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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2011
- Title: Interaction with a Picture of a Forest
- Primary Author: Regan Golden-McNerney (Museum of Fine Arts Houston)
- Abstract:
My central purpose as an artist in residence at the Harvard Forest was to investigate the different ways scientists "picture" the woods, from the graphs, to infrared images, to photographs documenting changes in the woods over time. I was particularly interested in the Lantern Slides that I found in the archive that document the impact of the 1938 Hurricane on the Harvard Forest. I wanted to know if these images would be spectacular photographs of the forest’s demise, or if the photographers, even in the face of such devastation, would be able to make images that were more objective records of how the forest had been changed by this event. What I found reached both ends of this spectrum.
The implication of this research today is that when much of the forest in Western Massachusetts is threatened by development, and by changes in the climate, how do artists and scientists "picture" that change? These could be visually dramatic changes, such the dynamiting and grading of hillsides to make flat spaces for new housing, or it could be less visible changes such as the presence of the Woolly Adelgid, which may not appear in a typical landscape photograph of the forest, but whose presence will ultimately, and just as dramatically, change the appearance of the woods.
Through conversations with the scientists at the Harvard Forest, this crisis of photography in capturing a changing landscape took on added significance. Photography, with the design of the camera based on the rules of Cartesian perspective and its ardent framing mechanicism, traditionally produces an image of the woods as a space that is unified, complete and orderly. For this reason, traditional landscape photography gives the impression that there is an inherent order or balance in the forest, just as it is pictured. The challenge is to make a landscape photograph of a forest that not does picture a well-ordered, unchanging ecosystem, so that the question that forms in the mind of the viewer is not, how do we restore this ecosystem to look the ideal that is pictured, but what is the ideal? What kind of relationships do different parts of this ecosystem have to each other? What kind of exchange is occurring between these different parts? One simple example of this problem of depiction is actually the Ghost Flower, which essentially "tricks" (for lack of a better word) the host fungi into thinking it will provide a reciprocal relationship, but is a parasite. How do you communicate that relationship through a photograph? Moreover, it is also one of the most difficult plants in the woods to photograph because of the conditions under which it grows and the way that it responds to light. Taking a page from my experience trying to photograph the Ghost Flower, I decided to photograph the edges of the forest where the brilliant light disrupted the continuity of the image.
Based on my research at the Harvard Forest, I produced a series of photographs, "Out of the Light and Into the Shadows," which was exhibited at the Rochester Art Center in Rochester, MN and also Dominican University in Chicago, IL. These photographs are either too light or too dark for the forms within them to appear complete. My intention was for these images to cause the viewer to question whether or not these photographs depicted a well-ordered landscape. My other intention was to raise this question without making spectacular images of the forest's demise, particularly in the nearby woods surrounding Ludlow, MA that I have been photographing for the past four years, and alternately, without making images that were purely documentary, striving for objectivity. For this reason, I cut with an x-acto into the photograph in the spaces where the light or dark was strongest. This technique of essentially making a drawing on top of the photograph using an x-acto knife is a way of reminding the viewer of the subjectivity of the artist even in the medium of photography, presumed to be the most objective tool of the artist.
The history of the symbolism of light in the forest as indicative of the inherent order of the natural world also played an important role in the making of these over- or under-exposed images. In Luminist paintings of the New England landscape from the 1860s, light sparkling through the leaves in a forest symbolized the triumph of order and reason over the darkness of the tangled and unruly wilderness. Photographing the same green rolling hills painted by Thomas Cole and Frederic Church over a century ago, light in the forest now has a different meaning—it is a sign of deforestation. Darkness, on the other hand, indicates a thriving forest with a lush canopy, even though this darkness is, in part, one reason we want to keep the woods at a "safe distance." The darker images in this series are taken from deep inside the woods, completely surrounded by trees. Darkness in Early American tales about the wilderness of Massachusetts represents all that is unknown about the woods: that which the light of reason did not yet shine upon.
These images reveal the limits of the camera's ability to capture the woods in either deep darkness or brilliant light. Ultimately, these images reflect upon the limits of our understanding of the woods: what remains to be discovered about how the forest works and what we do not yet know about how the world will be impacted by the eventual destruction of those forests.
IMAGE TITLES:
Installation View. Out of the light and into the shadows, "Vertical Currency: Five years of Emerging Artists," (September 2010-January 2011), Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN. Curated by Kris Douglas.
Into the shadows, 2010, hand-cut digital lightjet color print, 40 x 60 inches.
Details. Into the shadows, 2010, hand-cut digital lightjet color print, 40 x 60 inches.
Out of the light, 2010, hand-cut digital lightjet color print, 40 x 60 inches.
Details. Out of the light, 2010, hand-cut digital lightjet color print, 40 x 60 inches.
- Research Category: Regional Studies
- Figures: mn_RAC_fullview.jpg
mn_RAC_dark.jpg
mn_RAC_darks_details.jpg
mn_RAC_light.jpg
mn_RAC_light_details.jpg
