“Why do people photograph places? What compels artists to make images of the land? Are their intentions similar or different than previous generations? The advantage of an exhibition like this is that we have the luxury of putting these questions to the artists themselves. Early in the process of organizing these images, I interviewed each of the eighty-eight contributing photographers to understand the motivations that drove their work. I soon realized that these first-person accounts added new meaning to the viewing experience and should accompany the pictures they inspired. I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I did collecting them.” -From Andy Adams of Flak Photo
View the exhibition here.
Given our current project is the Cultural Landscape project, this online exhibition is especially relevant. It includes a few artists we’ve looked at this semester, including Cleveland’s own Garie Waltzer. Each image includes a brief interview with the artist about their work and relationship to landscape. Here’s Garie’s:
Garie Waltzer, Coney Island Amusement Park, Brooklyn, 2006
Why did you photograph this place?
I made this image as part of Living City, a series that looks at the cultural landscape of urban spaces. Coney Island is an endangered American landscape, one that has been at the center of development controversies for years. Having spent time there as a kid, I was intrigued by what is fleeting and what persists in this decades old iconic recreational space at the edges of Brooklyn.
What compels you to make images of the land?
As our worldviews change with time, and as imaging technologies give us more sophisticated tools and methods that change the look of photographic images, the basic desire to see who we are and render how we look remains the same. I am particularly interested in the ways in which cultural information about a place and time is embedded in the visual landscape, and when framed from today’s vantage point, becomes a multi-faceted time capsule. Places on the tipping point of change are interesting because they reveal past and present simultaneously.
Who/what are your landscape influences/inspirations?
There are too many to list here but my early documentary influences were Walker Evans, Robert Frank, August Sander, Nathan Lyons, and Berenice Abbot. I was initially drawn to photography’s documentary power and soon turned to a painterly and constructed way of working. Some of those influences were people like Ray Metzger, John Wood, Man Ray, and John Baldessari.
Years of constructing large, layered, collaged and multi-component images influenced the way I see and consider landscape, so when I challenged myself to work in a singe-frame documentary approach it wasn’t surprising that I was drawn to the temporal and spatial multiplicity of complex urban spaces. I find the chaos of unknown places inspiring. There is a lot of interest in the shape of cities today, so naturally a lot of photographers who examine and document the rapidly changing landscape influence me. I hope my images contribute to this ongoing conversation.
Is the landscape photo tradition evolving in the 21st century?
Photographers face the landscape today with knowledge of a long-standing tradition, more focused agendas for their storytelling, and a growing sense of the imperative for an original vision, frequently fueled by the marketplace. They have greater access to distant sites and a broader audience for their commentary. This lends a self-consciousness to landscape images (or any photographic image) that is an inevitable factor in the medium’s evolution. The marketplace and technological developments drive the look and packaging of photographic information, encouraging the growing scale, facility and ubiquity of images. And as new generations inhabit virtual worlds with growing commitment, it will be interesting to see how we consider the real physical landscape before us.
CSU Photo 