The word mindfulness has taken a dramatic surge in popular culture over the last few years. Everyone from Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley executives and athletes, to me and my 86 year old mum practice mindfulness meditation as a way to create a sense of equanimity in a frantic and often upsetting world. I’ll be honest, as a sceptic with a scientific background, even when we lived in the Tibetan Regions for 7 years, surrounded by monks, lamas and temples, I could never quite bring myself to meditate.

I am however an optimistic realist, and when scientific evidence begins to show the numerous benefits of a regular mindfulness meditation practice; from stress reduction, increased immune function, lowered blood pressure, increased attention and focus, lower anxiety levels and feelings of calm, I begin to listen (here's a link to the NHS NICE search on mindfulness - Ed). There is now sufficient evidence to show that neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire and reorganise itself, can reduce grey matter mass in the amygdala, a key stress responding region of the brain. Equally, increased mass in areas such as the Prefrontal Cortex, Hippocampus and Anterior Cingulate Cortex offer improvements in our abilities to plan, regulate emotions, deal with stress and increased cognitive flexibility.

Fractions of Moments

All of that was enough to pique my interest, and early in 2018 I began to incorporate mindfulness meditation into my daily schedule. Within a matter of weeks I noticed significant differences in my outlook, stress levels and ability to focus and even received comments from family and friends who noticed these changes manifest in my behaviour.

It took me no time at all to start joining the dots between my career in landscape photography and the practice of mindfulness.

Landscape Photography is Mindfulness

As I began to notice thoughts, feelings and sensations while sitting, I realised I had been doing this for decades with a camera in my hand. My relationship with the landscape has always been one of retreat, escape from daily troubles in the city, or from a stressful career: In fact I actually started photography to de-stress. Those moments behind the lens are filled with engagement, focus, calmness and my new buzz words Creative Attention. The expression that photography is a Marriage of Art and Craft could be reworded justifiably as periods of Being and Doing. Without hijacking this article with a lengthy cul de sac of “why do we make photographs?” - I’m sure most of us would rather be out there with a camera in our hands than sat on a commuter train running 20 minutes late!

My second realisation was that while Landscape Photography in a state of Mindfulness may be a Utopian ideal, it often isn’t. My life with a camera in my hand certainly hasn’t always been blessed with a feeling of equanimity, and things get in the way that disrupt it, often leaving us with negative emotions of frustration, anger, low self-esteem and jealousy! Not good at all!

A good percentage of this year has been spent investigating what those barriers to mindfulness are and becoming, well, mindful of them. In short, taking back control of my motivations, expressive and creative output and peace of mind. Hmm, fresh realisation, mindful of being a control freak!

Path of a Tibetan Cloud

What is Mindfulness?

The practice of mindfulness has been around for many thousands of years, ever since a young Prince abandoned his life of privilege to go walk the land searching for truth. Buddhists and other faiths all incorporate various forms of meditation into their daily lives, keen to simplify existence and gain a better perspective on the troubles that personify the human experience.

Here’s a great definition.

“A mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique”

But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? ~Henry David Thoreau

The practice of mindfulness meditation (indeed, even the very words) suffers from what some practitioners and scientists describe as, “a PR problem.” Some perceive (and consequently dismiss) meditation as a New Age fad, as westernised romanticised versions of mystical eastern rituals, or as a means to contrived “spirituality.” All are true in some cases. However, the scientific study of the effects of meditation is in fact a thriving area of research whose empirical conclusions are profoundly useful. Among the general (proven) benefits of mindfulness meditation, some are of particular interest to those pursuing creative work.

A bit of good news: the benefits of meditation can be had without ever sitting in the lotus position, without chanting mantras, and without seeking a path to enlightenment and freedom from the cycle of karma. In fact, you don’t even need to know what any of these things mean to benefit from meditation. To those sceptics not prone to fall for the hype, and who demand (paraphrasing Carl Sagan) extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims—rest assured, I am one of you. You’ve probably heard the hype. Allow me to fill in the science. 

Many are the individuals who have praised the beneficial effects of limitations and constraints in the creative process.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. ~ Orson Wells

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution ~ Igor Stravinsky

In the book “Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind,” Scott Barry Kaufman mentions that creativity “Involves variability – different ways of doing things,” but also “involves constraints, which can either promote or preclude creativity”.

