JAMES WYNESS
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Big Words for Little Things

13/7/2022

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Picture
From Palimpsest (in-progress)
Throughout the darkest days of the pandemic I spent time trying to understand historical and contemporary practices of still life photography and painting. This led me to my own experiments with still life photography. Although I’d love to be able to gracefully happen upon compelling ‘found’ still life compositions, just by having a camera ready at all times, I’m drawn to the reflective processes of selecting and setting up objects, working with colour, form, perspective, depth of field and of course light. There’s also the problem of choosing and setting up tables and backdrops which are almost as important as the objects themselves, something I underestimated in the early experimental phase. I decided from the beginning to work only with natural light and am fortunate to be able to set up my compositions in two domestic locations, one with a fairly even north light, the other with a south facing, less unpredictable but wonderfully diffused light, especially in a short window during the Scottish spring and autumn.

By way of research I began with a close look at the Dutch still life painters of the 17th century. I can never have enough of that period, be it still life, landscape or domestic interiors. This led me to more modern painters like Nicholas de Stael, Pierre Lesieur and Giorgio Morandi. In photography I was particularly interested in the work of Josef Sudek, Laura Letinsky and Andrea Modica. I could go on at length about the work of these artists.

There’s a lot of literature on still life painting and photography but two books in particular helped me understand the deeper mechanics of still life art. Svetlana Alpers’ The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century is a book to be read and re-read. Then there’s Norman Bryson’s Looking at the Overlooked: 4 essays on still life paintings who came at the subject from some very interesting perspectives. I’ll quote, paraphrase and comment freely upon some of the points that struck me.

The removal of the human body is the founding move of still life. The same of course could be said about nearly all landscape photography and painting. Obvious yes, but I’m led to ask why.

Bryson then introduces the notion of still life as an investigation of rhopography (the big word for little things) from rhopos - trivial objects, the discarded and useless, things excluded and passed over. In this I find parallels with some contemporary musical and sonic practices, some of which have been at the core of my own works over the year, for example musique concrète which often seeks out disused, found and forgotten objects for their sonic properties. One could also find some common ground within musique brut, arguably the sonic equivalent of arte povera.

Attention itself gains power to transfigure the commonplace. I understand this to mean that we have to spend time with still life, to slow down and pay attention, to allow the transfiguration to take place or emerge. Again, parallels with many of the musical and sonic practices that interest me.

Bryson makes the argument that there’s a disinclination (in early still life painting) to portray the world beyond the far end of the table. A lot could be made of this in terms of frame, content and concept. In my early fumblings I struggled not only with the table itself but found myself in the midst of heated conversations between the focal length of lenses, angles of shot, table size and orientation. I still have some way to go to resolve these conflicts. This is of course unique to photography - painters can design their backgrounds and angles in an infinite variety of ways.

Objects are made to appear unreal or unfamiliar. This becomes apparent the longer you gaze at paintings in particular. In my recent series Evidence I’ve found myself tapping into this tradition in a more immediate manner by masking objects (disused, forgotten and found) in what look like forensic evidence bags.

Cultural memory, an authentically civilised world. This fascinates me, if we extend to the idea that the best evidence of civilisation, the memories of past civilisations, are most often manifested in the objects left behind. And that these might be the humble objects of domesticity.
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From the still life series 'Evidence'

1/7/2022

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Stilleven

29/8/2021

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I'm still at it. The still life photographic project. I spent so much time researching the theoretical discourse, the histories and contemporary practice that I'm invested in the form. And because I find it difficult I embrace the challenge. Although I'm not wholly attached to originality above all else it would be desirable to find some kind of niche in my practice. Recently I changed locations, from the back garage studio to a room in the house. The summer light was too high and harsh and also too extreme in dynamic range over the course of a day with the arc of the sun. So I moved to room where there's a large window, a good north light and  more space to set things out. There's quite a lot of clutter involved in still life photography, at least the way I do it. As it happens this is the start of the season for excellent light back in my garage space. The frosted glass window is smaller but as the sun lowers lightly and is less intense there are some wonderful casts of light at certain times. When it's too dark is a good time for long exposures using the pinhole camera. 

