Roland Barthes - 'Image Music Text'

Why is text so important to the image? Does it give us added information that we don’t get just from the image? Does it Show things that we cannot see? Or does it distract us from working out the image ourselves?

In Barthes ‘Image,Music Text’, he tells us that...

“Naturally, even from the perspective of a purely immanent analysis, the structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namelt the text – title, caption or article.” Page 16

Here he is mainly talking about press photography or work in a newspaper but this also responds to artistic photography.   

He then goes on to talk about ‘connotation procedures’ which is the imposition of second meaning in the photographic message. It is realised that there are different levels of production of the photograph, for example, choice, different treatment, framing layout. 

He then talks about the connection between ‘Text and image.’

This speaks about how text is designed to ‘quicken’ our understanding of the image, the words help the image.

Barthes, R., & Heath, S. (1977). Image, music, text. New York, Hill and Wang. P 15, 16, 20, 25

  

Hamish Fulton

Hamish Fulton’s work is made from walking journeys and documenting his experiences through journals and notes. These private experiences that are then made public, develop potential for the viewer to understand a wider meaning of the journey through the landscape.

 It primarily consists of walking through the countryside all over the world, sometimes in places far away from industrial centres eg, Nepal, India, Bolivia, Peru and Alaska.

The physical action of actually walking thought these locations makes Fulton experience the nature first hand, there and then in that moment, and got himself, not through the medium of someone else.

Because he has been photographing since the early 70’s, his personal of perceptions of nature and the countryside, which allows the public to experience this with him.

His thoughts, observations and emotions which he notes down in journals and notebook which combines his work since the 80’s, which help document his images because they reflect his experiences of his walks in a poetic way.

This appeals to the reader’s imagination and allows us to experience what cannot be captured or expressed visually.

His work combines colour and black and white, in a way quite unique because when pre-visualising your work, you decide what format would work best, but he combines the two to get the best from him images and making no sacrifices, and also because every location is different and the weather changes and emotions to, so he decides on what would benefit and make the most impact.

He suggests, that his art comprises ‘facts of the walker [ie himself] and fictions for everyone else’ “

“For us, the impact of Fulton’s art will derive in part form by our own individual responses to landscape and to nature, perceptions that are inevitably mediated by our contact with a body of art and literature from out cultural past.”  Page 15 (Book 1)

Fulton, H., Tufnell, B., Wilson, A., Mckibben, B., & Scott, D. (2002). Hamish Fulton: walking journey. London, Tate Pub.

Fulton, H. (1998). Hamish Fulton: walking artist. London, Annely Juda Fine Art.

John Blakemore - 'Black and White Photography Workshop'

In his book ‘Black and White Photography Workshop’ he talks about the relationship between the photograph and the reality it describes. The choice of subject will reflect a photographer’s personal concerns and interests, what meanings will be read could differ immensely. Blakemore sees the landscape as energy, which changed how he looks at the landscape and responding to it. For him, the relationship is equally with the location and the process.

            “A landscape, for example, may be chosen to celebrate the unique presence and beauty of a tree, to show depredations of open-cast mining, or to suggest emotional state. The relationship of subject to content will be different in each case, as will the photographic means employed to realize the photographer’s intentions.”

            “In my won landscape work, my photographs grew out of intimacy with place, whether a small stretch of beach, a wooded valley or a tiny stream. These were areas which spoke to me in some way, and that I visited and revisited.  – My intention, however, was not to make images that were about a particular place, but through familiarity to recognize those elements of place that alluded to the larger forces that shape the total landscape”

 Blakemore, J (2008). Black and White photography Workshop. Cincinnati: A David & Charles Book. P11-13
Blakemore, J., Comino-James, J., & Fletcher, J. (2011). 
John Blakemore: photographs 1955-2010. Stockport, Dewi Lewis.

Literature Survey

Landscape photography is a broad and varied subject but I have found that the key texts, authors, artists and images to my field are …

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, looking at the stadium and punctum of a photograph. Fay godwin’s Secret Forest of Dean because she went to a location where she had no memories or emotions for the landscape she simply went there to walk and understand the location and what made it so beautiful. Bill Brandt’s Literary Britain where he photographed key locations linked with British literature. Jam Southam’s Landscape Stories and his different projects, they all develop over a period of time and become a journey or time passing. Klett and Wolfe re-photographed the landscapes of the American West along with the great surveys of the West.  

Barthes, R (1982). Camera Lucida. London: Vintage. 25-28 

Healey, E (1986). The Secret Forest of Dean - Fay Godwin. Great Britain: Redcliffe Press and Arnolfini Gallery. 7-11.

Hayward, J. (1984). An Introduction By John Hayward (1951). In: Literary Britain. London: Victoria and Albert Museum.

