’s the human applying it.
I am proposing we take a closer look at artistic side of photography and what that implies by considering poetry.
Revisiting The Process Of Resonance
After writing Resonance and Spirituality, I reevaluated my own personal photographic art practice. I asked: what is it I actually do and what do I desire? Do I follow my own philosophy?