viz. - Environment in art

David Maisel and Beautiful Disasters

Calliope — Thu, 02 May 2013 21:28:40 +0000

American Mine (Carlin, NV 1), 2007

You must be thinking, "Gosh, that's marvelous! What is it?" Well, I'll give you some hints about what it's not. It's not a computer-generated image (so you can rule out "digital vat of candy for a Willy Wonka film"). And it wasn't captured by NASA on a trip to Neptune. If you guessed geode, then you're getting warmer, but you're still way off in terms of scale. Perhaps it looks to you like a place where a leprechaun might stash his gold? Well, strangely, that guess may be closest of all.

It turns out this absolutely mesmerizing photograph by David Maisel is an aerial view of a toxic manmade pond in Carlin Trend, Nevada, "the most prolific gold mining district in the Western Hemisphere" according to Maisel's website. The disorienting quality of the photo is a hallmark of Maisel's environmental photography, which explores the visually haunting, otherworldly transformations humans inflict on the Earth's surface. For decades, Maisel has been flying over and photographing sites of environmental wreckage, like the scored and chemically soaked basins of America's pit mines or the wasted lakebeds that once supplied Los Angeles with water. Beyond increasing awareness about these environmental disasters, Maisel's photographs enact a terrifying tug-of-war between ethics and aesthetics. As viewers experience and take pleasure in their sublime beauty, they are forced into the uncomfortable knowledge that these environmentally ruinous conditions have an irresistably attractive dimension.

The Lake Project 13

Image Credit: David Maisel

My good friend and fellow graduate student Michael Roberts introduced me to David Maisel via the Smithsonian's recent blog about the photographer's new retrospective collection, Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime. The beauty that Maisel locates in sites of terrestrial destruction--in the curves of a withered, polluted river or a network of cracks in the parched earth--instantly reminded me of the dilemma philosopher Elaine Scarry explores in her work on beauty and justice. Scarry argues that far from diverting critical attention from injustice, or masking it, beauty incites us to cherish and protect life. It seems to me that Maisel's photographs push the limits of this theory by positing the majesty and allure of catastrophic environmental wounds. If the very evidence of environmental devastation is made to look beautiful then what will compel us to save these endangered places?

It's difficult to articulate exactly how Maisel's photographs make me feel; but I can say that I don't feel complacence. Perhaps because most of the landscapes paradoxically appear beautiful while revealing signs of trauma, or a kind of pain, they allow us to consider both sensations in our minds at once. Maisel's photographs poignantly capture the dignity and beauty of the Earth even when it's under duress. And what could be more pathetic than that?

Image Credit: Jerry Ting

Maisel's work will remind anyone who has flown over the country of the strange views they've seen out the window. Personally, I think of the colored geometric pools that greet incoming planes at the San Francisco airport. I always enjoy looking at these lily-pad-like fields of water, but never knew what they were until Maisel's photos prompted me to investigate. It turns out these colored pools are industrial salt ponds, one-hundred-year-old evaporating receptacles for harvesting sea salt. They get their coloration from algae and other organisms living within them that express different colors depending on the saline levels in the pool. Though they are a historic part of the South Bay and make for a beautiful spectacle from overhead (see the image captured by an airplane passenger above) the salt ponds pose a major disturbance to the natural wetland habitat that preexisted them.

Image Credit: Save the Bay Blog

In 2003, California and federal agencies reclaimed a huge area of the shoreline for the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project which aims to return these altered sections of shoreline to a more natural state. The effects of this project are already visible from a bird's-eye vantage (as the photo juxtaposition above illustrates). In a weird way, the SF Salt Pond Restoration Project feels like an "undoing" of the beauty Maisel's photographs cull out of industrial landscapes. But surely we shouldn't lament the strides these dedicated environmentalists have made towards renewing the wetlands habitat, even if they mean that the South Bay will lose its landmark look. Some will prefer the aesthetic and/or nostalgic value of the "before" shot to the "after" shot despite what their conscience tells them. But the tension between our aesthetic preferences and our ethical gut isn't something we should necessarily suppress. At least that's what Maisel's photographs seem to suggest.

"Useless" - Photographing the Everyday

Cate Blouke — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:55:22 +0000

Image Credit: "Smashed Glass" by Jessica Alpern

Guest blogger and Austin-based photographer Jessica Alpern discusses her recent work, Useless, in which she offers new visions of everyday objects. As she explains, "This collection is a look at common object, made or found, that no longer serve their purpose due to damage, defect or the inevitability of time." More from the artist after the jump.

