following a path

Without wishing to state the obvious one of the most interesting things about the photograph is the subject that it represents. This is not to denigrate a medium that on its own is still a fascinating thing. But what really captivates our attention, and has done so for nearly 200 years, is the what we see within the confines of the frame. It is here in the subject matter of the image where the interest lies.

There are all manner of reasons why this space should prove to be so intriguing. Not least amoung these is the photographs ability to articulate something of what took place outside of the frame. For example lets consider two images with a similar composition and subject matter:

On the left we have a detail from Dennis Oppenheim's Accumulation Cut while on the right we have Wall's Crooked Path. In both images the focus of attention is the path in the centre of the frame. But our response, our mine at least, is quite different to each image. With Oppenheim i recognise that this is a channel in the ice. Also knowing what i know about ice it seems very unlikely that this channel would have formed naturally. So i conclude that this is a channel that has been cut in the ice by a human protagonist. In the full version of this piece (which can be found in an earlier post) the process by which this channel formed is made explicitly clear. But even without such information we are given the suggestion that some sort of intervention has taken place. 

With Wall things are a bit different. We see the path but the location and the material with which it has been made do not immediately suggest the sort of intervention that Oppenheim enacted. While Wall could certainly have made the path himself, in a style similar to Long, it could equally be the result of everyday traffic. In short there is an element of doubt here for the viewer. Is Wall presenting us with a document here or the record of an intervention? With Wall this dilemma is enhanced by our knowledge of his working practices and use of heavily constructed imagery. In short we can never sure if Wall has constructed this image or just recorded a situation as he found it. 

The purpose here is not to provide answers to this uncertainty. Rather it is to reflect on the way the photograph presents its subject and how this leads us to consider a range of processes that took place outside of the photograph. With Oppenheim we have an image that does not privilege the space of the photograph. The nature of his intervention makes for a  less evocative image and it is rather the process of creating the work that we concentrate on rather than the image of it. With Wall though there is no sense that the work exists elsewhere. Instead it is all here in the confines of the frame. And while we find no resolution in this space we are given the wonderful provocation to imagine. 

C to B

On 29 October I took the train to Cosham which is a town about 50 miles from Brighton. My intention was to meet my friend at the train station and ride our bikes back to Brighton. I had done a similar trip earlier in the summer that saw me travel from London to Brighton and came to be the project called South (hopefully that publication will be made soon).

As with South I wanted to create some sort of record of this trip. But unlike South I did not want to take photographs. I had found this quite an interruption to the process of cycling and not particularly enjoyable. Also while the images were quite interesting that only felt loosely associated with the process by which they were taken. In other words they bore little evidence of bike ride that led to me being in that position at that time.

There is nothing wrong with this but I wanted to create something that actually articulated something of the process of travelling. So I decided in advance that the record of this trip would only exist in the form of a very minimal publication. I would record the time we left Cosham and the time we arrived at Brighton. In-between would be two arrows pointing right. These relate to the fact that two of us undertook this journey and that we travelled east.

The main influence on this project was Richard Long. I had been studying his work in the months leading up to the ride and was getting an idea of how he chose to represent his walks. One of the ways he does this is with text:

This text relates to a significant physical act. Long has literally walked miles but all we have of this experience is this text. What I really liked about this is that it gives the viewer plenty of space to imagine what took place. We have these brief, enigmatic pieces of text that indicate nothing off the effort, or even locations, that Long went to. We have to fill these gaps in for ourselves and imagine would took place outside of this basic info.

Long seems to recognise that trying to recreate his walk for the viewer is futile. As it takes place in reality whatever means of representation Long chooses will never come close to the experience of walking. So instead Long focuses on the act itself and this is what is at the act heart of this work: the basic process of doing.

This minimal approach to representing his work is something that occurs repeatedly in Long’s work. Another specific example that influenced my own project is his publication The North Woods. This coincided with a show Long had at the Whitechapel gallery in 1977. The book only has about 4 pages and these contain a brief amount of text and one photograph. So again Long has sought to engage the viewers imagination and ask them to recreate the work rather than present a resolved account.

I wanted to produce a similarly minimal type of publication for my own trip. I think I certainly achieved that and the information given to the viewer is pretty slender. However I think it does give enough to provide an evocative starting point for viewer. It raises questions about what happened in-between the two times and the arrows seem to indicate something but what exactly is unclear. My one problem with it is that it might be too evocative. Possibly the viewers would need a little more information to get them interested. In any case the final result can be seen here courtesy of the marevelous and highly recommended ISSU

Open publication - Free publishing - More trip

a foggy notion

As a member of the 21st Century I have to except certain things. I can contact people all over the globe almost instantaneously. I can rabbit on about my thoughts and publish them for the world to see. And, if I produced the right type of photograph I could sell this for a relatively large amount of money.

Each of these things is astounding in its own right and equally we would have struggled to do any of them  in 1968. With regards to the first two pronouncements this comes as little surprise. But with the final one this may not be so obvious. Nonetheless though it is fairly accurate to say that in 1968 art photography was not a widely recognised practice and proponents of this art form stood to gain little financial reward from it.  

In a round about way this brings us to the topic of todays post: photography in Land Art. 

Isolated Mass, Circumflex 1968

In 1968 Michael Heizer travelled in to the Nevada Desert and cut a curvaceous channel in the ground. That we know anything about this at all is down to the photographs taken of this intervention into nature. From the photograph we get the rudimentary idea of Heizer's work and the basic form it took. 

Isolated Mass, Circumflex is one example of the type of work that would come to be grouped under the banner of Land or Environmental Art. Protagonists such as Oppenheim, Haacke, Smithson rejected the traditional role of the artist and sought to explore new places and new materials. There was a sense that art was being liberated from its traditional confines of the studio and gallery. Now it could exist anywhere and be made of anything. Heizer himself had high hopes for such work and elaborated on its potential in idealistic terms:

'one aspect of earth orientation is that works circumvent the galleries and the artist has no sense of the commercial or the utilitarian...One of the implications of Earth Art might be to remove completely the commodity status of a work of art'

For contemporary audiences such a statement seems tremendously naive. The complete removal of arts commodity status has far from been acheived and all manner of work still sells for huge sums. Land Art is no exception. The photographs taken of these interventions act to commodify what Heizer felt could be un-commodifiable. They take what is site-specific and temporary and give it material form. What's more it is a form that can be easily reporduced and circulated to a wide audience. So while the initial intervention is hard to commodify the resulting documents more than make up for this.

But before we condemn this statement as totally naive we must remember the status of the photograph in 1968. This was not a medium that could be sold for huge sums and the art market had not conferred financial value onto the medium. When Heizer says the commodity status could be removed this is because from his point of view, and of the period in which he was working, the photograph was not a prized object.

Ironically it was work produced around this time that began to demonstrate the art value of the photograph and pave the way for the fantastic prices photographs fetch today. But this was still to come and as far as Heizer was concerned the photograph was a relatively worthless object in 1968.

All this indicates that judging the work and statements from artists has to incorporate more than just the hard facts. We must broaden our consideration to think about the socio-economic context they worked in; contemporary theories in art and the nature of the art market. All these things shape an artists production and if we neglect to explore the influence such things have then we risk being naive ourselves.