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November 2, 2011
Interest in the landscape amongst photographers has increased in the last few years as a result of heightened environmental awareness. What does the turn to the natural world as a site for critical practice and inspiration encompass today?
On answer is provided by the exhibition entitled "Slow Photography: Visions from the Real World" at the Braemer Galley in the village of Springwood i n the Blue Mountains of NSW. This exhibition consists of photographs of nature by Ian Brown, Mike Stacey and Len Metcalf that have been made with large format cameras.
Len Metcalf, Twister Canyon, Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area
It is wilderness photography in that their images are grounded in an intimacy with nature that emerges through long experience, up close and slow with the bush, the birds, the rocks, the wind, and the water.
In a collective statement the Blue Mountain photographers say they aim to use their photography to:
capture the grandeur and nuance of nature by selecting subjects of power and subtlety from what, at first glance can be an overwhelming abundance of subject matter. By immersing themselves calmly in a place, they seek the spiritual in nature; extending the notion of beauty into the ethereal; the true essence of what surrounds us.
So it is a form of wilderness photography that goes beyond natural beauty and unique artistic vision to the transcendental---the spiritual and the ethereal as the essence of natural beauty and natural being. Romanticism is alive and well.
Metcalf, for instance, says that:
As a conservationist I believe that mother nature is the creative and controlling primary force in the universe. While creating my art in magical locations I am reminded of the interconnectedness of our world. Society is dependent on the natural environment for peace and well-being.....Currently the direction of my work strives to move away from the current ‘landscape photographer’ status quo, in an attempt to discover a Modern Australian Landscape Style. One where the artwork is timeless, unique and the photographs illustrate the spiritual within nature. I search for a unique vision in my search for significant form.
I'm not sure what a modern Australian landscape style is compared to a pre-modern one; or how a photographic one here one in this exhibition differs from the Australian landscape tradition in Australian painting.
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One of my friends does this sort of thing and people do tend to like it. I find it a little over done most of the time. Belongs in a girls bedroom perhaps or on a calendar with a love poem attached.
But they do look nice sometimes when you turn them B/W