Japanese Landscapes
My criteria evolved as I viewed the collection, but I decided on three things: no people, excellent (generally) colour tinting, and no fuji-san. Or so I attempted to find...
Working out of myself, the dogs in the cage are interesting because the long, tall poles remind me of my aunt's backyard where to keep the dogs that can leap nine feet in, the wire fence is over nine feet tall.
In any case, I wanted to see what a bunch of landscapes unfocused on people might reveal in terms of similarity. There's a very expansive sense of place to these images, and the colour tinting seems to be of a higher quality on these particular prints then one others. The colours blend into each other like sunsets and sunrises, emphasizing a natural beauty assumed lost through black and white photography. The use of colour tinting is important in these images, because it allows in post-production for the emphasis of 'artistic details' though to be important, and in no way must these colours reflect a real life. Yet clearly such an attempt at real life facsimile has been made, considering the careful way the first image has been treated. The images are certainly composed, but the framing takes care to emphasis natural beauty and the genre-esque style that was mentioned in the online readings. The composition of these images are not surprising when you view similar English landscapes. They are framed only to be aesthetically pleasing images, not to do or say much other then 'this is a lovely place, isn't it. I saw it.' Mountains and water dominated these landscapes as I viewed them--including the 'famous autumn--and these are only a few. But this broad, sweeping things--even the eruption of a volcano--are eminently serene, nature holding quiet sway with people and buildings small or non-existent. Then the dogs, trapped up inside a man made cage, clearly some part of some purpose but the people completely absent. The figures are dwarfed in favour of the structure. The same in the landscapes--though here people are absent, buildings and man-made structures are also small, in a sort of romantic (as in the Lit movement)-esque aesthetic. These aesthetic lenses have been placed over the landscapes to render meditative, calm images supposed to reflect the breadth, depth, and mystery of the land as they were seen by the photographer and colorist.
I also think pictures of nature are spiffy, and so I'm personally drawn to them. Make of that what you will?
Here's a warning, folks. I had just written two long paragraphs of commentary on these slides. Lindsey may be relieved to know that after I clicked on one image to check its caption, all of my comments were gone when I returned to her blog. I should have opened a new window. So unless I have time later, I'm going to make my comments in class. Which may, come to think of it, actually be worse. Not that I'm being critical or anything....
ReplyDelete-Mizenko
Although I want to write twenty paragraphs on image four and Jimmy Carter, I think I'll leave that for another discussion.
ReplyDeleteImage three is my pick! The incredible imagery of clouds and weathering effects over a cityscape is just awe inspiring. With the direct size comparison, it just shows how epic nature is in comparison to man. And perhaps that is the point of that image, because really: our puny buildings look so damn insignificant compared to anything else within that image. Unlike Julia's images where the buildings blended in with nature, the buildings here seem to be a blight on the landscape, as if nature itself is incredibly angry and is now forming threatening clouds and fog above them. Also, how depth is portrayed in this photo, the water itself seems capable of swallowing up the town in front of it. This seems to me like an image that was taken to showcase nature's power over man, and to be a reminder of who is the actual guest here.
I actually like the last image the best... I think it's quality is quite the best I've seen through most of these slides (especially since some of them have huge cracks in them... but I digress...). I find it interesting that you say you wanted to focus on high quality images, which is an extreme contrast to the Ukiyo-e images that were basically meant to serve the fans right at the moment and then be disposed of when a new image came out. As a globetrotter, I'd say that the image quality would certainly be something I'm focusing on, but not so much as a symbol of the Japanese photographer, but more towards my ability to find such a great print of the place (Once more, I'm so bad, I'm going to hell for my rudeness... XD)
ReplyDeleteI say that this album would be for the globetrotter who wanted to bluff about the fact that they've been on some many adventures and been to the primitive Japan, since all of these scenes are nature driven. The idea of simple could arise, particularly with the fourth image, which could be seen as possibly a primitive dwelling. The second image could show this as well, the buildings aren't really fancy and basically are simple.
The images gives the impression very different from typical Japanese photos and art work in general. From my personal point of view, I've always felt that Japanese landscapes were rare because the overall small size of Japan as a country. So to me, these images have somewhat of a "in your face" kind of feel to them. I really liked the last one and the colors that are shown in the horizon and the sky. The colors in general are what stick out with lantern slides but I felt that this one had a good blending characteristic with the the sky and the rest of the image.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you set a certain theme to your album before actually posting up any images. The fact that you avoided thing such as people and Fuji mountain allowed to get an image of Japan that isn't instantly recognizable as Japanese without some sort of description as well as allowing you to focus of the visual aesthetics of natural Japan (except image 4)
No worries, Devon. <3
ReplyDeleteIn many ways, these slides are meant to show off some sort of knowledge of artistic effort. The outlines I gave attempted to avoid the 'repetitive' images that might be already familiar to the viewer, and to show something novel--but this is novel in terms of the European audience, not necessarily the images themselves. As discussed in class, all of these images are taken from 'famous places of beauty in Japan' as defined (by whom?) by travelers, travel boards, the government, traditional high culture, poetry? Who gets to define where is the most beautiful places in Japan? As well, for the European audience even these landscapes are something foreign--the volcano, the tree-loaded sandbar, the rice patties in front of the mountains. All of these show things a European would not see in England, and so would be more unusal or more believably foreign, and therefore, they would be drawn to them.
I find it really interesing in So-Jung's comment that he doesn't think of Japan in terms of landscape because of it's size, and yet the 'beauty of nature' in Japan is one of the most common tropes. These slides are all about aesthetics, and when they aren't, they are about emphasizing and amusing crudity for the audience. And even then they are carefully arrange photographs. The constructedness of the aesthetics gives us an idea of what the viewer thought should be interpreted as beautiful, or vast, or crude.
As Devon mentioned, these slides are 'showing off' the adventures of the person who held them, and the fact that they saw beautiful, rare, mysterious, exotic places as a sort of cultural capital. Whether or not they went there....all of these photos are taken from special angles, and the eruption only happened the once. How likely is it that the holder of the slides were there? If foreigners were restrained to certain areas, the likelihood of them having visited all of these places in a time of poor transportation (no shinkansen), is low. Yet the image can be bought and sold as proof of experience, whether or not that experience is 'real'.
Evan's got a great point too--the looming sense of nature. These particular images aren't about civilization in Japan and it's wonder. It's about the blight--including the caging of the dogs, though I'm not quite sure how to interpret that image from a European/American traveler standpoint. Would they see it as crude, or would they see it as appreciable?