Nicola Hampshire Photography 2 Landscape: The contemporary abyss

26th April 2015

The contemporary abyss

“Read Simon Morley’s essay – “staring into the contemporary abyss” published on the Tate Website (http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss). This should provide you with a good overview of the sublime as a theme within visual culture. Next choose any body of work that you feel explores the sublime. It may be a photographic project, a work of literature, cinema or any other medium. In your learning log write at least 300 words, describing how you believe the work you’ve selected relates to the sublime. Use Morley’s text to support your argument.” (Course Material)

I also read Simon Morley (2010) The sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery.

My chosen body of work is “Forest”, a photo book by Jitka Hanslova because whilst reading the chapter on nature in Morley’s (2010) The sublime, I became curious about the work explained in the essay from John Berger (2006 pp125-127). I followed this up by finding her photo-book and researching the ideas behind how it fits into the sublime. I thought it would help formulate the ideas I had for assignment 1 on beauty and the sublime.

Jitka Hanslova is a Czech artist who revisited the forest of her childhood home several times to make a body of work entitled “Forest”. This is the second of her documentaries, made during 2000-2005 in which she explored “the forest as a metaphor for a concrete landscape but also a dividing line where the site dividing fantasy and reality becomes thin.” (http://www.georgkargl.com/en/artist/jitka-hanzlova - accessed April 2015)

Her images are not wide angled shots of a forest; instead they pick out part of a tree or the forest floor, or the last remains of the day’s light or even moonlight light show off a few tree branches. Viewing the body of work, I had some idea of what the landscape of her forest consisted of, and that it contained a mix of heathland, undergrowth, deciduous and evergreen trees, although I could not tell if it was on a mountain side (shot in the Carpathian Mountains) or a flat landscape.

The first image of the silhouette of the tree in low light is sublime rather than beautiful because the viewer conjures up a sense of what is lurking in the forest as the light starts to fade. It plays with the mind and does not tempt the viewer to go into the forest but look from the safety of the book. It sets the scene of what is to come.

The subsequent images are shot when it is nearly dark. There is some light hitting and reflecting off the trunk of the silver birch tree which lights a few branches which becomes a theme for some of the images. This makes the forest look eerie and a place for wildlife to inhabit rather than people. The viewer does not expect to come across waterfalls in the dark and Hanzlova includes a small brook taken at night. These are usually a place of beauty to visit in the daylight and this gave the impression of a danger the reader may stumble across or something which is necessary for survival in the forest.

Kargl describes Hanslova’s composition of images as “refined, and yet random, the tones are tender and fragile, and yet lend a palpable materiality to what is represented, making them seem unnaturally close”. (http://www.georgkargl.com/en/artist/jitka-hanzlova - accessed April 2015)

Hanslova uses low light, night time and weather such as fog and snow to create the required atmosphere in some of her images. Her use of colour is minimal, sometimes only the beech nut husks on the forest floor are the only colour in the image and sometimes the images are so devoid of colour that they look almost black and white.

How does the work chosen relate to the sublime?

Morley categorized Hanzlova’s work under nature, explaining that “nature turns us back to the roots of much contemporary art in notions of romantic sublimity, identifying the natural world as a primary source of such experiences” Morley (2010 p20). In my opinion, Hanslova’s “Forest” still fits in with the notion of producing “emotions in the audience of a decidedly irrational and excessive kind” http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss (accessed 26/4/15) which was from the idea of the Romantic artists, although I think the execution of her work is more contemporary than the work of Casper David Friedrich.

Casper David Friedrich

Morley, when describing the history of the sublime in art, explains that in the 1950’s and 60’s “the goal of art was to pare work down to a minimal visual language in order to establish its purity.” http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss (accessed 26/4/15)

I think that with Hanslova’s work, she has stripped away any confusion of what this work might be and once the viewer has looked at the images, they are left with a feeling of the sublime. It is the silence of the images which provides the disquiet, provided by recording timelessness.

In this day and age, most people have fast paced lives and rely on technology to record information. Even in “down time” people reach for their laptops or mobile phones or television instead of engaging in conversation or going outside into nature. What happens when we enter a forest is that time slows down because it has a different sense of time. The forest is governed by seasons and events that happen in the forest at a much slower pace than we are living at. Our ancestors would have used forests as refuge from the bad weather as they provide shelter. To us, forests have become places of recreation but also in a culture which is becoming more secular, the energy within the forest is making us scared of finding ourselves. This is what Morley terms “self –transendence” which is the opposite of rational thoughts and more about spirituality. In my opinion, Hanslova’s images were ones where the viewer could lose themselves rather than of recreation or beauty which makes them sublime. As Morley explains, the contemporary sublime is about “defining a moment where social and psychological codes no longer bind us, where we reach a sort of borderline at which rational thought comes to an end and we suddenly encounter something wholly and perturbingly other.” (http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss accessed 26/4/15) Morley argues that contemporary art is now about “immanent transcendence[…] a transformative experience understood as occurring within the here and now” (http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss accessed 26/4/15) By this he means that Hanzlova has presented a set of images in which the viewer may either find reality or left wondering and asking questions about the set of images and may convey to us on a subconscious level.

Bergen (2010 p126) explains that Heidegger (a philosopher) used a forest as a metaphor for reality and what he was really trying to find was the way through it (or the woodcutter’s path). This reminds me of Grimm Brother’s fairy tales and Disney’s animations such as Snow White. What Hanslova is really trying to show is the “the way I go is back to see the future”. She is trying to photograph the backwards motion of time from modern day to forest time.

References

(http://www.georgkargl.com/en/artist/jitka-hanzlova - accessed 26th April 2015)

(http://www.georgkargl.com/en/artist/jitka-hanzlova - accessed 26th April 2015

(http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss) accessed 26/4/15