It might seem logical to think that an artist which plenty of tools, options, and possibilities will see his or her artistic output thrive. The reality seems to be just the opposite.

Even if it is true that a minimum of resources is needed to create, limitations and constraints reduce the overwhelming feeling triggered by too much freedom and channel creative energies, providing a framework and helping us focus our attention, energy, and work. All writers and painters dread the blank page or empty canvas syndrome. This effect is nothing but the consequence of the total absence of limitations and constraints. Right before the first word is written or the first brush stroke is laid on the canvas, all possibilities are there for the artist to grasp. The sheer amount of options available, theoretically infinite, can freeze the creative process even before it starts. As soon as the first few sentences are written, the story starts being channelled, and the options get progressively reduced. Constraints appear as the beginning of a plot begin to materialize. The painter experiences the same progressive liberation as paint disrupts the empty space. Each brush stroke informs the following one, and as the painting emerges on the canvas, the options get narrower and narrower, the idea clearer and more transparent and the actions more focused and determined.  

As photographers, we are all on a journey. As with any journey, each is unique, the options unlimited and we each choose our own route. They all differ and there is no right or wrong. It’s a very personal thing. The journey can equally be a single project or portfolio or even cover an entire career. It can be very targeted or quite varied, but both are progressive. For many of us, at least at times, the journey can become confusing but if we have an idea as to our direction of travel, an objective, from the outset it can make the journey far easier.

When you look at the work of some of the great photographers you can often see a clear understanding of direction. A perfected expression of place combining vision, mood, technique, style and the individual eye to ultimately capture the soul of the location at a moment in time in an image. Their personalities are revealed by a subtly combined execution of many elements including format, subject, composition, lens, time, settings and post production and a profound understanding of light and how it reacts to the sensor or film. A personal reaction to place, light, season, weather, time of day. The ability to capture varying conditions that present themselves on any given day with respect to their personal style. 

For others, the journey is more varied. My own has seen me travel down a variety of paths including the odd cul-de-sac, motorway dead end and some sublime single track roads. My travels have developed through traditional, impressionist, minimalist, contemporary monochromatic (though rarely black and white), etc. with each project informing the next as my knowledge grows and the journey continues. Each informs the last and I revisit roads previously travelled with the increased information gained from all that has gone before.  But as I commenced my latest journey I was profoundly shaken as events required me to radically change my approach and perceived thinking on capturing landscapes to suit immediate and personal circumstances. The same journey but most definitely a new road. Let me explain. 

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness ~ Kahlil Gibran

In the 1800s when Northern California was inhabited by Native Americans the coastline was covered in over 2,000,000 acres of Redwood forest. Initial settlers were attracted to the forests which sustained the growth of the lumber industry. When the gold rush happened those who were not fortunate in finding gold found their treasure in the forest. The giant trees were prime territory for logging and the practice led to an economic boom which facilitated the birth of the San Francisco metropolis. The unrestricted logging practices, unfortunately, led to the catastrophic devastation of the forests. Today a small fraction of that original forest remains protected under National and State laws. Serious conservation efforts made since the 1960’s have resulted in a sanctuary for the giants, along with a narrow strip of the California coast that extends over a distance of 470 miles (750 Km) in length and less than 47 miles (76 Km) in width. In 1980 the forest was declared as a World Heritage site. 

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?
~André Gide

If you are like most people, looking at the photographs on this page, you may not consider that there’s something very wrong with them, at least according to many contemporary art mavens. What’s wrong with them is that that they are beautiful.

In today’s art world, that something is beautiful, may be reason enough to disqualify it from serious consideration. Still, to the chagrin of some in the art business, most people consider beauty and art as almost synonymous. To wit, if I asked you to think of a favourite work of art, odds are you will think of a work of art you find beautiful, even if you are schooled in the arts and capable of appreciating creative works that are, by design, not beautiful..

The thorny issue of ethics and moral responsibilities in documentary photography, particularly in the case of photojournalism has been discussed many times. It has also created severe turmoil in the careers of long-established and respected photographers, who failed to comply with the expectations of the audience.