Image Credit: "Wax" by Jessica Alpern

The following is from Alpern herself:

Two common themes in my work are identity and materialism. Having moved excessively in both my childhood and adult life, I've devoted many hours to acquiring and discarding the detritus of everyday living (dishes, furniture, bed linens, etc.), transferring things that filled utilitarian needs, leaving behind those no longer served a purpose.

Image Credit: "Tape" by Jessica Alpern

Exploring Kafka's notion that "The meaning of life is death," [in Useless] I took particular interest in objects that were rendered useless through use; being destroyed by performing the very function for which they were created.

Image Credit: "Gum" by Jessica Alpern

The images are unexpectedly organic but are not intended as abstracts. Rather they are a close look at an object that has itself, become an abstraction. Watching these man-made entities transitioning from one form to another feels something akin to witnessing Pinocchio become a real boy.

Image Credit: "Pencil 2" by Jessica Alpern

Despite being at the end of its necessity, it has not reached the end of its existence. It's simply moved beyond the familiar. photographing these objects during that transition feels like a celebration of potential as well as a final record before the destruction, recycling, repurposing, disbursing of its parts makes it unrecognizable.

Image Credit: "Pencil" by Jessica Alpern

Interview with Photographer Maureen R. Drennan

noelradley — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:10:27 +0000

Image credit: From Maureen R. Drennan
H/T to Artist as Citizen Burning Embers Competition

On the Viz. blog September 2009, I discussed Maureen R. Drennan’s photo series "Thin Ice," where Drennan proposes the potential losses to ice fishing with global warming. I recently had an interview with Drennan about "Thin Ice" and being a finalist on the New York Times DotEarth blog/Artist as Citizen Burning Embers Competition. We discussed remote places, the scale of her project, the themes and the arguments of the photos, as well as the intersections of photography and story.

“A small story about a greater problem”: Interview with Maureen R. Drennan

Viz.: I was talking to a colleague about your series of photos. She said that when she thinks about visual rhetoric and the environment, she thinks of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” She was struck by the contrast between “An Inconvenient Truth” as a visual rhetoric piece and what your series of photos are doing.

Drennan: With Al Gore’s movie, he was really trying to hammer home this situation that is imminent, and I think he’s trying to reach as many people as possible. I think it was done very successfully. It was done in a way where a lot of people could understand it. It was accessible, and it was also dynamic and intense. I know my work is not like that. I wouldn’t know how to go about doing that. That would be for a different photographer…I’m not a scientist. I don’t claim to be an expert.

Viz.: How do you think your photos compare to the other visualizations of climate change?

Drennan: I hope this doesn’t come across as self-deprecating. I think [my images] were a little more subtle. It’s not super dynamic, but I think that’s okay. It’s a small story that I think can relate to the big picture. We’re all involved in small stories. It’s what we’re involved in every day. It makes up the big picture. I think other visualizations of climate change are grand and monumental. My pictures aren’t like that. They’re a lot more quiet.

Viz.: Can you describe how you began to take these pictures of ice fishing?

Drennan: I’m from Manhattan, born and raised here in New York. I’m really drawn to remote, beautiful places because it’s so different from what I’m accustomed to. My husband Paul is from Rice Lake, Wisconsin, which is a very small town in northern Wisconsin. When we would go visit his in-laws, I usually wander around and take pictures of the area. I was just really drawn to these beautiful, remote lakes, and the fact that there are these little shacks on the lake. [For people who aren’t from a cold climate, ice-fishing] is sort of a foreign thing. I was really drawn to it…What are they doing out there? Why are there these little houses out there on the lake? I just instinctually wandered out there and started chatting with people and taking their picture and taking photographs of the landscape and the ice shacks.

What was initially so interesting was the community and how tight knit they are: these temporary communities out on the ice. They only last a few months, and people bond. They become so close. It’s like having a cabin in the summer at the lake. It’s a little place—a little refuge that you go to—and you’re friends with the neighbors. You also (for safety reasons) have to be looking out for one another. Even though it’s an isolated activity, there’s also a community aspect.

Viz.: How did your photos become part of the Artist as Citizen project?

