The Question:

“Wynn Bullock and Minor White used viewpoint, depth of field and lighting to explore the abstract qualities of objects and features in the landscape. Investigate this theme, research appropriate examples and produce a personal response.”

What is abstraction?

The dictionary definition of abstract has many meaning. In an art context is often taken to mean that which is not a physical representation of reality. Throughout this study, abstract and abstraction has come to mean pure thought.

So the series of photographs has two themes:

Firstly how Neolithic man stamped his impression on the landscape to record his thoughts in terms of death and the universe around him.

Secondly, to understand the value of ambiguity, intuition and instinct. In a technological society we are at pains to demonstrate the logic and proof of what we do and believe. But man is more than this; we have hunches, gut feelings and intuition that the photographic process can represent, without words, without logic.

There are rules in photography; where best to position the image, how to compose a photograph, the decisive moment to press the shutter. But in the process of taking a photo we think of none of these. It’s intuitive. Yes, the image is usually in the 1/3 and all the other good things about the composition are there, but we didn’t think about it. It was intuitive, click, a moment in time is captured.

Recording the ambiguous.

When we look at a work of art or a photograph, there are many interpretations of what the artist or photographer is saying. The reason photography works so well in recording the ambiguous is that it lets the viewer interpret the image, the art of photography is to point the viewer at the image and let him subjectively interpret what is there.

For example, no one really knows why stone circles were built. A monument to the dead? An astronomical calendar? A ritual place for sacrifice? You decide. Photography lets you do that.

Likewise, what is it that the photographer sees in a landscape? He can only direct you to see his abstract thoughts.

Minor White

“The state of mind of the photographer while creating is blank….For those who would equate “blank” with a kind of emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with on image pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself – seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives life in it”.

White would take his photographs by literally meditating in the landscape and than intuitively photographing the scene. In as sense excluding the logical process from what he was doing and letting the intuitive take over.

His photographs could simply be of cracked paint on a wall, or sections of tree. Short-circuiting the logical process in favour of instinct.

I some of his photographs infra-red film was used. This gives a white appearance to leaves on trees and further enforces the abstract view of reality.

Wynn Bullock

“How can you expand unless you search beyond what you are at the moment? To me, the search is everything. I speak not as an artist, physicist, or a churchgoer, but as a human being seeking meaning. If a person stops searching, he stops living. Everything is a miracle, including ourselves.”

Bullock sought to understand the connection between reality and existence. He saw that logic and rational thinking imposed limitations to “the search” for greater meaning.

He sought to explore the connection between the physical and the abstract.

“Two worlds exist on opposite sides of our sense organs: the inner world of ideas in our minds, and the outer world of events that stimulate our senses. Visual communication is based on the supposition that relationships between the two worlds can be established.”

Much of Bullocks work relies on the counter positioning of objects in the image. A naked human, against a forest background, or a young child walking through an immense woodland.

This technique was very much promoted by surrealist photographers like Man Ray, who was a great influence on Bullock.

The Response

The Stones o’ Stenness

In 2005 I took a trip to the main island of Orkney and visited the Standing Stones o’ Stenness and the Ring o’ Brodgar. These monuments are 5,000 years old and I wanted to capture the thoughts behind the people who built them. It would be no easy task, some stones would be 20, 30 tons and take many man-hours to move and erect. There was an ambiguity behind this. Was it for astronomical reasons, a monument to the dead of an attempt at immortality? I have no idea, but what I did feel was an incredible sense of presence of these people and I wanted to capture that.

I took both black and white as well as digital colour pictures. In both cases I wanted a greater contrast between the stones and the landscape. To emphasis the surreal impact of these monuments in the beautiful Scottish landscape. In a way showing the thought and presence of these Neolithic minds that were behind them still in this landscape.

The digital colour images were desturated to black and white and then solorised. In this way stones stand out from the background more.

The black and white negatives were printed using split grade printing on multigrade paper to get the best tonal control, and then the images of the stones were selectively toned so that the background was sepia and the stones remained black and white.

The Grand Canyon

In April 2008, I was able to visit the Grand Canyon. Again, I took both B+W negatives and digital colour images.

In the photographs, I wanted to pose two abstract concepts.

1) The vastness of the location and the way that objects close by, on the edge of the ridge, seemed completely separated from the back drop of the canyon landscape.
2) The way that life clings to this difficult environment. Standing out against this hostile environment, and sometime not surviving.

I only use one B+W image and treated it to a similar selective toning process. Most other colour digital shots only required slight attention in Photoshop and relied on the counter position of trees and plants against the back drop of the canyon, which I often blurred by depth of field control.

"All we can really do as photographers or painters or writers or theoretical physicists is to create symbols that enlarge and expand the self. The symbols we choose are not important because we choose them but because the things symbolised are important.