self-designed project

One of my favorite photographs is from "Everything is Illuminated."  I couldn't find a good copy, but here's something.

Also, one of my favorite photographers is Andreas Gursky.

(Atlanta 1996)

Another similar photographer is Edward Burtynsky.

AMARC #5, Davis-Monthan AFB, Tuscon, Arizon, USA, 2006."
Chromogenic color print. Copyright the artist, courtesy Hasted Hunt Kraeutler,
New York and Corcoran Gallery of Art.

I get a feeling when I look at photos of something huge.  It's a bit overwhelming.  I want to communicate that in my photos.
What I see in common in these three is vastness in landscapes.  Also, they don't use perfect symmetry, but they're not afraid to put a subject right in the middle.
They are all images that make you wonder how so much can fit in one image.  How can so much light from so many places all make it through that lens onto the film?
In a way, this is kind of what separates photography from other art (in a very f/64 way).  You can only have a certain amount of detail in a painting no matter how hard you try.  In a photograph, as technology progresses, we may be able to make images with more detail than we can see.
I sometimes get this sense from Aaron's photos, however he tends to do more macro shots.  I want to try that.
I like the idea of stretching that boundary.  I don't have a cherry picker or a huge ladder to lug around, so I will have a hard time getting such high-angle shots, but I would like to try to capture this vastness.  Will I be able to create that same sense in a macro shot?  Can I make you feel that way by looking at the ground by your feet or the Bowdoin library?  I think it's all about focus, so I might have to explore using my large format to accomplish this.  If I take color 4x5 film and ship it off to be developed, will I  be able to enlarge it at Bowdoin, or will I have to use b&w film and hand-color?

Tangible non-photographic references:

When Queen recorded one of the greatest songs ever made, Bohemian Rhapsody had so many layers written over it to make the sound complete that they say the ribbon on the tape was completely transparent.  It made a whole sound that seems deeper than you can imagine.  You can feel when you listen to it that there is more there than you could ever hope to hear.

Likewise, listening to a band live has the same effect--you get a bigger picture than when you listen to a recording.  There is more there to hear and you feel dwarfed by the sound.  I want my pictures to do that--make you feel small.

To some extent, Planet Earth, Baraka, and various other nature films have the same effect.  I, however, don't want to limit my vastness to nature.

That said, I think there is a lot of this experience in the natural world.  The reason people say the Grand Canyon is a natural wonder is because of this feeling.  Standing on a peak in Kings Canyon (actually the deepest canyon in the US with 8000 ft. rims) you are totally overwhelmed.  This is what John Muir and Ansel Adams loved and what convinced Teddy Roosevelt to create national parks.

In mathematics, there is something called the Mandelbrot set.  It is not an algorithm, but it is often credited as being one.  In actuality, it is a set of numbers that map onto the real numbers.  Math talk aside, if you use a certain criteria to draw them out, you create a shape that has infinitely many details occurring in a predictable pattern.  This is relevant because I think these photographers have the same thing.  You could crop their photos and blow them up several times and still come up with just as interesting of an image.  There is simply that much detail.



what is my struggle?

I want to challenge the frame of the camera.  What makes large format images interesting is that the human eye cannot focus on 2 planes at once, yet the large format camera parametrizes a different plane into the plane of your vision.  As a result, you get an astounding result of a world you cannot see in real life.  I want to make these images where you cannot see them in real life just because of our physical limitations as humans--images in such great focus and so vast that you simply cannot imagine that it can actually exist on the wall in front of you.