The reader might remember the polemic discovery of severe photoshop retouching in images of the former National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. The case exploded following a post by an Italian photographer, who spotted on some exhibited gallery prints severe visual inconsistencies in some of the images that led to thinking of substantial image manipulation. Further analysis led to discover that in many of McCurry images, people had been eliminated, compositions had been cleaned and backgrounds strongly modified. The photographer, under logical attack, first claimed his ignorance about the fact his images were severely retouched, pointing to his own assistant as the real culprit and firing him. Then, he changed his discourse, claiming that he had “artistic freedom” to manipulate his images at will, since, after all, his images were not to be understood as photo-journalism, but as fine art photography.

This last detail is of special interest to me. Beyond considerations of the dubious (or not) reasoning inherent in such claims, McCurry explanations brought under the limelight a number of barbed issues. McCurry, a photographer best known for his image “Afghan girl”, made his reputation as one of the photographers for National Geographic. His career was built on the basis of images made to document and represent the identity of certain cultures and societies, illustrating articles supposed to transmit truth, as the reputation of a publication like National Geographic would let us think. It can be easily understood that if the polemic would have taken place at the time when he was part of the staff of NG, surely enough heads would have rolled.

In April 2015, my life took an unexpected and devastating turn. Two weeks prior to my 14th wedding anniversary and four weeks prior to my 40th birthday, my husband (who had also been my best friend for 22 years) and I decided to separate. After experiencing an outrageous amount of success throughout my charmed life, the word “failure” had never entered my vocabulary, and I felt like I had failed at one of the most important things to me in my life. My soul died.

As the emotional storm tossed me into a whirlpool of despair, I sought to redirect my pain into a new dream. I decided to stand-up-paddleboard (SUP) the 141-mile length of Lake Powell, a reservoir along the Colorado River on the Utah/Arizona border. In November 2015, my 64-year-old mother and I launched on a 14-day journey. However, like my marriage, it too did not go according to plan.

On the fourth day of our trip, we encountered unpredicted crosswinds that stirred the lake waters into five-to-six-foot swells.

As one wave after another slammed into my paddleboard, I watched the swells toss my mother’s kayak against the sheer 400-foot cliffs bordering the lake for almost two hours. Small grottoes threatened to swallow her and her kayak whole with each outgoing wave and then smash her with the next incoming one. 

The wet plate collodion process dates back to the middle of the 19th Century. During that period you had a couple of choices if you wanted to engage in that new-fangled photography thing. Firstly you could go French and produce an ultra sharp (and small) Daguerreotype, a one-off ‘print’ that couldn't be reproduced, or you could produce a much softer and textural salt print or calotype.

The ideal world, though, would be a combination of the sharpness of the Daguerreotype with the reproducibility of the salt print.

Around 1850, collodion was discovered, made by dissolving guncotton in ether and alcohol (which is why you should buy your collodion off the shelf instead of making it yourself). Collodion was the perfect support for photosensitive materials as it dries to a ‘skin’ which will stick to most materials, even glass.

Whilst putting together this issue, including Joe Cornish's article on Sally Mann and my own article on the second life of wet plate, I asked Alex Boyd, a well-practised collodionist himself, about what it was about the medium that attracted so many people - Tim Parkin.

I was one of the many photographers who visited Sally Mann's exhibition at The Photographer's Gallery in London in 2010, and while an admirer of her Immediate Family work, was more drawn to What Remains, her quiet meditation on landscape, death and the process of decay. The prints were reproductions of glass plates she had produced while working in the field, and along with their compelling subject matter they revealed the signs of their creation - of unpredictable chemical processes, of tired hands, a concentrating eye, and of the landscape around her which stuck to the plates in the form of dirt and dust. To my mind they recalled the records of Tom Waits with all their scratches left in - everything compelling captured within the frame.

A unique style emerges in photography by ignoring it, concentrating on the subject, and allowing care, passion and knowledge to bubble to the surface through a lot of hard work over a long period of time.
~Bill Jay

A common trope in photography is that you need to find your vision (or voice, or personal style, or some other personally-unique quality). Logically speaking, this is an impossible task since, if a person’s vision is different from other people’s visions, then there is nothing out there for one to find. And if you search within but don’t know what your own vision is, how will you recognize it when you find it? If this sounds a bit like a Zen koan, it’s for a good reason. As explained by D.T. Suzuki, “We look for its [Zen’s] secrets where they are most unlikely to be found, that is, in verbal abstractions and metaphysical subtleties, whereas the truth of Zen really lies in the concrete things of our daily life.” Vision, personal style, voice, etc., are not things that you find; they are things that you are. 

