The late David Joyce, an excellent and inventive photographer and artist in Oregon, used to have a cartoon taped to the door of his office. Titled Nature Photographer, it showed a guy with a big view camera and tripod, his head under the dark cloth. He was carefully focusing on the scene in front of him, which consisted entirely of an Ansel Adams calendar propped up on a chair.
This, sadly, is the state of most nature photography today, especially in the United States. Photographers of this school don’t actually photograph the world around them, even when they trek halfway around the globe to do so. Instead they photograph what a few bright minds have seen for them – this, and no more. When they travel to Yosemite they see Ansel Adams’ Yosemite. When they encounter a Sandhill Crane they see Arthur Morris’ version of a Sandhill Crane. When they look at fall leaves they see fall leaves according to John Shaw.
These photographers – who are often earnest and hard working and willing to spend a lot of money in this pursuit – buy books to tell them what pictures to take. They sign up for expensive seminars from famous photographers who show them what kind of lens and what kind of film to use to capture the world in just the same way as the famous photographer once did. They go online and trade advice about lens tests and film resolution and motor drive speeds, but rarely discuss anything beyond simple photographic technique – this f-stop, that exposure index. And then they sell pictures to magazines.
If they do discuss images, their criticism usually follows a seldom stated but unyielding set of rules, which say the photograph must be sharp, clear, classically composed and representational – basically, following the tenets established by the Photosecession movement a century ago. The irony, of course, is that the Photosecession was a revolt against the Pictorialist aesthetic then in vogue. Now, though, its vision represents a kind of 19th century French Academy, guarding the portals of photography against innovation.
You can sell a nature photograph to most magazine editors today only so long as it looks a lot like every other nature photograph published in the last 25 years. Any especially original photograph will be rejected — not, supposedly, because it’s original, but always because it’s too grainy, or too dark, or oddly composed, or otherwise violates the implicit rules of the game.
This kind of conservatism starts when you’re learning technique, and so beginners are often the most enthusiastic about enforcing its rules. It’s natural, while learning any skill, to seek to imitate past masters. Painters go to museums and paint copies of masterpieces. Good writers often memorize interesting passages of writing.
Photographers should emulate masterpieces, too. My complaint is that photographers, as a group, too frequently fail to move beyond this apprenticeship into mastery of their own. By setting their tripods in the footprints of masters, they limit themselves to a kind of visual stenography.
Obsession with technique and, especially, with technical rules is terribly prevalent in photography compared to other visual arts. (When photographers get together, they talk about lens tests. When painters get together, they talk about money.) For some photographers, indeed, photography is almost entirely about technique. While practicing technique can be a satisfying pastime, it rarely produces interesting art.
Today’s wildlife photography has a strong emphasis on producing clean, sharp images of healthy, charismatic animals shot on grainless film (now, noiseless digital files) with dramatic “golden hour” lighting. These certainly make marketable images in the contemporary market. But nature is bigger than this narrow representation. Animals, even more than humans, go through their lives injured and deformed. Few wild animals live in pristine wilderness areas; rather more of them contend with traffic on interstate highways on a daily basis than live in Eden.
Nature happens at noon, not just at sunrise and sunset. I’d love to see more nature photography that actually reflects the world outside, and not just the world according to nature calendars.
(I wrote this a few years ago on my blog, Bob Keefer Photography | Pictures of the American Northwest, and posted it here in a slightly updated form as I think it still applies.) |
