Revealing the Undiscovered Country-Interpreting the Luminous Landscape Through Photography
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My involvement with landscape photography began recently, and developed as a direct result of attempting to capture paranormal anomalies in digital photographs using various experimental techniques. I've taken thousands of photographs since I first picked up a camera two years ago, and most of them were taken as part of this same experiment (My experiments I consider successful, and they can be seen here on this website, along with experiment details and full accompanying text in the 'Consorting With Spirits' gallery). Being so involved and focussed on this aspect of the photography, I barely glanced at a photo or landscape as an entire picture. Normally, as an artist, I would always usually do this, looking all around me for beauty and inspiration, engrossed in both nature and my own and other peoples art, but for almost two entire years I had developed a different way of seeing entirely, up close and in miniature, scanning details for the faces, figures and other anomalies that I find over and over again contained within my photographs, often in miniature. My first recognition that my outdoor photo's might contain more than just strange images superimposed over landscape came when I mirrored an image that contained an eye in an editing program and got an inkling that they also contained art with a mythic quality. This led to experimentation that resulted in digital art, some of which can be seen on this website in the 'Underworld Reflections' gallery. At this point, I still hadn't seen the potential and beauty in some of the photographs to stand as landscapes alone. When the 'penny dropped' and my eyes opened, I began to view them as I usually do a painting or photograph once more. Excited by a new discovery, I scoured old discs of photo's and went out taking photographs more concerned with landscape than ghosts and interdimensional creatures for once. I realised immediately that my techniques, combined with the constant anomalous 'extras' in the image, meant that however beautiful some of the natural scenes might seem, their misty, illuminated and sometimes extremely soft-focussed images were never going to win any prizes for sharp, crisp clarity. From the reactions I got from some of the people who originally saw them, however, and the way I myself responded to them as an artist, I realised that they had a peculiar fascination all of their own. I am not a photographer by any generally acceptable and familiar definition of the term, and as I felt tremendously impulsed to take these landscapes further, I also felt duty-bound to do some research on photography as art. I'm a little more comfortable now I've discovered that other people experiment in this way, and have done since practically the dawn of photography, even though it has been called 'outsider art' by some. Pictorialist photography caused a furor in it's day, with it's attempt to establish itself as an artform, and this has been debated hotly to the present time. Pictorialist photographic art was generally very moody and evocative, sometimes amorphic and fantasy-like. These photo's definitely held romance and mystery for some people, or evoked feelings of nostalgia with the atmospherically yearning note they struck emotionally in some viewers. But what they also did, which is very important to all artists, was to be the major influence in the birth of Impressionist art. In fact, it's very probable there would have been no Impressionism as we know it today without photography and Pictorialism. The argument regarding photography as art, and what exactly constitutes art, is one I feel no need to enter. I believe art tells me what it is by the way it makes me feel inside, and the way it adds to or rearranges my own intimate inner psychic landscape. Therefore I personally believe that to take up the camera and use it as a paintbrush, forming loveliness, mystery and wonder by helping to paint with the Living Light, reveals unknown facets of the beautiful and naturally luminous landscape that surrounds me, and is valid as art if that intention is transmitted as form and color to others in a way that produces emotion (e-motion as energy in motion), especially joy and revelation. Some of my photographs would seem to be classifiable as Pictorialist, and others as Impressionist Art Photography. There is no doubt that some of the photographs are Tonal in quality. Still others could be classified as Mythic Photography, a fairly new genre, and of particular interest to me, as I classify myself as a Mythic Artist when describing my highly detailed paintings, which can be seen in the main 'August 12 Stargate Gallery' of this website. It's true that while I am used to classifying paintings, doing so for photo's is new to me. However, I can clearly see the similarities, and a lot of my photography work shows a very painterly effect. Texture is rich upon the surface of some pictures, with branches, light and movement forming an effect reminiscent of Japanese textured paper. Some of the work looks as though it were rendered in colored pencil and pastel, and some seem to be executed in oils. Form is