Landscape Photography - Part Two

This is a continuation of the previous blog post, in which I examined the very dissimilar, but equally interesting, work of two photographers.  The first photograph I have chosen to include today obviously has deep roots in the conceptual movement in art.

From The Garden 1 by Pipo Nguyen-duy

This is an interesting twist on the landscape genre - the created, simulated, or adapted landscape.  It looks as though the landscape Nguyen-duy created is inside of a broken, abandoned old greenhouse.  This is but one in a series of photographs he took in this location, each displaying signs of different seasons.  There is a strange juxtaposition of growth and decay in the image - and indeed a subversion of the imagery one would expect to see in a greenhouse.  It is as though nature is taking back over the scene, even if it is artificially arranged to some degree (which it must have been, given some of the features of the other shots in the series).  For all the skeletal elements, there is still nature and vegetation.  The artist managed to create a very intriguing series, one which I would like to research further in the future.

Terre Rouge, Esch-Alzette, Luxembourg 1979 by Bernd and Hilla Becher

 

In keeping with the theme of non-traditional landscapes, this photograph caught my attention.  What first drew me to the piece was the geometry it contains.  I have an affinity for interesting composition and arrangement, and often find that there are either vaguely or entirely geometric elements in most of my best photographs.  So, the way that the photograph reveals the geometry of this structure speaks to me.  However, if it did not seem to be an organic structure, I would not find it nearly as interesting (or necessarily call it a landscape).  Yet it does seem to swell and twist like vines or some strange shrub, growing up towards a sky that is barely visible behind it.  In this photograph the artists did a wonderful job of comparing the industrial scene to the landscape which may have been destroyed by it.  Such conceptual work, where something inorganic serves as a landscape, often makes for an interesting work.

-Kelly F.