Take a look at this photograph.
 |
| "The Tetons - Snake River" by Ansel Adams, c. 1942. |
One who's active in our class may look at this picture and recognize it from my previous blog post, but, other than that, what do you see? Maybe you notice the sharpness and detail of the vast landscape photography. From the tiniest ripples in the Snake River to the sun's rays peeking out from behind the clouds, the photograph captures a certain majesty and mystique of the area. You might look at this image for several minutes and it may begin to evoke a feeling inside of you, as if you have been to this particular spot in Grand Teton National Park. But have you? This is the power of the camera as a technology. The camera and the images it produces bends space and time, affecting the viewers to think differently about the way they perceive articulations [the contingent connections of words, concepts, institutions, practices and affects that form a specific unity (p. 127)] of space: Representations of space and representational space.
"In an era when handheld point-and-shoot cameras were quickly becoming the norm, Adams and other landscape photographers clung to their bulky, old-fashioned large-format cameras. Ultimately, Adams’ pictures turned photography into fine art. What’s more, they shaped the way Americans thought of their nation’s wilderness and, with that, how to preserve it." In 1940, Kings Canyon National Park was established, but it didn't come without a fight and technological aid. FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes "took particular interest in the National Park Service." Ickes turned his sights on the Kings Canyon region of the Sierra Nevada and enlisted the aid of Ansel Adams to drive home his fight for preservation. President Roosevelt was so moved by the work of Ansel Adams that he signed Kings Canyon National Park into existence, even though "he would never be able to visit in person because of his inability to walk unaided. Instead, he would appreciate its magnificence through the photographs of Ansel Adams."
As our book tells us, technology is spatial, meaning technology and our awareness of it affects the ways in which we perceive and move within space. The camera, in particular the way Ansel Adams used it with the establishment of many US National Parks, has shaped the way our culture perceives, conceives and lives. Adams' use of the camera has altered the way we see our countries wildlife as representations of space, "space as it is conceived . . . concepts we use to think about space" and representational space, "the direct, lived bodily experience of space, which include how we move in, through and experience space" (p. 136-137).
Adams crafted representations of space through his photographs. Our book describes how "scientists, engineers, planners, architects and others" (this includes photographers) "understand and represent space as something to be lived." Adams' experiences, emotions and thoughts as a young boy visiting Yosemite translate onto the large sheets of photographic film. The deep, black shadows of the mountains, fluctuating highlights and mid tones in the sky and wooded areas, and overall sharpness of the first, and even second, photograph are intentional of the artist. The black and white photography and sharpness are meant to affect its audience into feeling the same way as the artist about the subject, the representation of space.
This establishment of emotions in the viewer begins to affect the way the viewer perceives the subject or representation of space and, in turn, changes "our awareness of space," or representational space. Though the book tells us that representational space is the "direct, lived bodily experience of space," the photograph's strong evocation of emotions and feelings as a representation of space begins to affect a mind in a way similar to how the book describes representational space as "what space 'feels' like" (p. 137). The overall depth of the photo, how clearly we can see the drop in altitude from the high perspective of the camera to the river below and the distance between the camera and the mountains, evokes a "feel" of the area. It's wide open. It "feels" free to be explored. The detail in faraway objects like trees is so fine that we "feel" the experience of walking through the massive forest, linking it to our own experience of inhabiting a similar space.
Even though you have probably never been to Kings Canyon or seen the Tetons and the Snake River, you "feel" like you have because of the representations of space in photographs. In a way, the image allows us to travel through time and space in order to "experience" or "feel" something we have not. Like previously stated, this is the power of photographers and their cameras: Representing space and causing the viewer to have an emotional reaction to the piece.
For more examples of how photographs change the way we look and perceive space around us, check out this article.
"In an era when handheld point-and-shoot cameras were quickly becoming the norm, Adams and other landscape photographers clung to their bulky, old-fashioned large-format cameras. Ultimately, Adams’ pictures turned photography into fine art. What’s more, they shaped the way Americans thought of their nation’s wilderness and, with that, how to preserve it." In 1940, Kings Canyon National Park was established, but it didn't come without a fight and technological aid. FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes "took particular interest in the National Park Service." Ickes turned his sights on the Kings Canyon region of the Sierra Nevada and enlisted the aid of Ansel Adams to drive home his fight for preservation. President Roosevelt was so moved by the work of Ansel Adams that he signed Kings Canyon National Park into existence, even though "he would never be able to visit in person because of his inability to walk unaided. Instead, he would appreciate its magnificence through the photographs of Ansel Adams."
 |
| Looking southeast from base of Moro Rock, Kings Canyon National Park. |
Adams crafted representations of space through his photographs. Our book describes how "scientists, engineers, planners, architects and others" (this includes photographers) "understand and represent space as something to be lived." Adams' experiences, emotions and thoughts as a young boy visiting Yosemite translate onto the large sheets of photographic film. The deep, black shadows of the mountains, fluctuating highlights and mid tones in the sky and wooded areas, and overall sharpness of the first, and even second, photograph are intentional of the artist. The black and white photography and sharpness are meant to affect its audience into feeling the same way as the artist about the subject, the representation of space.
This establishment of emotions in the viewer begins to affect the way the viewer perceives the subject or representation of space and, in turn, changes "our awareness of space," or representational space. Though the book tells us that representational space is the "direct, lived bodily experience of space," the photograph's strong evocation of emotions and feelings as a representation of space begins to affect a mind in a way similar to how the book describes representational space as "what space 'feels' like" (p. 137). The overall depth of the photo, how clearly we can see the drop in altitude from the high perspective of the camera to the river below and the distance between the camera and the mountains, evokes a "feel" of the area. It's wide open. It "feels" free to be explored. The detail in faraway objects like trees is so fine that we "feel" the experience of walking through the massive forest, linking it to our own experience of inhabiting a similar space.
Even though you have probably never been to Kings Canyon or seen the Tetons and the Snake River, you "feel" like you have because of the representations of space in photographs. In a way, the image allows us to travel through time and space in order to "experience" or "feel" something we have not. Like previously stated, this is the power of photographers and their cameras: Representing space and causing the viewer to have an emotional reaction to the piece.
For more examples of how photographs change the way we look and perceive space around us, check out this article.
I really like how you linked representational space to the variable human emotions that we experience when viewing photos. The representations of space,the photos,portraying how we project new areas that do not have to be physically and spatially lived to be experienced. I think this aides to new realms of creativity for the spacial inventor, the photographer and how it can be controlled and distorted.
ReplyDeleteBy creating and forging a space for a relationship with the viewer and the image, the photographer can challenging how people perceive themselves in their relation to their own identity. By mind meeting pictorial space, one can erase their own lived identity markers such as class, race,age, and experience a world of new content and mediums through landscapes.
I have actually been reading this fantastic book "On Photography" by Susan Sontag that I think you should check out. She talks about voyeurism,reality, photos being a marker of proof or evidence of something lived and experienced, and other neat stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/Photography-Susan-Sontag/dp/0312420099/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300737907&sr=1-1