Finding meaning in photographs
Going beyond just clicking
This week my inspiration comes from the American photographer Robert Adams’s essay “Truth and Landscape” from his book Beauty in Photography. Throughout his photography career, one theme that consistently appears in his landscape photographs is his concern about the environmental degradation that human beings cause to the natural world. However, in this post I am focusing upon other facets he discusses in the essay, which are also related to landscape photography. Robert Adams talks about three important aspects that make a good landscape photograph: geography, autobiography and metaphor. I am going to try and draw upon Adam’s insights and connect them with my own photography as a fun experiment and exercise.
Many-a-times during our travel to different places, we just click photographs without putting in too much thought into them. The approach largely is of creating a memory book: been here, done that! In my early photography days, my approach to landscape photography was perhaps like this. In Robert Adam’s words this kind of image capturing is like recording a piece of geography. It is a reminder of what is out there and of how it is unique.
When some autobiography is added to the geography (meaning your perspective and a bit of yourself), the photograph is hugely enhanced. Every photo is a part of the photographer’s story. One understands more about the photographer through the photo. The photographer decides when to take the photo, which way to take it and how to take it. He or she is putting her point of view in the photograph without which the photo is incomplete.
Photos are not objective; they are subjective as they reveal the mind and emotions of the photographer. Thus, as Robert Adams says, “making photographs is a personal thing”. Actually, all works of art convey details of the creator’s context, life, and innermost feelings and thoughts. Very often people who have been observing my photos for a longer period of time are able to comment on my style of photography. I personally feel my beach photography will have a lot of me in it. I take a minimalist approach, prefer to observe from a distance and take the photo.
A photographer, according to Robert Adams, has another responsibility which is about telling the viewer about the significance of the place. Without this viewpoint, a landscape photo will not hold the viewer’s attention for too long. For instance, when I visited Kashmir a few years ago, I took the boat/ Shikara ride early morning on the famous Dal Lake in Srinagar the capital city. The lake was vibrant with tons of tourists, floating vegetable markets and colourful flowers sold by boatsmen. It was a mesmerising sight for any photographer.
While I did take plenty of images of all the above, I also spotted from a distance some men removing weeds from the lake. I gathered this information upon asking the boatman who was navigating us through the lake. I was taken aback with the amount of weed they were drawing out from the lake. Certain kind of weeds kill marine life and so these men were hired by the government and would usually begin their work early in the morning and carry on till late in the afternoon. The pictures I got were actually beautiful but a little tragic as well. Amidst all the noise, colour and celebrations on the Dal Lake some men in their boats were busy removing weeds from the lake, nonstop.
For someone who has done development communication, and has been invested in people’s issues I was naturally drawn to these images more. In retrospect, through my photos I could bring attention to this side of the Dal Lake. I think connecting your work with the perspectives of great photographers and philosophers like Robert Adams and many others, can be a huge learning. It allows one to reflect upon one’s own photography, the journey so far, the confidence to move ahead and the inspiration to put out more meaningful work.
Thanks so much for reading this post. Happy you stopped by! Please consider subscribing to Living Pictures. It’s free! Your support would mean a lot to me.
Thank you for reading!
I really enjoyed your article, Shital, and I definitely want to check out Robert Adam's work. The idea of geography, autobiography, and metaphor in landscape photography is fascinating and personally brings a new perspective I've only just started to explore. Have you seen any of Bryan Schutmaat's work? I was inspired to shoot some landscapes afterward and was fascinated by the results. I feel I was unconsciously incorporating those ideas by just really taking my time to explore a common environment but trying to make it more interesting. Also really love that first photo in your "Beach Series." I wonder what he's looking at!