For this exercise, I have chosen two landscape photographs; Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico (1941), by Ansel Adams and Bonne Carre Slipway, Norco, Louisiana (1988), by Richard Misrach

These images are visually very similar, both depicting a wide-open landscape with some form of human presence within the frame. They are both shot on large format film with the obvious difference being one is colour and the other is black and white. Moonrise… is perhaps the most famous image by Adams, probably the most recognised landscape photographer in history. This image is famous for the story about how it was made almost as much as the composition. Adams was travelling back from a failed day’s shooting and saw the gibbous moon, lit by the fading sunset. He rushed to set the camera up, couldn’t find his light meter and worked out the exposure from his knowledge of the luminance of the moon. The story reinforced the legend of Adams as a ‘technical’ photographer. Misrach’s image, has no back story, being part of a documentary series about the impact of the petrochemical industry on the environment in ‘cancer alley'[1], a region of Louisiana. Outside of the artistic intensions, the images have other visual differences. Moonrise… is very precise and sharp, exposed carefully for the moon’s luminance, whereas Misrach’s picture is a deliberately long exposure. The fine details of the refinery are lost in the flattened movement of the water and the smoke rising from the buildings. Where Adams captures the natural light impacting on the buildings, Misrach represents the light pollution impacting on the environment; the antithesis of each other. The technical codes used create a sense of wonder in Adams’s picture and his familiar use of scale makes the manmade part less significant in the context of the desert space, where Misrach’s image is depressing. The light pollution creates artificial colour in the sky and is reflected in the water in lines that lead towards the viewer. Misrach’s image relies on colour to create this mood.

I chose these pictures because of the aesthetic similarities and the obvious technical codes that identify each as landscape.  They also both contain natural and man-made context in similar compositions. However, it is clear that even without knowing of either artist’s work, they are very different ‘cultural tones’.  Where one is rich in detail and natural beauty (then moon, the almost clear sky and the highlights from the sun setting behind the viewer), the other is devoid of the same elements.  The composition is simpler but the use of polluting rather than natural light immediately sets this in a environmental/political space.  It’s no longer a pure landscape but a documentary protest.  With the rest of Misrach’s series, the images serve as a stark warning.  Adams’ image isn’t part of a series, but an observation of a moment of natural beauty.  Both could be argued to be ‘documents’, but Misrach’s is more of a commentary on man’s destruction of his environment.  

“I photographed the landscape, but where it collided with civilization,” he said…

…while Misrach outgrew Adams’ influence, he still reveres the nature photographer. In fact, he has a typewritten letter Adams sent him in 1979 framed on his wall at home. Adams had sent it to Misrach’s first gallery, expressing his admiration for the work…

…“He’s still my hero,” Misrach said.

(Richard Misrach Photographer | All About Photo, s.d.)

References

[Fig 1] Unearthing the Enigma of Moonrise Hernandez Murals – AAG (2020) At: https://www.anseladams.com/a-halloween-story-moonrise-hernandez/ (Accessed 07/05/2022).

[Fig 2] Petrochemical America by Richard Misrach (210PH) — Atlas of Places (s.d.) At: https://atlasofplaces.com/photography/petrochemical-america/ (Accessed 07/05/2022).

Bibliography

[1]Petrochemical America by Richard Misrach (210PH) — Atlas of Places (s.d.) At: https://atlasofplaces.com/photography/petrochemical-america/ (Accessed 07/05/20

[2] Richard Misrach Photographer | All About Photo (s.d.) At: https://www.all-about-photo.com/photographers/photographer/61/richard-misrach (Accessed 07/05/2022).

Introduction

For Part 1, I created a Padlet to capture my thoughts and observations and for Part 2, a Padlet for each image analysis. This blog post simply contains reflections on both pieces of work. The Padlets can be found at the following addresses:

Part 1: https://oca.padlet.org/richard5198861/jofu35hc1njbw93r

Part 2: https://oca.padlet.org/richard5198861/b7v6mxqna7lg2bsr

Reflections Part 1

The source material draws our attention to what Rose (2001,p25) referred to as the three sites of a visual image; the site of the production, the site of the image and the site where audiences will view it. These aspects form meaning in interpreting an image and are the most debated in terms of the importance placed upon them. The idea that there could be shifting emphasis on the importance of all three reasonably suggests that there are many potential interpretations of what is ‘truth’ in documentary. The rhetoric of an image is dependent on how the photographer has used photographic codes to influence the reading. I was taken by the idea that for every ‘rule’ there is subversion and the clues as to how that makes a photograph believable or otherwise is down to how the image is broken down.

The artists included in the both the notes and the embedded exercise have all taken the idea of documenting using a camera in different directions. The first thing that I noted was the exploratory nature that evolved over time. The early photographers, such as Fox-Talbot were interested in how to capture a significant event visually, e.g. the building of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. Although a fairly simple composition, use of visual codes such as scale and perspective, coupled with the rudimentary equipment and processing used to make the picture, raise questions that change over time. Shafran makes the point that the image has a modern feel to it with only the necessary elements included (e.g. the column’s base but not the statue) and the advertising hoardings in the frame. Was Fox-Talbot establishing photographic composition codes from the outset or have modern analyses of the visual image and structuralist ideas made sense of his work after the fact? The collection of artists impressions in We are Here have the common notion of re-visiting works of lesser known photographers with a post-structuralist eye. Works by Hinde and Charles Jones break down the codes of very simple compositions to give clues as to an area of society that we might not be familiar with. I was drawn to the catalogue photographs of pristine vegetables as if being judged in a horticultural show as shot by Jones. They use technical codes such as light and composition (uncluttered, filling the frame etc) to bring out the natural beauty of the subjects. The subjects, although familiar are shown to have been cared for and made as good as possible for the camera to document, asking the viewer to see how important horticulture is to some people.

