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.