Photos by Friedlander
I usually avoid landscape photography. I see it as too often cliche and banal. But I’ve always remembered Lee Friedlander’s close in desert work of bushes, and thistles, and cacti. I’m looking through it right now, as preparation for my own time out in the Australian bush.
- The first thing is that they are brilliant. They have so much critical intelligence in them and so much aesthetic sense that it will be a great challenge to better them. The humanise the landscape and use foregrounds that a real walker would encounter. Even where there is a ‘heroic’ background, the foreground makes a harsh counterpoint that punctures the ideal myths of what the desert has been represented as. The desert in Friedlander’s work is not the place for dreams but a spiky reality or even a painful bright nightmare that you are trapped in.
- Reminds me of the trope used by Katsushika Hokusai (in Mount Fuji seen behind a cistern, 1835) of contrasting foreground and background. This freedom and wit had a huge impact on the loosening of Academicism and the flowering of Impressionism.
- The shapes that F. finds are also reminiscent of the Japanese love of beauty in disequilibrium. In fact this discordance with traditional balance is a major argument for the uncontrolled barbarity of nature.
- The light is midday and harsh. He has tried to obliterate tonality in subservience to blinding detail. His language is intense so that he can communicate the intensity of that environment. I think the Australian desert isn’t like that. Does it have to be this harsh? This chaotic? The Aboriginals lived harmoniously in and around the desert. How did they do that? What did that harmonise with? A potential way to go beyond Friedlander.
- His subjects are plants. But the plants take on the symbolic weight of chaos itself. Starting from a point they burst and reconfigure the environment in an image of cacaphonic entropy. This entropy is not harmless however, the spikes spread along with the slender branches.
- But what takes his work deeper is the beauty inherent in this terrifying disorder. And some pictures go even further. The picture on page 20 of cacti discs is about beauty. The discs are nearly perfectly round, idealistically round, and they face themselves at angles that are diverse, and harmonic or even more, melodic.
- The background deserves a mention. Some of his backgrounds are terrifically lyrical. And it is the contrast that he is looking for. He creates small pockets of clear amongst the chaotic foreground for the optimism of the background to filter through like the morning sun.
- I, of course, love his square format. It simplifies the space and removes the distraction of format.
- Deep, deep focus. Probably not hard in the strong light. But still I wouldn’t want to lose too much quality in going to a too high f-stop.
- There is a dramatic cutting off of objects by the frame. It makes the object not an object, but more a flat structure put before what is being commented on. The trees are his comments on the text, the traditional landscapes. Of course, he can’t stop himself from innovating in the background too.
- By trying to represent chaos he is walking on the precipice of the work itself becoming incoherent. I believe some pictures do, for example p30, p.38. I don’t think it can be argued that he still used these to further the narrative. He didn’t need this many pictures. Maybe half would have done. Hard to judge though. He must have done a shit load. And in the edit become infatuated with parts rather than the whole.
- In some there is a direct interaction between the foreground and background. E.g. p.36 the cacti is touching the tree. Creates a very interesting feeling after the first 30 pictures where the two were very separated. The desert is slowly closing in on you as you tire, as your thirst grows. Things seem even more menacing.
- The cacti are humanoid. They are used as soldiers or sentries of a sort. But mute. You will get nothing but hurt from them. There is no lonliness more difficult than the one when someone else is around. Sometimes the cacti hover, ghostlike.
- His shape and pattern making are masterful. Unbeatable perhaps. He made photographic paintings out there.
- There is often a revelation. The foreground is allowed to be seen. It is anti-climactic. p.48. A certain story is developing here. Amazingly you do not get the feeling you are seeing something for the second time ever. An amazing success!
- He plays with the weight of the tone of different parts of the photograph, and of the photograph as a whole. Some are heavier and darker. Some are nearly washed out in white. Creates a way for him to differentiate and a scale for him to work with.
- p.57 show the remains of a battle. The remains of an event. Reminds me of the famous Gettysburg picture of fallen soldiers or Goya’s etchings of men impaled on trees.
- He is exploring the inherent shapes of the objects in and of themselves, beyond using them as texture or counterpoints.
- These pictures are the inbetween moments which are just as real as when you get to the vista and look. To get there you have to walk through the shrub. Like life. Heavy shit.
- Uses shadows with extreme sophistication. The shadows become third actors, reflecting, softening what is there, but also urging on the chaos.
- Often he uses blur, or over exposure to reduce the detail of various parts of the print, or the whole thing to be expressive. Uses less so that you feel more.
- These natural things look anything but natural. They look like they are lifeless things made of earth and stone. There is no life here.
- It is fatiguing. (He says in his essay: “More probably, it’s just like a long scratch of a fingernail on a blackboard.”)
- The cacti become characters further on in the piece. A baby a sleep, foetal (p.94). Two lovers (p.95). A fat kid with candy (p.97). A hand beckoning (p.99. An magic orb from outer-space (p.98)
- p.101 is a killer.
- This is a seriously masterful minor work. A great, great intelligence to it.
- Photography is big. Just as big as cinema, or a novels. It is a worth it.
- Of course he had an infatuation with Cherry blossoms. Of fucking course.
I looked at the Distributed Art Publishers edition.
Posted 2 years ago