As the 20th Century progressed, the subjects and approaches to documenting them became more experimental. Photographers began subverting the ideas of their time, such as Munby’s portraits of dirty women. His idea of humorously substituting the female form into male professions and further subverting the notions of class in Victorian England mirror the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, who was pilloried by the establishment for what was seen to be poor technical skills. Her pictures create a real sense of her subject’s personality as she saw them, rather than majoring on the accurate representation of their features. Towards the 1960s and 70s, we see more voyeristic style of documentary, taking cues from classic and contemporary street photography. Here we saw the visual codes of separation, isolation through focus and highlight as well as the decisive moment, being used by the viewer to create narratives as though they were part of the scene. In the V&A article about South Africa, the cultural evolution of the country with its troubled recent history is documented through an approach that highlights what we may have no experience of. We can see influences of early practitioners such as the FSA group in Jodi Bieber’s Women Who Murder Their Husbands. The horror of the women’s acts is contrasted with their visual aesthetic and being surrounded by their meagre possessions in their cells. We don’t even need the additional context of why they committed their crimes to break down the visual clues in their portraits. The pictures are constructed and don’t tell the subject’s whole story, but Bieber makes us connect with them as if we were actually visiting and asks us to consider gender violence and societal bias when viewing the images. This fabricated reality theme is naturally present in the works of Crewdson, Wall and diCorcia who direct their pictures so that they viewer can create a narrative based on their own experiences and perspectives.

The final artist in the reference material was Richard Misrach, who’s series Destroy this Memory is a documentary of the region of Louisiana that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The series focuses on the people of the towns that were worst hit through the graffiti they left behind. This included messages of hope in preparation for the storm, fear of the event and the shock of the aftermath. Messages warning looters and asking people to call their families as well as rages against the state government and insurance companies are curated into a series that explores the human response to crisis. There is some gallows humour in amongst the desperation, which Misrach uses to punctuate the series. The interesting thing about the series is the apparent lack of technical setup in the images. Misrach made the series from his scouting photographs which were taking with a basic digital camera. As a result, the style isn’t cinematic or constructed, but more snapshot as if a tourist (or the viewer) took the pictures. Composition is ‘careful’ but doesn’t have a sense of planning about it. This style brings the viewer closer to the scenes as the photographer saw them. The absence of people creates the eerie sense of emptiness but their wrecked possessions and their need to write something on them is compelling.

It’s clear from the reference material that documentary has evolved from the straight ‘truth’ of presenting something to the camera, through coded composition, rebelling against convention and the subversion of cultural understanding, to the more intimate act of being part of what is happening.

“I guess that is how photographic culture shifts and changes as time passes. We think that everything’s been done, but, of course, there are many things that haven’t. In twenty years’ time we will be shocked by how certain works are perceived, and that’s exciting.”

Martin Parr, 2007

Reflection Part 2

My conclusion from part 2 of this exercise is summarised in the following key points:-

• The analysis of an image using semiotics can be applied to any of the genres, even when at first glance, the image contains signifiers that do not have apparent connotations. I chose 4 random images by famous photographers of the 20th century as well as contemporary artists and my choices were purely aesthetic. When looking at the codes that help to identify an image as being part of a genre, we know that the visual aesthetic is one of the most common; a portrait contains a person and little else, a landscape contains a view of some sort etc. When analysing, I could determine the denoting elements and derive some connotations from them with little difficulty between genres.
• The connotations are greatly affected by the social and cultural perspective from which the elements are viewed. For example, Ansel Adams shot with black and white film in 1947 because that was the established technology, not because he was looking for an aesthetic. The drama of his landscape is enhanced by its use and the technical approach to highlight and shadow with each element, certainly helped support the narrative that I saw within the image. Similarly with Winogrand’s image, I would argue that it is as shocking in today’s culture where racial prejudice has often been seen to be worse than the 1960s.
• The technical codes direct the viewer to not only the elements that are ‘important’ through use of depth of field and framing, but also create a mood through lighting and colour temperature. In Djikstra’s portrait, the tones of the image contriubte to the sterile connotations of the subject against the background, while the low contrast offers a bleak feel to the subject’s experience.
• What we bring to the interpretation of an image. In the case of Adams’ image, I saw religious connotations in the snaking river that was lit to reveal its surface texture. Although I’m not particularly religious, the combination of the scale of the mountains and their reaching the dramatic sky, invoked the creationism stories I was taught as a child. Other cultures would not necessarily prioritise the connotations in the way that I did, instead introducing their own meanings allied to their own experiences.

Overall, I found this exercise to be interesting because of the application of the structure of linguistics to a variety of images. It focuses our attention on what is physically present and what each element might mean.

Bibliography

Please see the Padlets linked previously