Following a comment by my tutor in his response to my submission for Assignment 2 of Landscapes I followed up his suggestion that I look at the work of Hans Aarsman a known photographer in the genre called Neo-Topographics. At first I looked at the photographs shown on the Nederlandfotomuseum. I was immediately struck by their lack of artistic merit. They are snapshots of a man made environment usually incomplete or in decay. I was left wondering why he had bothered taking the shot. As a record of the environment I felt that there was a sense of detachment almost disinterest in what was seen through the viewfinder. They were very ordinary.
I then watched a recording of a lecture by Aarsman in which he explains the reasons for his approach. All my responses were more or less in line with the aim of the photographer. Following the work of the New Topographic Photographers such as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and others Aarsman and his contemporaries deliberately chose to work outside the accepted 'artistic' and story telling approach of photography, they eschewed the beauty and recorded the ugly. Based on the images I have seen of Aarsman he was very successful.
Even now I am not sure that I like them but it has made me think that I, as a photographer, am very much conditioned by the majority who seek out the artistic, the emotional and the beautiful image. The chances of such images being accepted in a general exhibition are small perhaps because we do not like to be reminded that not all is beauty and that some of our environment is very ugly and often such ugliness is created by man.
At least I will look afresh at the 'landscape' and see beyond the accepted coffee table book image.
No comments:
Post a Comment