Claudia Rohrauer

I came across Claudia Rohrauer whilst browsing in the book shop at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford, when I picked up her small self-publication Photo Trekking.  It is a signed limited run of 50 of which mine is number 39 and was published in 2014.  It is a notebook-sized hard book with post card size pages.  The book describes both photographically and in journal form a series of walks she made in a Finnish nature reserve. This link takes one to the relevant page on her website where she displays the book.  On her site she describes the walks as a self-experiment in order to repeatedly explore a Finnish nature reserve on foot and by camera.  I was attracted to the book as her project has a lot of similarities to my own project of walking the Viking Way and exploring the remaining wilderness in Lincolnshire on foot.  Her walks, like mine for Assignment 3 take place in winter, November 2013.  Unlike me, however, she only anticipated an hour of daylight each day; it is a Finnish winter.  Like the photographs I have taken so far lighting is soft and muted.  I particularly like some of her shots as the sun is going down.  Not garish sunsets that are so prevalent on social media, but largely comprising massed silhouettes of the pines through which she is walking with the trunks lit seductively by the warm light from sunset.  She writes "All of a sudden the view cleared up abd scattered beams from the setting sun made their way into the forest.  A new interplay of light and scenery emerged and while I watched that unexpected transformation happening, with my eyes almost popping out of my head, there was this voice in the back of my head shouting - YES!  Everything seemed to be GLOWING, the forest was glowing, my eyes were glowing, the camera was glowing!"
Some of her images, like mine, display footpaths disappearing into the forest.  They look enticing and make one want to be there walking along them, anticipating what is just around the corner.
In her journal entries she describes her emotions: so on 24th November 2013, she writes, "Bad mood, gloomy sky."
I found myself mildly irritated by the mix of horizontal and vertical format prints as it necessitated constantly turning the book around.  I have nothing against the mix of formats but perhaps a different style of book would have suited better.
Rothauer is Austrian and is based in Vienna.  I have had some difficulty in finding information about her.  The link to her website is here.  She describes herself as a photographing researcher or a researching photographer.  She says that she distrusts the seemingly binding approaches and results of scientific studies.  She goes on to say that she avails herself of a sober aesthetic typical for this sphere, while provoking, emphasizing and integrating its rate of error at the same time.  This gives rise to a poetical moment that eludes any promise of proof as such.  This is a Google translation of the Austrian script and it perhaps loses something in the process.  She studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna and has had exhibitions throughout Austria and Europe.

To finish I have to say that I found her book Photo Trekking inspirational.

Vanda Ralevska

                                      1.

Originally from the Czech Republic Ralevska now lives in London.  She moved to England in 1997 and in 2011 abandoned commercial photography in order to pursue her own artistic feelings.  In 2012 she cofounded a community called Landscapes by Women and her work features on their website.  In 2015 she joined the Arena Photographers group and organised the Mistresses of Light exhibition in London's OXO Gallery with Beata Moore.

She describes herself primarily as a landscape photographer, although she does some impressionistic work.  She particularly enjoys working in soft pastel colours.  She enjoys writing poetry and there are examples of this on her website.

I enjoy the soft nature of the lighting she uses and like the way she employs long exposure times.  I particularly enjoy her more impressionistic work.

                                        2.

Images:-

1. Ralevska, V. Sea Fever [online] Available from: http://www.landscapesbywomen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/yapb_cache/seafever.8o1cb0hecx44ssk40g4884o80.8ob4qiug1cgscsgok000co800.th.jpeg [Accessed 05.05.16]

2. Ralevska, V. As Dawn Greets the Day [online] Available from: http://www.landscapesbywomen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/AsDawnGreetsTheDay.jpg [Accessed 05.05.16]

The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to Exon Valdez (1991). Alexander Wilson.

What an excellent book this is.  Alexander Wilson was a horticulturalist, journalist and partner in a landscape design business.  He taught and wrote widely on popular culture, media and the environment.

In the book he discusses in depth how the American people have altered the landscape in America ever since they first arrived as European colonisers  up to 1990.  He catalogues the horrific and callous way that both land and Native Americans have been treated, whilst at the same time holding out a ray of hope for the future, for which he is quite optimistic.  He helped me to firm up my views of Wilderness and what it means.  Not the 'land untrammelled by man, where man, himself is a visitor who does not remain' of the American Wilderness Act of 1964, which ignores the fact the all of North America was populated by indigenous peoples for millenia.  Instead he suggests a more humane definition, a land where nature and man live in harmony with each other.  He suggests that we need to build a culture that will nurture new relations with the natural world, relations built on harmony and livelihood rather than domination and profit.  He goes on to stress, later, that the land will only be saved if people live on it in a way that restores it - and helps the rest of us to survive.

He discusses recreation and tourism, education and how the land close to our homes has been altered, changed and developed.  He looks at how nature has been presented to the public over the years through films and television and how that presentation has changed.  He examines how world's fairs and theme parks have presented the world and the future and how we relate to nature and then he moves on to write about nature parks and zoos.  He finishes with discussions on energy and power, especially the oil  and nuclear industries with a large section on the  militarisation of the land and its misuse.  Finally there is a discussion on space research and satellite use and how it has affected the Earth for good or ill.

He died on 26th October 1993, not long after the publication of the book.  After his death a garden was created in his memory in 1998, The Alex Wilson Community Garden, in Toronto. In the garden is a plaque bearing a telling quote from from the book: "We must build landscapes that heal, connect and empower, that make intelligible our relations with each other and the natural world."

My full and complete notes on this book will be presented as part of my research folder.

