Inspirations
The so called abstract realism, which originated in 19th century in California, was a point of reference for the American school of landscape photography. At the very beginning, American photography was influenced by European photography and painting. Photographers were hunting for a specific light, ambience and beauty. In the 1850s the fast economic growth of California attracted immigrants. A need for photographers who would document the progressing changes arose. They were engaged to take part in geologic research and while working in the field they discovered new sceneries. Abstract realism was soon born out of a passion for photographing landscapes, rocks and textures forming picturesque compositions.
Alfred Stieglitz’s work and his theory on straight or pure photography encompassing the idea that seeing became the primary tool of a photographer had an important impact on American landscape photography. The notion of equivalency which he promoted can be applied to "define the artistic photography as being the result of an emotional reaction and the photographer's feeling of unity with the photographed object or scene. This approach is not documentary, it is open to further metaphorical interpretation". According to Stieglitz, the photographed objects change their own meaning as they reflect the feelings of the photographer. Their role is to invoke emotions in the viewer.
What Alfred Stieglitz had began Edward Weston continued. In his first photographs you can see his research of beautiful forms. Later on, after 1929, when he moved to Carmel in California, he found unusual rocks which inspired him to seek equivalents. Photos of nature became a pretext for exposing his own feelings.
Ansel Adams was a legendary figure of American landscape photography. He was exceptionally sensitive to the beauty of nature. He photographed all the national parks of the United States. Adams, like the first explorers and photographers, was fascinated with California. The state was the setting of most of his photographic work.
Ansel Adams invented the zone system which permitted photographers to obtain very sharp prints in all fragments of the picture area with a wide tonal range and a very high technical quality. Adams was a photography instructor at the California School of Fine Arts and the zone system was an important issue he discussed in his lectures.
For some time, together with Minor White, they gave lectures and led photography workshops. However, from the very beginning White was looking for something different from what Adams had already achieved. He was attracted by spirituality and wanted to become "an artist of the soul".
Minor White distinguished two kinds of photography: creative and expressive photography. Creative photos are created as an effect of individual associations and reflect what the author imagines. In the opinion of Minor White "images taken with even slight conscious awareness and mostly depict ugliness and the internal illness of the photographer". White appreciated only expressive photography created intuitively from pure observation of the surrounding reality. Stieglitz's theory of the equivalent was an important idea for White as well. Minor White sought inspiration for his creativity in religion. He would experience "near-mystical states" but all the time he was looking for a method which would let him achieve transcendence. In 1955, White came across the philosophy of the Far East. He learned from many readings that man lives in a world of illusions created by himself. Illusions resulting from affection for material things, from desire or the wish of possession are the source of bad thoughts and transform man into a slave with a poor consciousness. White started meditating. However, to wake up from a sort of coma he may have found himself in, to make it go away pass and to stay in a state of a higher consciousness a continuous self-development is needed. Unnecessary thoughts forming illusions should be constantly shed and one should look at the world directly without making any intellectual associations. White wanted his photos to be born out of the state of harmony he found himself in. His photographs evoke a variety of emotions and tensions. Photography was an inspiration and the essence of life for White.
One of the most well-known students of Minor White was Paul Caponigro. Like his teacher, Caponigro sought photography in transcendence. He wished to attain such a state of the heart which would let him access a deeper instinctive sensitivity. He tried to sense a hidden emotionality observing "immobile and silent" landscapes. Linking his "internal silence" with static powers of life Caponigro cut to the heart of the mystery of existence. He entitled his debut series of photographs, published in 1958 in the photographic quarterly Aperture, "Experiences with Boundlessness". Images of different fragments of a graveyard were referring to another – invisible but palpable – world. A deep personal unity resulting from internal silence was a leading motive for Caponigro's creativity. Seeking for sources of imagination he asked himself "where pictures came from"?. Were they hidden in people and whether they could draw upon this source. Noticing the reality and the dependence of photography on the external world he sought for means which would enable him to reach the internal truths beyond the superficial vision of things. He believed that a excessively literal perception of things based on learned rules disturbs or actually hinders a deep sensation. According to Caponigro, pictures already exist on another level, we only have to extract them from our imagination which awakens at the same moment. By photographing nature Paul Caponigro sensed once again the powers creating these forms. This was a way for looking for harmony between himself and the reality. Photography was a meeting place for eternity and the ephemeral with a strong bond with nature.
During his travels in Ireland he came across a dolmen which impressed him so much that he decided to focus his attention mainly on megaliths. He was enchanted with stone-blocks' dormant energy. He found rocks to be sensitive beings, and he himself, in a state of internal calm, waited to be caught up into their rhythm. He found a transcendental unity in the pulsating silence. For Caponigro the most important photos are those he felt had to be taken at an exact moment – photographs born out of a moment when things came together extending beyond their external visibility. Summing up his own work Caponigro wrote: "True creativity is an internal matter. The calm and the internal equilibrium are the most important associates in my craft".
Most people need a mentor and Marian Schmidt became mine.
The best photos of Marian Schmidt were born out of "the sublimation of tension, and they can be called »harmonics of the reality«. It is harmony extracted from chaos, upper and hardly audible tones here unexpectedly louder". This description pertains both to his early street photographs and later landscapes. Schmidt transforms his strong experiences into a perfected visual language. For the purpose of his work he has developed and improved Ansel Adams’ zone system.
The abstract nature of the stone forms offers audiences a freedom of interpretation. The world of Marian Schmidt is "full of illusion, mystery, cryptic existences". According to him, "the artist is only a tool which receives the Energy and transfers it to his own work" while "a real masterpiece is a source of energy which can take a viewer to paradise for a brief moment".
My sensitivity developed from a passion for the outdoors. When observing pristine nature I often felt intensely close to it. What I look for in nature, and often find it, is timelessness.
His Holiness Dalai Lama has written:
"A blossoming tree becomes bare and stripped in autumn. Beauty changes into ugliness, youth into old age, and fault into virtue. Things do not remain the same and nothing really exists. Thus, appearances and emptiness exist simultaneously."
In my own photos I try to find "the rhythm of a place, and once I do, I try to learn how to change it". I do not ask questions about the meaning of its existence.
References
1. Karen Blixen, Pożegnanie z Afryką [Out of Africa], Muza, Warszawa 2002
2. Paul Caponigro, Katalog do wystawy w Starej Galerii ZPAF [Catalogue of the Exhibition in the Old Gallery ZPAF], Warszawa 1983
3. Dalajlama, Ścieżka do spokoju [The Path to Tranquility], Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, Poznań 2003
4. Ewa Popiołek, Alikwoty rzeczywistości [Harmonics of the Reality], Fotografia 6/2001
5. Grzegorz Przyborek, Między realnością a metafizyką: O nowej fotografii Mariana Schmidta [Between Reality and the Metaphysical: : On New Photography by Marian Schmidt], Fotografia 10/2002
6. Marian Schmidt, Niecodzienne rozmowy z Księdzem Janem Twardowskim [Unusual Conversations with Father Jan Twardowski], Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa 2000
7. Marian Schmidt, Tao fotografii Minora White’a [The Tao of Minor White Photography ], Format 3/2002
8. Minor White, Rites & Passages, Aperture, New York 1978
Inspirations