I never looked for, let alone found, a personal style or a vision. I always assumed that, by virtue of it being my vision and nobody else’s, there is no point in looking—I already have it. So long as I create my photographs according to my own instincts, interests, and aesthetic sensibilities—rather than attempt to imitate others—whatever vision I have will naturally ensue out of my work. Rather than criteria by which I create photographs, I think of my vision simply as a byproduct of creating photographs. Put another way: style, vision, voice, etc., are not things I strive for; they are things that, if I properly express myself in my photographs, other people may find in my work.

There is no truth in photography, only honesty - Giles Duley

The role of realism in photographs, as discussed in Guy Tal’s recent article on the morality and realism in photography, is as provocative as it is elusive. Guy’s article, whilst impeccably written and well received, stimulated debate and discussion both on our website and amongst many of my colleagues. I wanted to express some of the ideas and reactions I had on reading the article and try to dig out what it is about an “anything goes” default position that I find disturbing.

Post processing - the red herring

The most obvious and first point to discuss is possibly the biggest red herring in the whole discussion of truth/realism in photography, and that is post-processing. There seems to be a widely held view that no post-processing is equivalent to truth and the more post-processing you do, the more your work veers away from reality. This view is responsible for more arguments and dissent in the photographic community than any other.

The problem with this argument is that some photographic post-processing can make images more truthful and some images with no post processing can be quite deceiving. For instance, the use of white balance to make an image match what the eye saw brings an image closer to a representation of reality whereas images rendering weak aurora displays as vivid green have led many an arctic visitor to feel deceived and ultimately disappointed (more about this in a future article about the ‘truth of aurora photography’).

Another example of the way a straight photograph lies is the use of wide angle lenses. The eye does not see like this and early viewers of photography were confused at the resulting images. However, using warp distortions to fix the perspective of a fisheye lens could be perceived as making it more truthful.

In short, global vs local post-processing, cloning vs none, saturation levels etc are not 'bad' in and off themselves. It's always contextual.

Modern viewers of photography are a lot more savvy about what is ‘normal’ in terms of post-processing. We see so many images that have graduated filters to make the sky a bit darker, sun stars due to lens aperture choices, seeing into shadows that would perhaps be almost black in real life. This has been going on since the early days of photography and yet we don’t think these are ‘lying’ as such.

So, what is a better foundation on which to discuss the role of ‘truth’ and photography? In my opinion, a much better criterion is, perhaps, the perceived feeling of deception in the viewer.

Feelings of deception and the implicit contract

This negative reaction is at the heart of most of the arguments we end up having when we’re talking about realism and photography. This is obviously subjective and will vary from person to person. However, let's analyse some situations from this perspective. Before we do, let me be clear that I don’t intend to relate any feeling of deception in the eyes of the viewer with an intent to deceive by the photographer!

There is a term used to describe the expectations of a viewer when presented with something. This term is the “implicit contract” and in legalese terms, this is the ‘fair’ expectation that what you are being presented with meets certain criteria even though there is no explicit contract.

For instance, when people first found out that many of the photographs on the fronts of fashion magazines had been manipulated heavily to make the models seems slimmer and smoother of skin, the typical person felt cheated or deceived to some extent. There was a broad assumption that what was presented was inherently truthful. Even though there was nothing in the magazines that promised to represent their models truthfully and no intent to deceive, there was an implicit contract between the magazine producers and the readers that this was so and when this contract was broken, the magazine’s readers felt deceived.

This implicit contract is really all about managing viewer expectations. If you think your audience is going to expect a ‘straight’ photograph and you present them with a heavily post-processed one, they will possibly react negatively when they find out. Likewise, you can post a straight photograph of an amazing sunset on a website known for it’s OMG! Wow! Digital Art concoctions and you shouldn’t be surprised if people yawn at your photo in comparison with its neighbouring confections.

So, were a photographer to want to honour this ‘implicit contract’ with their viewers, the biggest hurdle to overcome is to work out what their audience accepts as ‘non-deceptive’ photography. This raises a pretty big hurdle - what does the average person think photography really is!

What an Audience expects from Photograph

One of the aspects of Guy’s article revolves around the definition of photography, calling on dictionary and encyclopedic quotations. These sorts of definitions should be handled with caution as there is a great deal of difference between the ‘bounds’ of what ‘could’ be considered photography and the general layperson’s idea of what photography is.