Alec Soth Exhibition, Gathered Leaves, National Media Museum, Bradford

I had an enjoyable visit to the Bradford National Media Museum yesterday to see Gathered Leaves the Alec Soth Retrospective exhibition.  The exhibition covers the last ten years of Soth's work and includes four bodies of work: Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Niagra (2006), Broken Manual (2010) and Songbook (2014).

Soth describes himself as a lyrical documentary photographer, but there is a much landscape work in there as well.  However, most photography crosses genres now and the tag travel photographer could also be applied to Soth's work.

The title for the exhibition could, we are told refer to sheets of images brought together or it could refer to a line from Walt Witman's 1885 poem, Song of Myself:

Alone in the far wilds and mountains I hunt,

Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,

In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,

Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-killed game,

Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.

In the same way that Whitman is telling stories, perhaps fictional, about himself, and is here describing a a journey in the wilds, perhaps the title of the exhibition gives us a clue that the work is about Soth himself and the journeys through life that he has made.

Soth regards himself as an American photographer in the tradition of Robert Frank, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfield, but perhaps we could add others here; William Eggleston, Walker Evans, maybe?

Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004) documents a road trip he made along the length of the river.  The images displayed are from 1999 - 2002 so was this one extended trip or an amalgamation of several.  Beds and mattresses feature heavily in this series, hence the title.  I wondered how long he took to get to know people before he photographed them; it is difficult to imagine that some were taken on a first acquaintance.  The images ask many questions and allow for many interpretations.  Do they portray people, present or absent, dreaming of something better or aspiring to higher things as perhaps Charles Lindbergh and Johnny Cash did.  Most seem to be in straightened circumstances.  Are they a portrayal of hope or despair; dreams or broken dreams?

The work would appear to have gone through different stages of presentation from mock ups of books to the final edition and then to a series of gallery prints.  All of the prints are the same size, although a mix of vertical and horizontal format, mounted on white and in grey frames.  They are chromogenic prints on oyster or semi-gloss, lustre paper.

In Niagra Soth links the tourist image of the falls to the fact that it is a honeymoon destination associated with 'love'.  He collected love letters from people, although it is difficult to imagine that these were given to him.  They are displayed along with the book that he produced with notes on the letters and images.  We are told that he flirts with the picture-postcard cliche of Niagara, which is a subject tackled by painters of the American sublime.  The exhibition features a large print of the falls.  Other images are of people he came across at Niagara sometimes as couples and sometimes alone.  Some he persuaded to pose naked for him  Interestingly there is an image of a box of pawned wedding rings.  Again there is an element of pathos here.

Prints are again semi-gloss chomagenic framed and mounted as the previous series, but much larger.

Broken Manual (2010) arose through researching Eric Robert Rudolf the 'Olympic Park Bomber' who, while on the run hid out in the Appalachian Wilderness.  He has since been caught and is in prison in Florida.  While engaged in his research Soth discovered that many other recluses had retreated from the world and were living wild.  Interestingly he found out about them on the internet.  They comprised survivalists, hermits and monks.  In this body of work he explores the desire to run away and, in fact, dons the persona of one of these people: Lester B. Morrison.  As Morrison he wrote his own survival manual, How to Disappear in Amerika, which he produced as a maquette and which eventually became the book Broken Manual.  In this series the prints are again large and printed on semi-gloss paper, but this time are digital prints.  The frames are grey and 3D mounted against a white background. Small figures of the subjects are often dwarfed by their surroundings.  I actually liked this from a lamdscape point of view; the figures gave scale to the image and made the land as important as the subject.  Sometimes there were no figures in the image and the presence of a person was implied by their homes or belongings.  Two were of basic homes built into cliffs or caves and in one case there was a satellite dish.  This with an internet presence makes one ask the question how much do they want to disappear.  The exhibit also had a display of Soth's books along with survival leaflets.

In Songbook (2012-2014) we find Alec Soth's most recent work.  After adopting the persona of a recluse he felt that he wanted to reconnect with the world.  Along with writer Brad Zellar he returned to his earlier role as a news photographer (albeit fictional) and torued the country with Zellar looking for 'stories'.  These were produced as unbound publications, each covering a different state.  Later the photographs, without Zillar's text, became the book Songbook.  This time the photographs are all black and white as were some of the images in Broken Manual.  It is as if in Broken Manual  he was experimenting with monochrome and now decided to move completely to that style.  Again digital archive brints on semi-gloss paper, they are printed extremely large and box mounted in black frames.  It is the large size of the images that one notices as much as anything else.

Of Songbook we are told that it is a chronicle of 21st century America, exploring the human condition in the digital age.  In fact all of the work in the exhibition is 21st century, but I felt that it had a 1950 -1970s small town America feel about it, although I never been there.  Certainly most of the images could not have been 21st century England.  I felt that each body of work looked at people in 'straightened' circumstances; he likes to photograph vulnerability. David James in the BJP (James, 2015) suggests that we are witnessing the 'less-travelled America' and that Soth has photographed in what are known condescendingly as the 'flyover states'.

 I have already researched Alec Soth while working on my assignment 2 and that blog can be found at this link.

James, D. (2015) Photography is a Language: Alec Soth on his first UK Exhibition, BJP, [0nline] Available from: http://www.bjp-online.com/2015/10/photography-is-a-language-alec-soth-on-his-first-uk-exhibition-gathered-leaves/  [Accessed 05.05.16]

Image
 British Journal of Photography, [online] Available from: http://www.bjp-online.com/2015/10/photography-is-a-language-alec-soth-on-his-first-uk-exhibition-gathered-leaves/ [accessed 05.05.16]