Drennan: Even just in the two years that I have been doing this, the season got a little bit shorter. The ice shacks went out later in the winter and came back earlier. It’s way below zero—like 10 degrees below zero and 20 degrees below when the wind picks up—so I spend a lot of time in the shacks talking to people. In talking to people this past winter, people [would say] how the season is changing and the ice is changing…That’s anecdotal. I don’t think [the ice fishers are] studying charts and graphs, but it was interesting to hear. It just got me thinking about these lovely communities and how this is a small story about a greater problem.

For the full interview, click here.

Danie Mellor: Environmental and socio-historical ideas in fine art

Anne Bobroff-Hajal — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:52:09 +0000

Danie Mellor is an Australian fine artist whose themes integrate environmental and socio-historical concerns. His message isn't quite as "left-brained" as the ideal I'm seeking (my goal is to find art whose ideas are clear through the art itself, without a separate artist's or museum statement). But there's something to be learned from Mellor about ways to achieve that ideal. Plus, his work is so beautiful that I'm utterly seduced into presenting it here.

Mellor uses a vocabulary of indigenous Australian animals and people paired with classic English china patterns. For Mellor, the kangaroo represents (as explained by a wonderful National Gallery of Australia audio guide), "all the native animals and indigenous people who lived in this land before white settlement." As for the blue china patterns, "The English firm Spode manufactured blue and white china in the late 18th century around the time of white settlement of Australia. The famous willow pattern, adapted from Chinese ceramics, became popular at this time. It demonstrates another way in which English culture absorbed another, creating a fabricated history." Artlink Magazine described another of Mellor's works as signifying "how colonisers always get things wrong; how Europeans looking for China and its fine porcelain manufactures, stumbled instead upon the land of the kangaroo, and traded and planted ideas of racial and cultural superiority."

Dreaming Beyond Paradise (Let Sleeping Giants Lie) by Danie Mellor

Once we know the language of Mellor's vocabulary, we can feast on his images and feel some of the tragedy of imperialism's domination of native habitat and culture. This dual vocabulary of English china and indigenous animals underlies even a more complex work like "New World Order (The Visitors)," in which Mellor also uses Masonic and other imagery:

In the lessons-to-be-learned-for-artists department, the very different visual qualities of Mellor's two primary components make his work very readable. The china pattern is elegant and finely detailed. The indigenous Australian elements are live creatures painted a bit more roughly.

Color above all distinguishes the Australian from the British in Mellor's art. The imperialist element is blue and white. The indigenous Australian is warm browns and oranges. The two are on opposite sides of the color wheel, reinforcing the contrast between the two.

So fellow artists looking to communicate left-brained ideas through right-brained art might draw on Mellor's device of creating a limited, easily-graspable vocabulary whose elements have high visual contrast. The viewer will then be able to easily distinguish the components of the vocabulary.

Another lesson learned through Mellor's work is how he speaks of tragic events with tenderness, joy, and fun. This is important in fine art when it takes on difficult issues. We're only human, after all, and we need to have some reward for facing catastrophe and reasoning ways to repair it.

Mellor also illustrates the fact that sometimes the best tool to express harsh reality is actually surrealism - through the artist inventing a whimsical version of reality rather than actual reality. Mellor places a kangaroo fast asleep on the bridge of the Spode willow china pattern. He paints an indigenous Australian man raising his spear over vertiginous painted-porcelain mountains.

What makes Mellor's surrealism speak so eloquently about reality is that the elements he chooses are visual synedoches: china patterns represent British imperialism; native animals represent the indigenous Australian people, culture, and natural world. The artwork we looked at in my last post, Nina Paley's animated film "THE STORK," is based on a visual metaphor - two elements with something in common. Mellor's work is based on the contrast of two very different synecdoches. They are two great examples of visual rhetoric.

PS Since we've been talking about science in art elsewhere on viz., you might want to look at Mellor's installation at the National Gallery of Australia and listen to the brief audio description. The installation's very long title is "The contrivance of a vintage Wonderland (A magnificent flight of curious fancy for science buffs, a china ark of seductive whimsy, a divinely ordered special attraction, upheld in multifariousness)." It's a joyful/tragic riff on "artificial and didactic" old exhibits in socio-historical and natural history museums. It's accompanied by a poem by A. G. Bolam, "The Trans-Australian Wonderland:"

A wonderland of truly wondrous things

That nowhere else upon this Earth are found;

Of reptiles rare, and birds that have no wings,

And animals that live deep in the ground;

And those poor simple children of the Earth,

(A disappearing race you here may meet),

Whom whites have driven from their land of birth

To regions still untrod by booted feet.