Southam, J (2005). Landscape Stories. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Front fold.

Fox, W.L (2001). View Finder: Mark Klett, Photography and the Reinvention of Landscape. : University of New Mexico Press.

The books/work I want to look at next, during the Easter holiday period are…

David bate. (2009). In The Landscape . In: Photography - The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg. 89-108.

Barthes, R (1997). Image Music Text. London: Fontana Press.

Blakemore, J (2008). Black and White Photography Workshop. Cincinnati: A David & Charles Book .

Fulton, H (2001). Walking Artist. Düsseldorf: Richter.

Frank, R (2003). London/Wales. London: Thames & Hudson. 

(2013). Fifty Key Writers on Photography. Oxon: Routledge.

Klett and Wolfe

This book is almost like a photographic documentary of their journey and the process of recreating the images. We see the steps that they went through in perfectly placing the large format camera on the tripod and angling and placing it in a position that would perfectly match up to the original image. In some of the images that we see, we can understand the struggle that they would have gone through in not just placing the camera in the correct location, but because the landscape and its surrounding can change, then that makes it even harder, a better outcome I believe because we can see the change, but to photograph it would have been extremely difficult.

William Henry Jackson, Tthe Bluffs of Green River, Wyoming, c. 1885. P. 262 

Above we have an example of the preparation that Klett and Wolfe went through, picking up on every detail in creating the exact recreation of the original image. You can see the notes that they made on a copy of the original image by William Henry Jackson, circling key rocks that need to be in the correct place, because they are still part of the landscape, and horizon lines to help make sure that they can reproduce the landscape as equal and as precise as humanly possible. I like how they include these notes because an appreciation for their recreations and time spent in this really draws us in. Below is their photographic recreation of the original image (above), they even includes a man standing in the image, not posed the same but this makes it his own and we mainly focus on the landscape this way.

Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe for Third View, Mike at Tollgate Rock, Wyoming, 1999. P.263

Fox, W.L (2001). View Finder: Mark Klett, Photography and the Reinvention of Landscape. : University of New Mexico Press. 

Klett’s first realisation for his passion and interest in photography and the history of images came across in 1977 when he co-founded a team t undertake the task of re-photographing work from the 19^th century. This expedition accompanied the Great Surveys of the West. This Rephotographing survey ran through 1979 and , made thousands of images, all with great mathematical accuracy, geography, history and art.

                Klett has been photographing the American West for almost 25 years t re-photograph the sites where various photographers made photographs, these photographers include William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’sullivan and others. His work focuses on mans interaction with the American landscape and by re-photographing these locations after 100 years after the original image was made, it draws the viewer in because we become fascinates with the change and what once was. We compare and contrast the images and Klett bonded with the landscapes because he knew an image maker had stood in the exact same location many years ago.

                Timothy O’sullivan photographed a site in Logan City over 100 years ago (1871) and in 1998, Klett drove down a dirt road that lead into the Mt.Irish Petroglyph District and towards a ghost town where O’sullivan photographed.  Klett begins the day around 7, by setting up a tripod and his 5x4 field camera with a polarograph pack and a copy of the original print of O’sullivans landscape he want’s to re-create. He assumes the vantage point from where the image would have been taken. Klett’s assistant, Byron, begins to locate the area best for the positioning of the camera.

                This book is also a narrative documentary as we see the journey they go through in making these images, the steps they take to create these historical landscapes and the thought and progression that went into the work. 

Fox, W.L (2001). View Finder: Mark Klett, Photography and the Reinvention of Landscape. : University of New Mexico Press. 

Rockfalls, Rivermouths & Ponds

‘Rockfalls, Rivermouths & Ponds’ is like the title suggests, get into the three sections. 

'Rockfalls' is set on the beach at Whale Chine on the Isle of White, where he was originally drawn by the roaring waves but then he was pulled to the trickle sounds from the cliff face behind him. He began to discover the tiny rivulets of particles that occasionally detach themselves from the cliff face and bounce onto the beach below. The more he stood there, the more he began to notice this becoming a frequent thing.

            ‘Rivermouths’ began from a desire to imagine the Earth engulfed by water. The Earth is erased from these photographs, drowned, as two bodies of water become combined, as the stream becomes released and flows into the sea, mirroring a psychological movement when we ourselves become exhausted and give ourselves up to death or something greater than ourselves.

            ‘Ponds’ is a project based upon a small pond which is between two fields and the moor at Woon Gumps in the far west of Cornwall. The shallow saucer was dug out of the ground a few hundred years ago and has continually used by cattle, which with their heavy presence have maintained paths through the gorse and brambles. When they are full, they are like a ‘mirrored disk or an eye reflecting the heavens’ when empty, they are described as ‘craters made by celestial objects crashing into the ground.’