In fact, in other artistic practices, there are quite rigid guidelines that bound what makes a watercolour or an oil painting. Some purist watercolourists would baulk at the use of gouache to lift their whites (body colour) and the addition of oils to a watercolour painting would cause apoplexy in some quarters.

So perhaps we need to call some works that have been heavily manipulated and ‘painted’, “mixed media” or “digital art” instead of photography? Personally, I don’t think it matters. Arguing the bounds of word definitions is a form of sophistry that has never really solved anything. However, I do think that there is a point at which many people would say an extensively processed image breaks the accepted idea of what a photograph is. Whether this then becomes Mixed Media or Digital Art is irrelevant but they certainly warrant an explanation if the images appear in the context of photography and we want to manage our audience's expectations.

The Variation in Audience and Context

There is a small problem in trying to work out where these boundaries sit anyway. For example, different audience groups will have different levels of acceptance of manipulation/deception and additionally, the context in which the image is found further informs the audience's expectations. For instance, an older audience may well expect a photograph to be fairly ‘straight’ whereas a younger audience may accept that photoshopped pictures are becoming the norm.

Also, if an image is found in a guidebook for a national park, the images therein would be thought to have a level of veracity that perhaps would not be expected in a wordless ‘fine art’ portfolio.

In my conversations with Guy Tal, he suggests his audience just accept his work and don’t approach the details of their creation critically. However, whilst his audience would not really be surprised by typical Lightroom adjustments and some Photoshop work, the wholesale removal, addition or rearrangement of fundamental elements in the image would perhaps be ‘Beyond the Pale’. Whereas fans of Art Wolfe’s or Steve McCurry’s work would be a little more forgiving (see here and here)

Creating and Informing Your Own Audience

What Guy has done is to work hard at building an audience that has an understanding of where his work is coming from. He has taken them on a journey where they accept the work he creates because it is Guy they have invested in and not necessarily the work itself.

Artists may still find it difficult to carry all of that audience with them should they change approaches suddenly, however. (witness the crying and wailing that went on as Radiohead developed their sound over their first five albums).

Is there a problem with breaking an audience's implied contract?

A bit of a cop-out answer to this one. “Not Necessarily”. For one, most people who view your images won’t have a chance to compare things with the location or object you’re are photographing and so they won’t ever feel deceived. However, should they feel like this on one of your images, they will start to doubt the others in your portfolio. This isn’t the best way to develop a relationship with your audience.

If you’re happy with what you are doing and are not pretending that what you are presenting is anything other than what it is (both implicitly and/or explicitly) then no one is going to be harmed.

In fact, the biggest issue regarding this management of expectations is when presenting images in public forums alongside other images. For instance, if you are presenting images on a group website where the usual working practice is ‘straight’ photography, you might want to think twice about managing expectations if your work departs from this norm (i.e. make a note of how it was created). Also, if you are a straight photographer and wish to post on a forum that typically posts work tending toward the‘digital art’ category, don’t be surprised if you don’t get as many wows and omgs as anybody else on the website.

Work out your relationship with what your pictures are of...

If what your photograph is ‘of’ is important and you wish to portray how this is important to your audience, I believe that a certain level of respect for both the subject and your audience can go a long way. Anything that breaks the perception of truth in your photographs is a crack in your audience’s relationship with both yourself and the subject of your photographs.

Suggestions

Given the ability for most individuals to decide at what point the manipulation of a photograph has begun to deceive, and then a point at which it exceeds the bounds of their acceptance of what a photograph is, we can say that for a particular population, there is a rough consensus of what is acceptable photographically.

The problem is that this is a very ‘soft’ definition. Some people can accept a large amount of manipulation without feeling deceived. Some people have a very sensitive trigger and feel deceived at even a slight saturation adjustment. The majority of the population fits in the middle ground between these two extremes though and in most cases, the photographer themselves instinctively knows when they have gone so far as to ‘disturb’ the typical viewer.

It doesn’t take much imagination to pretend you’re in a gallery, explaining your photograph to the local ranger or guide and imagining their reaction. If you can imagine yourself explaining your work to these people, who know your subject so well, without feeling embarrassed in any way then you’re probably on the right track (or you’re a sociopath!).

