Week Thirteen: After Nature

This week we have looked at an past exhibit titled After Nature at the New Museum in NY. I find the title of the exhibit a bit contradictory if it is to be about what comes after nature it should be waste land, were nothing survives (just my opinion). Which brings us back to the question  what is nature which we have been trying to define all semester.  The exhibit is described as surveying a landscape of wilderness and ruins which have been darkened by uncertain catastrophe. Some of the pieces work for the exhibit if it's meant to be when nature takes back over earth and humans are know longer in conflict with nature.  How ever some of the pieces a bit contrived out of individual fantasy for example Allora and Calzadilla piece. Are we meant to be looking at an example of what has remained after we are gone and what has taken over is studying are culture that has been left behind?  I have to also criticise the way you view the online exhibition it is most frustrating when you not only have to browse up and down to see a piece but also side to side is just intolerable to me, it takes away from the enjoyment of viewing. I have yet to figure how the text relates to each piece of art and the way the links take to randomly to other pieces I found there to be 15 different lines on the art work and I am not sure how they relate to each other or even if they are to. I do how ever like William Christenberry's photography work of the Kudzu vine take over buildings, taking what was from nature back to nature. When man has lost or given up a battle with nature. I also was really really amused by August Strinberg's Celestograph, at that we can be fooled by nature because we took a picture of it. 

William Christenberry

August Strindberg

Week Twelve: Looking space into place

How the mind looks at the unknown or an unfamiliar landscape can be very disorienting. This weeks reading reminded me of Terry Evans work A Greenland Glacier: The Scales of Climate Change 2008 and how she talked about having a hard time relating to its scale without any human markers. The relationship to scale is an issue for the photographer and the viewer to figure out how to relate to. The viewer has to trust the photographer and their interpretation of the glacier, for all the viewer know these could be made up in a bath tub on a miniature scale to look like the real thing.

Terry Evans, Ice fjord leading to jakobshavn Glacier4

Terry Evans, Coming into Greenland

Week eleven: What is Landscape photography to you?

What do you picture when some one says landscape photography, it comes in many forms here are three different ways I think of landscape. Which seem close and very far apart in propose and concept, yet give of a similar feel of emptiness, isolation, the horizon being the interest point. The form of these images are of particular interest to me they draw you into there center and push you across the horizon line which hold interest to the viewer. Depicting a tree line, a fence post or power lines.

James Rotz, from Detritus Night Series

James Rotz, from Detritus Day Series

Larry Chait, sat1644, 2005

Larry Chait, sat1625, 2005

Lynn Geesaman, Beloeil, Belgium (2004) [4-04-2c-6]

Week Ten: Mythic Wilderness

This weeks reading on Subhankar Banerjee photography, his search to find a mythic wilderness and finding so much more. He found and shows in his work how connected and inhabited even the Arctic is, which is usually see as the last frontier unmarked by man. However it is inhabited, by natives that respect the environment and hundreds of species that migrate to and from the area. Wildlife that we would not normally think is so reliant on the Arctic, its more than just polar bears and ice.

The image of the polar bear relates to back to biophilia

Which is why we love anything polar bear

A better way of see how the world is connected. by Buckminster Fuller

Which may help people see just how connected the world really is, we are all connected by one body of water there are no walls to start and stop the flow from coast to coast of different countries and land masses are also actually much closer than they appear in a 

more traditional view of the world that cuts the view in half 

making the environments seem separate and cut off.

We need to be reminded how connected we really all are. Were do all the birds go they don't live in one place which Banerjee depicts in his images and caption of migratory birds and caribou reminding us of how important this land that seem total uninhabitable really is used by these animals and is very fragile. As it is in todays news I was reading about and ice shelf that is part of a bridge that is about to break away from the Antarctic coast.