Picturing Place

This collection of essays, subtitled Photography and the Geographical Imagination, is quoted by my Tutor in his PhD and recommended re my work at Rye Harbour. The most relevant essays would seem to be the introduction by the editors and the piece on the Grand Canyon by David Nye. Interestingly Hockney also covered the issue of perspective at the Grand Canyon in his recent immersive exhibition.

INTRODUCTION

Schwartz and Ryan point out the key role of photography in picturing place: “a functional tool of the geographical imagination, informing and mediating engagement with the physical and human world” (Schwartz & Ryan, 2003:3). Geographical imagination is defined as “the mechanism by which people come to know the world and situate themselves in time and space” (Schwartz & Ryan, 2003:6) – also quoted by Wyatt.

This is developed by exploring how photography works, disseminating a “viewpoint” (a useful word that can be interpreted from a landscape or political stance) via a cultural filter which is rendered transparent by the apparently mechanical nature of the medium: “photography has long played a central role in giving (such) social imagery solid purchase as part of the ‘real'” (Schwartz & Ryan, 2003:6). “Nye suggests a dynamic relationship between landscape meaning and landscape photography” (Schwartz & Ryan, 2003:12-13).

VISUALISING ETERNITY: PHOTOGRAPHIC CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE GRAND CANYON

Nye’s essay is most relevant due to it’s approach to time – the point is made that time is directly visible in the rock layers of the canyon, and that it is very long (far longer than mankind had acknowledged until recently). Even now it is hard to get the human head around periods of time of millions of years – Nye points out that this “geological wonder” acts as a “map of time”.

It is also more accessible to me as I have visited the Canyon. Perhaps relevant here is that most people spend only a little time at the Canyon’s edge – despite it being a long journey to reach the place, they go there and tick it off their list, usually with a photo, and then leave. I was lucky to spend a night on the edge in an old prospector’s cabin and took time to walk down into the Canyon – a physical way of addressing the perspective issue, at least to an extent.

The space is difficult to “perceive” from above by an eye used to looking up at mountain ranges such as the Alps – Nye gives the example of how early Spanish explorers thought the river at the bottom was just a few metres wide. Indeed the word canyon itself, derived from the Spanish cañon, was a new one in the 19th Century. The early explorers’ view was, however, generally from below looking up from the river, where a mountain-like picture is obtained that was often aligned with the sublime. Photography was difficult and time-consuming, involving transporting heavy equipment in unstable boats and, at first, portable darkrooms to facilitate the wet collodion process. The results were used to verify the exploratory descriptions, and if anything presented a scene even more spectacular than those words could describe.

Nye stressing how remote the Canyon is. Travel to the area was very difficult and few attempted it (this may be written from a colonial standpoint) before 1901, when the Santa Fe Railroad was built. Furthermore, despite being one of the most visited National Parks now, in the early days of exploration it was written off as “altogether valueless” (Schwartz & Ryan, 2003:76) by Joseph Ives in 1858.

When tourism did develop the view from above lacked perspective as the eye struggled to make sense of unfamiliar terrain, was chaotic. Once hotels were built at the rail head there is again the sense of the sublime viewed from safety and comfort. Free passage and board was granted to photographers and painters, whose images were used to promote the place, while at the same time the inadequacy of the image in doing justice to a place that should be experienced in person was emphasised to potential customers.

According to the author 3 types of photograph were created:

• River as resource
• Sublime
• Human activity in the landscape

“Collectively, they celebrated the Canyon and announced the human triumph over it” (Schwartz & Ryan, 2003:87). Indeed it was put that a new type of view had been created: “the Kantian vastness of eternity … the temporal sublime” (Schwartz & Ryan, 2003:89).

Ansel Adams’ images recover the landscape as viewed by the first explorers – this is another example of baseline confusion, as raised by Tree – a previous view, perhaps from childhood, is regarded as natural, which becomes an iterative process leapfrogging back through time. Of course for photography there is an obvious beginning point beyond which this effect cannot go, although it could be argued that the cultural influences on photography extend further back.

Nye then moves away from the b&w to the colour photography of Eliot Porter, who recorded the Glen Canyon before the dam flooded the area, using the details of the place to add up to the bigger picture rather than trying to capture it in a single frame.

By the 1970s Martin Parr, etc. were representing the landscape as more managed than sublime, emphasising the tourists watching the view above the view itself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Schwartz, J. M. & Ryan, J. R. (eds.) (2003) Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination. London: Routledge