The Three Levels of Honesty in Photography

I wanted to have a think about what an audience might think of as an ‘honest’ photograph.

Straight Out of Camera

The first is where the picture is used ‘as is’. I.e. The transparency or a ‘straight’ print from a negative. This is the ‘gold standard’ and yet isn’t quite as honest as it seems. Only the transparency is untouched really (and then you'd have to choose E100G which isn't available anymore - Velvia 100 is out of the question). The ‘straight’ print is still a choice of contrast and tone (never mind compensating development etc) and in the world of digital, it should be fairly obvious that this doesn’t really exist. It could said that ‘as untouched as possible’ works is for digital if you take a "straight out of camera" photograph e.g. perhaps only global adjustments. Not a realistic approach at the end of the day though.

Journalistic Ethics

The second is the level of reality that is demanded by the documentary and journalistic establishments. A good reference for understanding these is the World Press Photo PDF on The Integrity of the Image.

The Public’s Perception of Photographic Honesty

The third is the level which I’m talking about here which is subjective and pivots on whether the viewer would feel deceived if they knew the full provenance of an image.This last is a tough one to define but people inherently know it themselves when they encounter it.

This isn't to imply that photographs that don't fit the above are dishonest - as I've said previously, it's all about context. An example raised in discussion with another photographer is whether an ICM photograph that was generated on a computer from old 'straight' photos is dishonest. Well, encountered on it's own there are no issues as there is no context to suggest anything either way. If it was shown alongside other work that was ICM then there is the scope for an audience to feel deceived? Why should the way the image is generated make a difference to the audience? Well, that's at the heart of the nature of photography. The end result doesn't stand alone, it has the baggage of creation, assumed or explicit.

Conclusion

I just want to end by saying that I don’t think any level of manipulation of a photograph is inherently wrong. The artist should have full creative freedom in the production of their works and if that includes the radical changes to the subject of the photograph then it is important that this is respected.

There are no hard lines implied by any of my ideas but for there is an implied contract between the photographer and the viewer (depending on context, and audience as above) that goes something like this… “Here is something I saw and then photographed” with the hopeful reply from the viewer “I believe you”. In other words, even in the images where I have extensively post-processed them, I strive to remain honest and hope that my audience understands this.

I'd like to know whether you have boundaries in your own photography and how you manage audience expectations. Let me know in the comment section below.

I recently read an essay by Luciano Concheiro, called "Contra el Tiempo" (Against time), where he mentions something we all know, but that needs to be put under the limelight from time to time:

If I were forced to identify one feature that defines the age, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second: I would choose ‘acceleration’. That is the phenomenon that largely governs how economics, politics, social relationships, our bodies and minds now work. The increase in speed is the prism through which, without relying on reductionist perspectives, we can see —and maybe understand– better the world in which we live in today.

This text reminded me of the theories developed by the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, and particularly about his concept of "liquid modernity", that he coined to define the new constant and incessant changes taking place nowadays in the major foundations of society, traditions, economy and politics. What he saw as the major trait of our modern times (or post-modernity) was the quick, incessant and accelerating change taking place all around, that demolished, without proposing solid alternatives, the pillars that for centuries had helped us create a sense of order and the moral, intellectual and spiritual foundations on which to build our own identity. With the quick dissolution of long established solid values into a shapeless bubbling soup, "constructing a durable identity that coheres over time and space becomes increasingly impossible". According to Bauman, "we have moved from a period where we understood ourselves as “pilgrims” in search of deeper meaning to one where we act as “tourists” in search of multiple but fleeting social experiences".

I could not avoid making a direct connection with landscape photography when reading this last sentence, particularly when tourism nowadays frequently translates into the realization of a series of selfies in a number of prescribed locations and their distribution in so-called "social" channels. Indeed, when it comes to photography, this same fast paced culture of immediacy, speed and acceleration have also shaped not only the way we photograph but also the way we consume photography and the motivations and aspirations we have of the medium when we embrace it. In a way, the liquid modernity seems to also have attained photography, making it as liquid as a bath of Rodinal, and this, at different levels. 

Critics of landscape photography, and there are many, argue that it romantically pedals a dangerous myth that the natural environment is an unspoilt, Garden of Eden and that it adheres to outdated philosophical and aesthetic models such as The Sublime and The Picturesque. Undoubtedly this can indeed be found in some ways of working, but it is a gross simplification to assume that all landscape work is rooted in these traditions.

