As an American photographing the contemporary landscape, I think it is important for me to contemplate the landscape in the traditional sense. When I look at the works of the great master photographer Ansel Adams, I think about what he must have experienced as he first went out west to photograph the landscape. “Born in San Francisco, Ansel Adams was 14 when he made his first trip to the spectacular national park of Yosemite, California. The experience was of such intensity that it stayed with him for the rest of his life. [1]” It’s also interesting to me that Ansel had a period when he said, “At that time we'd all been bitten by the Surrealist bug, and we were finding incongruous juxtapositions everywhere. I was out near Long Beach and drove by a cemetery, and here was this white marble angel of death behind some oil derricks.[2]” I wasn’t even aware of this images by Ansel until reading an interview by Mary Ellen Marks, in which he talked about how it often got used for pollution ads even though that was never his real intention. In the upcoming weeks I hope to be traveling out West towards Arizona to reflect upon the photographs taken by the old masters, as well as to build on my series of images with creative juxtapositions.
Works Cited
[1] "BBC - BBC Four - Audio Interviews - Ansel Adams." BBC - Homepage. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/adamsa1.shtml>.
[2] Mark, Mary Ellen. "ART NEWS - ANSEL ADAMS-THE LAST INTERVIEW - 905N-000-001." Mary Ellen Mark Home Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/art%20news/905N-000-001.html>.
No comments:
Post a Comment