Enana Nduku
Landscape Response
Photo II
David La Spina
9.15.2011

In all facets of my daily life I find evidence of my own obsessive fascination with the human form. When I draw, or write, sit in a restaurant or go out shooting I find myself spending hours investigating the human face the human personality. I long to capture and inspect the unique way each individual finds their balance as they sit, stand, or move. I say this to explain that I approached this reading. When I photograph or draw landscapes or interiors they always see somehow empty. My eye interprets the scene as defined specifically by the lack of human presence as if the figure has just wandered out of the frame. Therefore it is as of yet difficult for me to relate to the ideas of someone who describes them self as a “landscape photographer” ( Beauty in Photography page 14, pgh 2).
Even so there were a few passages which struck me. First of all Adams addresses a question which has been raised in nearly every discussion of photography that I have been a part of. Can there authenticity or truth in an image captured by a non objective eye. On page 15, pgh 2 of Beauty he says “Most photographers are people of intense enthusiasms whose work involves many choices–… Behind these decisions stands the photographers individual framework of recolllections and meditations about the way he percieved that place or places like it before.” I think this is an interesting way of looking at this photocultural riddle, with the idea that what makes a photo feel authentic is a sense of the artist self recognition, his understanding of his own faults and biases. However this then changes our puzzle. If we hold this to be true it means it is no longer a question of whether a photograph can capture reality (objective truth) but whether the photographers intent reads as genuine or honest. The image captured is a metaphor for the artist’s personality, history, and background.
To take this briefly away from landscape in order to support my response I bring into question the work of Richard Avedon, particularly his series In the American West.

 example (Carol Crittendon, Bartender)
The way Avedon captures his subjects gives me the overwhelming impression that he is somehow violating their dignity in some way with his gaze. They are raw but I feel that he is exploiting their insecurities. The blank backdrop could almost be said to seem symbolic of forgotten potential, like an unused sheet of paper Avedon staged and lit these shots outdoors and you can see that the subjects are aware of how exposed they are in front of the camera. To link this back to the reading I refer this train of thought in my mind to Adams’ idea that “we continue to value them [pictures] initially as reminders of what is out there, of what is distinct from us.” (pg. 14) This says to me that we can appreciate new images only in relation to what we already know, we perceive them based on how they differ, and how the are similar to things that we have already seen. I think that Avedon looked at the people of the west as creatures “distinct” from his self, instead of just as other human beings molded by distinct environments. He regards them as one regards a photo of starving children in the third world. With pity, perhaps a little fear, and a twinge of guilt comes with the snide voice in the back of your head whispering “there but for the grace of god go I”. After reading this article I am surprised to find myself a bit more optimistic about tackling landscape in our next assignment.

While reading the beginning portion of Adams’ Truth and Landscape I was initially struck by the way he understood the origin and progression of America’s traditional fondness for geography. He quickly suggests that this ‘fondness’ for preserving landscapes has begun to assert itself over the last half-century in a way that painfully separates the subject from his subject matter, what in this case would be called the traveler and the landscape. I think an important distinction that Adams is making in his attempt to clarify the traveler’s loss of affection gives insight into the way the viewer exists as subject to the landscape and not vice versa. Perhaps it is from this point that one may begin to understand the sadness that can be induced during the process of recording one’s self in a reputably ‘beautiful’ landscape. The effect that comes with being a visitor and not a resident of a landscape depicts the way in which that visitor deals with his temporality in an unclaimed space. In order to play the role of the inquisitive and thoughtful visitor, one can, through the mechanism of photography, remember a time that is no longer livable.

Though Adam’s points to this melancholy as a ‘surprise’ byproduct of engaging with a renowned landscape, it is my feeling that this sentiment is to be more expected than it is shocking. I’m concerned with the way this sense of trauma is becoming deconstructed in the greater scope of memory because it appeals to the way the subject becomes expected to participate in a narrative of fondness that is probably greater than he is. It comes as no surprise to me then, that one could or would have a sense of belittlement while engaging with a landscape precisely because the way one conceives himself against an expansive, wide, rolling space is not meant to deliver him from his estrangement from nature but to intensify it. What is scary about this moment for me is how this narrative of belittlement is becoming increasingly withered as the traveler arms himself against nature with the one medium that defies its constant change: photography.

In thinking about ‘a common record of sorrow in places worthy of postcards,’ as readers, I think we are being asked to challenge the role of subjectivity the traveler is made to assume while observing a landscape. Take, for instance, the Grand Canyon. It’s uniqueness is communicated throughout our history as a premier relic of primordial beauty, an ‘unspoiled’ place. Adams would argue that it is this pristine feature that ultimately makes it robbed of its precious majesty? By no fault of it’s own, the demise of the Grand Canyon has perpetuated in an experience of it that can oh-so-easily be replicated and stored in the inevitable photo album that will outlive the experience of actually being there. Thus, Adams concludes that rediscovering and revaluating where we find ourselves in relation to a landscape is the only means by which we can hope to defend our memory from the inevitable melancholy lingering beneath its surface. .