I have difficulty describing this class to my friends and family. The simplest, quickest phrase is my “photography class.” But this does not nearly describe the discussions, readings, and projects contained within the semester. When I feel like spending more time than a few seconds on the class, I would say it is class on landscape narratives and that our primary tool for investigation, interpretation, and presentation is photography. I explain how this class changed my understanding of my site.

In my first semester studio project, the Borderlands were part of my site. During our research and analysis, we spent most of our times pouring over maps, reports, historical accounts, GIS data, excel charts, and previous plans, attempting to understand a place. It was a scattershot effort. One emerged knowing a little bit of everything. We then immediately ended our analysis and started developing our interventions. Mine was a residential neighborhood that had most of the buzzwords: mixed-use, pedestrian-scaled, etc. However, what I did not have was an understanding of how all these layers wove back into the site. I tried to take a few pictures for my “existing conditions” analysis but they showed little individually, and amounted to little more as a collection. Through this class, I have began to understand how these layers of information can be matched to my personal experience in a site. By intentionally wandering through my site with the camera, I was able to concentrate on what was in front of me, what existed, and how I could use photography to say something larger about the site itself.

The reading by Galen Rowell was a big moment for me. His ruminations on the role of light stunned me and made me rethink how I relate to my environment. When I read that nothing would have color or shape without light, I learned nothing I had not previously known, but reading it in conjunction with Rowell’s photography made me understand on a deeper level. It made me rethink how I took pictures. It made me rethink how I thought of material and form. It made me rethink how humans receive information, make spatial connections and relationships, and elevate those into meaning. The revelation—that light has meaning—followed me throughout the course and caused me to think about other senses, especially sound.

Though I learned much from our conversations with Anne and each other, I learned the most from looking.  Whether the projected pictures were excellent or nothing particularly special (and we all had both kinds), I learned most about the relationship between distillation and complexity. We talked so much about what made a picture a photograph versus a “postcard image.” Though we never arrived at an explicit answer (and I wonder if there is one), I am more acutely aware of which pictures I take are really special. Though I was initially frustrated by Joel Meyerowitz’s vague, nebulous description of how he photographs, I think I now understand why he spoke the way he did. It is trained knowledge through exploration and experience, not a list of rules, that make an excellent photographer.

I spent a good amount of time debating what format my final essay would take. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I enjoy using sound, music, and lyrics to explore Joel Sternfeld’s photos. I decided, with some encouragement from Anne, to attempt to capture a piece of the borderland, to lay bare some of the underlying emotions I have experienced there. After making this decision, I felt burdened with the need to explain every detail of the site in song and sound. I decided to start by writing down a series of words or phrases I associated with the site. Here is my stream of thought “word dump.”

severed. time. passing. covering. revealing. forgetting. blocking. reclaiming. revise. reation entropy. weathering. rebuild. restore. play. trashed. broken. shattered. filled. left. leaving. returning. fencing out. hostility. movement. storage. waiting room. metal glass. asphalt. rust. salt. encroach. overshadow. overgrowth. forget. exposed. waves colliding. trucks moving. rumble. whir. crackle and buzz. you are not welcome. urbs. wire. crater. razors and barbs. plastic. wind. stripped. towers. collapse. build. paradox. collision. burial. remission.

I had already written an ambient piece full of delay, feedback and drawn out chords. I spent some time deciding who the voice of the singer would represent. Looking over my journals, I realized that I often felt there were two voices in this landscape: industry and residential, old and new, large and small. These often competing voices create a landscape cacophony in the borderlands, a melange of confused narrative. If there was one central theme that joined these paradoxical relationships, it was time. How to represent this?  I decided to write a duet between these twin forces which ends in a unison verse about time’s effect on the landscape. I am continuing to struggle with what these voices are. Initially, I wrote them as the voice of industry and the voice of the people, but I’m afraid that might be too literal and specific. I’m in the process of making the voice more about paradox than any single individual. More about dueling words and images, than industry versus residential.

The difficulty is matching these up to my pictures in a way that isn’t literal or simplistic, but still is emotionally complex…

As I walked my site this weekend taking photos, I found myself struggling with my approach. Should I focus on the assignment and search out particular categories of landscape grammar? Or should I move through my site taking pictures of what gives me that intangible but telling “feeling?” As I read through Spirn’s list of landscape grammar elements, I realized that many of them seemed to rely on intentionality by a designer. Many of the examples that jumped out at me were from designed landscapes and even the vernacular examples seemed difficult to apply to my site. “The Borderland” is marked more by the absence of the design than its presence.

However, I realized that the intention can come from the photographer as much as it can from a designer. The photographer, through their lens, suggests relationships, guides the eye to consider elements it might miss. For example, I came upon a piece of a tree branch that had grown through the fence of a truck lot. It was severed on both ends, impaled on the chain link. It is my job as the photographer to observe such anomalies. By framing it between the trucks, it speaks of a industrial site divorced and at odds with a natural past. I was asked by an employee at the lot what the fuck I was doing. I told him I was photographing for a class and he just smiled, shook his head, and walked away. Would he have the same reaction if he saw the picture? If it was elevated beyond daily experience? This is what I try to do when photographing: elevating the overlooked.