I started tethering properly with this tentative new series. This is where you hook up the computer to the laptop so you have a generous view of your composition. I have to say it helps to judge lines, margins, light and of course depth of field. The two images I'm showing were taken with a Sony A7r3 and a Voigtlander 50mm F2 APO-Lanthar lens which is by far and away the best lens I've ever used. This is a manual lens which has excellent fine-detailed focusing capabilities in combination with the Sony body. With these tools I've been working to define compositions either by a thin sliver of focus, the circle of confusion, or by defining an accurate hyperfocal distance (using a phone app and a tape measure) to try to get the whole show in focus.
Picture
This is called The Boat and the Lighthouse. Initially I had no intention of seeing these simple compositions as anything other than studies in form - shape, colour, light, distribution - but on my first attempt at juxtaposing various objects I began to see the overall composition as something else, a representation of a narrative, however tenuous or abstracted. The other thing is that the objects are taken partly from the domestic environment (in this case a handbell) and partly from the forest, these being the environments in which I work from day to day. I'm very pleased with the concept and ideas behind this this though the challenge from now on is to find enough domestic objects with sufficient 'resonance' to create some kind of secondary representation along with the woodland found materials. As you can see the point of focus is at the stern of the 'boat'. With these wide aperture images there's a huge difference in how an image can speak to you depending on whether the out-of-focus field is towards the front or the back of the frame. This particular choice the direction of travel with respect to the boat. I leave the viewer to judge. A minor point is that I'm pleased with the high key nature of this photograph. It wasn't intended or post-processed as such. I don't tend to do very much in post production because I want to get as close as possible to what I want in-camera. Not much point in having a good lens if you're not going to put it to best use.
These are two takes on what I've called Eve and the Serpent, based on the same narrative concept as the previous image, though here the reference is Biblical or even mythical. I think that in both cases the use of composition (obviously) and depth of field (less so) help to offer entirely different readings of the image. The first has Eve, another small handbell, somewhat sheltered by what might be read as a cave or a tree. She's perhaps unsure or afraid of the serpent . Here I would say that the serpent is the protagonist, approaching. The tree or cave is not entirely in sharp focus but it's defined enough to make it and Eve the combined subject. In the second image Eve has emerged from the shelter to confront the serpent. Both shelter and serpent are more or less equally out of focus which places Eve clearly at the centre of the narrative. Which works best? Let me know your thoughts. Maybe both would sit well on different pages in a photobook. Decisions, decisions. Finally I think that such readings become more evident or welcome because of the introduction of what we might call a human figure, albeit in in the form of a brass bell. 

​There'll be more on this as I work my way through other combinations and narrative ideas. Thanks for reading.
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Still Life

23/5/2021

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The Corner

Even if I am experimenting I like to work methodically so I decided quite early on to categorise my still life experiments into three areas of activity: colour, form or assemblage, ie the shapes and composition of the objects and how to work with the table or tables in my studio. I could add light to those three but I have a good diffused natural side light and haven't yet taken to artificial lighting slight remains as constant as natural light can be. In fact the whole business of getting the table right - the angle, height of shot, colour of cloth, backdrop, is perhaps the most problematic of all and I still haven't found all the solutions. I do often wonder how other still life photographers solve these matters.

​Here we have three corner shots, all jpegs straight from the camera (these are test shots after all) with slightly different arrangements of four simple elements. For me the most successful is the first shot. The apple distracts the eye and the angles are too obvious. The second shot uses a wider aperture which throws the apple slightly out of focus and I think this enhanced depth of field pulls the eye around the image more effectively. The light however has changed in number three, for the better I think,  and this is one of the most interesting aspects of working with natural light, the changes between shots and a measure of unpredictability which perhaps goes against the grain in a studio setting. But it teaches me to look ever more closely which I believe is one of the cornerstones of becoming a better photographer. 
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  • Home
  • about
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    • music >
      • ubanu tarasa
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      • words on resilience
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      • Evidence
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        • the fundamentals of architecture
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      • The Landowner
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