often elusive, veiled with misty and ethereal light effects. After staring at some of these works, apparitions become apparent. Borders, edges and horizons are hypnotic and undulating, often exerting a magnetic and trance-like effect. It is difficult sometimes to relate the images to the actual places photographed, and this intrigues me, as if the landscape had opened from within and revealed itself as a mystical abstraction containing a psychically charged emotional atmosphere. Some of the landscapes show shadowy places that contain barely visible and tantalising mysteries, while smears of light and vivid colors briefly dazzle the eye. Other quieter pictures of hazy pastoral scenes are dream-like in quality, like memories. Some are tonalist and dark, twilight pictures that are moody and mysterious, a quality I am sometimes drawn to. The photographs depict seemingly insubstantial and transitory images which defy proper description for several reasons. Many of the effects are the result of my technique, and as such have no reality. Mysticism is at the heart of all my creative efforts, and the basis for Pictorialist and other romantic art traditions is the depiction of images that are removed from everyday reality as we know it. And yet ultimate reality is not as it seems to us now, and mysticism and mystery also lie at the heart of that same reality. The apparitions visible in the photographs are real, in the sense that they appeared spontaneously in the picture. The familiar boundaries of what is generally accepted as reality are blurring, literally right on and in my photographs. Layers of light, reality, art and dreams containing information not usually available, yet somehow present. This challenges me in a way that tells me that through the combination of painting and photography, and in revealing the unseen, I have found my life's work. All the landscapes are edited, but generally only for exposure, contrast, color, sharpness and size. In a few examples I have removed anomalies that interfered with the balance of the image. In a few cases also I've used solarization or a paint program for effect, and these are mainly shown in a separate gallery. The techniques I have used, such as a longer exposure setting, are in part responsible for the dream-like quality of my work, but it is intriguing because it contains, most literally, another dimension generally not seen in photographs at all. Many of the images you will see containing paranormal anomalous material seem particularly busy and amongst the trees, by the side of the road, in the grasses and water are faces and figures in abundance. At no time, in any way, have I artificially added this particular material, or edited it in. Every single face and figure you will find as you examine the pictures are there courtesy of the unknown and generous spirits who have fully and graciously entered into the original experiments with me. After editing so many of them for interdimensional life, it was with great joy I discovered that they had also appeared in the exact correct places for both mirroring and other techniques that I employed in the digital art gallery 'Underworld Reflections', in which I also added no eyes, faces or figures of any sort, human, animal or elemental - they were simply there, as though they had been waiting. In this gallery of landscape photography, you will find illuminated landscapes peopled with real spirits who watch me from behind trees as I take photographs, and can be seen sometimes visibly stepping, or breaking through into this dimension, through portals that seem to be partly enabled by trees and a natural environment. This reminds me of the 'mythagos' in the old-growth wood that are the basis for the fantasy novels of the 'Mythago Wood' and 'Lavondyss' series, written by the brilliant author Robert Holdstock. It is a startling and beguiling concept, that is in my opinion viable, and closer to the truth than we might guess. As you will see in some of the pictures, single eyes watch from foliage, and children's faces appear everywhere. To my delight, some entities seemed to pose for me as though they were taking part in a faery-tale book come to life, such as the enigmatic 'Dreamwalker', or the more poignant 'Summer Secret', in which a young spirit girl is seen on the far left of the photo leaning with her back against a tree, posed sideways, looking towards us and smiling. Not only did I enjoy the painterly-looking composition of the image, but it also tugged at my heartstrings, as I am a mother. I am still in awe, and I dedicate this gallery, all my galleries, to the invisible spirits who helped me to see on photographs what I always knew was there, and longed to see in reality. Thankyou, everyone of you, whichever worlds you inhabit, from my heart. Without your numinous presence throughout my photographic work, it would not be nearly so meaningful. Indeed, I believe you helped paint these pictures for all of us who wish to see, using the Illumination that lights all life in every world, and also lights all art in this one we inhabit.
Jane Tripp All images are entirely the copyright property of the artist Jane Tripp and may not be used in any form under any circumstances without her written permission. |