In 1966 John Szarkowski Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, made a significant contribution to the critical discussion of photography in general, with the publication of the book entitled The Photographers Eye.

Writing at a time when the medium was still struggling to be taken seriously within the art world, Szarkowski hoped that the book would “…contribute to the formulation of a vocabulary and a critical perspective more fully responsive to the unique phenomena of photography”.

Having recently visited the Andreas Gursky retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, in London, it occurred to me that viewers could be left with no doubt whatsoever that photography as a medium has come a very long way indeed since the publication of Szarkowski’s book. In addition, anyone that scratches the surface of contemporary photographic criticism in an attempt to learn more about this fascinating medium could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps less ‘vocabulary’ might now be something of an issue.

In The Photographers Eye, Szarkowski outlines what are for him, five key characteristics of photography, that mark it out as being unique among media; these are The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time and Vantage Point. Clearly all of these key characteristics are worthy of much consideration, however, it is perhaps The Thing Itself that might be of particular interest to the landscape photographer.

By this I mean that unlike other ways of making images, photography has an umbilical link to the real world; to ‘The Thing Itself’, to that river, that tree, to that sky at that moment, on that day; Without the landscape itself, the landscape photographer is nothing. Szarkowski is right when he says that “Photography deals with the actual; the photographer must not only accept this fact but treasure it; unless he does, photography will defeat him.’

This, of course, can be said of all photography – as we need ‘things’ to photograph, whereas musicians and painters can conjure up images and evocations of both places and events without the need to travel any further than their studios. This is, thankfully, beyond photography, and is, therefore, a defining aspect of this fascinating and often frustrating medium of ours; in short, we need to get out!

The term landscape photography is broad, and once we begin to explore it, we find there are many different approaches:

For many, the aim is the description. Indeed, the camera has multiple functions in our everyday lives that go far beyond the boundaries of art, from NASA satellites to police speed cameras, from what we buy and sell online to our passports and family albums etc. All of these things testify to photography’s unsurpassed and extremely accurate ability to describe the world. The often favoured large format film camera provides detail (another of Szarkowski’s key characteristics) in abundance, as does any decent RAW file, and this technical clarity of vision for many never fails to fascinate.

However, while it is true to say that for some photographers it is enough to produce a clear and accurate description of a place visited, and to enjoy developing the associated technical skills in order to achieve this, I believe that for most landscape photographers, description is not the only aim. I suspect that the majority of landscape photographers attempt to communicate something of the subjective, lived experience, or encounter with a place.

With my own work, I am less concerned with description. My current projects LOCUS and Elsewhere form an ongoing exploration of both the solitude and sense of intoxication experienced when time is spent alone in a rural environment. All of the images use multiple exposure to sidestep what I call the blunt instrument of description, to create a more complex, visual experience that evokes the curious and visceral sensation of being alone. Perhaps the word synergy opens up a way of articulating this idea:

Synergy: The interaction or cooperation of two or more organisations, substances, or other agents [exposures] to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. 

There are two separate lives to a photographic image, the time that the exposure is made, and the time that the print is made. Both are vital, yet very different. For me, as described above, the former can be an overwhelmingly sensual and intoxicating experience. The land (and the necessary camera equipment) can be physically demanding; My blood rushes a little quicker; I look and listen keenly to everything around me; I smell the land changing through the seasons. I find myself totally absorbed in the moment, often losing track of time completely. Analogue, rather than digital helps here because there is no screen on the back of the camera to immediately review an image once it has been made, allowing me to remain in the present, and sustain what are often intense experiential encounters with the land.

The process of reviewing images that have been made in this way is a completely different thing altogether. Using film to create multiple exposures produces images that don’t exist in the ‘real world’. The technique often generates very busy and complex images that have a large element of chance: one exposure sutures with another, highlights filling in shadows, obscuring details, colliding to create new places. What I look for when reviewing the images is for something that resonates with or evokes something of the sense of ‘being there’, of being alone for a long time, quiet, and utterly lost in thought.

Whichever type of landscape photography you favour, understanding what you like about the medium and the process and what it can achieve will enhance your understanding and your pictures and appreciating that there is more than one way to approach landscape can only add to our understanding and appreciation of this genre.