SHOW AND TELL
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My body of work is about internal and external passage. When I “go out” to the ancient woodlands, I am really “going in”. My visual representation explores my feelings of discomfort about the tension in my local community, this as a contrast to the successful assimilation of diversity in the woodlands.
This series is an exploration of whether diversity necessarily results in tension and chaos, or whether these differences can be harmonious.
IMAGES
Harmony or Chaos?
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#Chaos… or Adaptation
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#Discord… or Diversity
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#Mayhem… or Cooperation
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#Partnerships… or Anarchy
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#Peace… or Disorder
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#Muddle… or Balance
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#Collaboration… or Disarray
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#Confusion… or Harmony
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Reflective commentary
This series develops my previous work which positions the ancient woodlands as a visual metaphor for a harmonious community. The motivation for the concept are my observations of the local community who are often disharmonious, driven by difference. The concept is stimulated by humans, though they are not evident in my work.
This approach runs parallel to my contextual studies work on affect (expressing what is in a photographer’s mind) and effect (the reality) in landscape photography. In essence this is the difference between photographing a subject for itself and photographing a subject to give a message about something else. Photographers such as Minor White present images as metaphors for something beyond the subject being photographed.
In this assignment, I want to explore further my ability to transform the abstract ideas in my head, my subconscious, into something concrete, via a physical representation of another subject. Many landscape photographers I have researched talk of combining the world within us and the world outside us, some say that that going out is really going in. Radonjič, (Metascapes,2016) calls this transforming our subconscious into “metascapes”, our personal landscapes, as the real landscape is inside your head. Tom Wilkinson (Wilkinson, 2022) suggests that photography is as much about the photographer as the landscape. I am aware through my previous practice that combining the world within my head with the one in front of me can be cathartic as well as produce intriguing photographs. My concept fits well with the theme of part 3 course work “Showing not telling”, Golding calls this using photography “to transform objective reality” (Golding 2022).
Prior to producing this particular series of images, disharmony in the local community had increased; partly due to the influx of summer tourists. Walking in the woodlands I was struck that there are many different species and great diversity, yet they coexist successfully, adapting to accommodate each other’s needs. Moreover, when I observed closely I saw that although this diversity first appears chaotic, messy, muddled, and disorderly, it is an organised chaos that works successfully. I resolved to to express my discomfort with the discord caused by the differences within the local community, by contrasting this with the harmony that exists in the diverse woodland community, where various elements accommodate each other to mutual benefit.
My intention when photographing was to seek out the visually chaotic, muddled and disordered to focus viewers on this aspect of the woodland community. Radonjic describes this as “visually intertwined living space” (Wesche, 2022). Viewers will need to observe hard just to make sense of what is present in such images, without any distortion by the photographer, and this fits well with another of my intentions that viewers should look closely to find meaning in the images.
I then edited to form a series of images that would communicate my message. My intention is to invite viewers thoughts as to whether what is presented is in fact harmony, or chaos. The images I chose demonstrate disorder and some randomness, but I believe they also have a quality of tranquility. I have signposted the work simply with its title “Harmony or Chaos?” and by each image having a caption denoting antonyms of these. In a way I am asking viewers to consider if chaos and differences are necessarily inharmonious. For myself, the first author of this work I am suggesting that differences and diversity can lead to adaptation, balance, and harmony.
I challenged myself in my last assignment to put something of myself in the landscape without intervening in it, and believe that my voice, my subconscious, is in these images. The viewers must decide for themselves what meaning they take from the images.
“To create a vision of the harmony of the unequal, balance the infinite variety, the chaotic, the contradictions in a unity”. (Hans Richter, German Dada painter, and modern art historian cited at: The painters keys, 2022)
References:
Golding, J.M. (2022) At: https://www.jmgolding.com/before-there-were-words/wigdebnrfagnyp1cf1wr96rfxg7jll (Accessed 09/09/2022).
Radonjič, G. (2016) Metascapes. At: https://gregorradonjic.wordpress.com/metascapes/ (Accessed 30/08/2022).
The painters’ keys (2022) Hans Richter quotes – Art Quotes. At: http://www.art-quotes.com/auth_search.php?authid=3048 (Accessed 25/09/2022).
Wesche, A. (2022) ‘An Interview with Gregor Radonjič’ In: On Landscape (250). Ed. Tim Parkin. pp.97–118. Found at: https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2022/02/interview-with-gregor-radonjic/ [accessed 30.7.22)
Wilkinson, T. (2022) Tom Wilkinson Art Photography. At: http://www.i-m.mx/tomwilkinson/ArtPhotography/about (Accessed 09/09/2022).
NIKI SOUTH 