The Emotional Landscape

The Emotional Landscape and the Importance of Process

How is it that some fine art photographers can create landscape photographs that evoke something more than the land – a personal vision? How can a landscape have emotion? I think about Sally Mann’s images from Antietam, where her wet plates seem “touched by some other hand than my own,” according to Mann. I think about how her collodion process culminates in less than technically perfect imagery; scratches, dust, and peeling emulsion. These flaws obscure our vision like they are ghosts of the men that died on the battlefield and have risen in conversation with Mann’s camera. It appears that a photographer’s working method and process play a role in creating emotional landscape imagery, as well as stepping back from the technical perfection and allowing “that other hand” to guide you the artist - if you are willing.

Untitled [Antietam #21] ©Sally Mann, 2001

In a three-day workshop this March at SE Center for Photography entitled The Emotional Landscape, photographer Doug Beasley takes on the daunting task of teaching students about “making a deeper, more authentic connection, then learning to express that connection through photography.” Beasley himself has accomplished expressing his vision through nature in his portfolio Earth Meets Spirit. Like Mann, his images from the series boldly embrace an imperfect landscape through alternative process - his being black and white polaroid film. Beasley’s photographs read like personal narratives and memory – they are not a study of nature; they are a culmination of earth and artist engaged in a dance about meaning and existence. Beasley explains that “The act of making, not taking, photos is my daily lesson to slow down and be more aware of what presents itself. It is the act of paying attention by honoring and honoring by paying attention.”

Snowy Road, Burnett County, WI ©Doug Beasley

I had a faculty advisor in graduate school explain to me that I needed to be less heavy-handed and intentional with the camera - that I needed to turn off my brain and listen to my intuition and trust the process. It sounded a little like I should take photographs with my eyes closed; I was skeptical and failed miserably at my attempts to sit on my heavy hands. Beasley’s work reminds me of someone with the ability to have faith in both process and his inner voice as he allows space for both physical and metaphysical elements in Where Earth Meets Spirit. The pictures pass through the artist to the viewer with a mystifying quality so subtle that you don’t notice it until you look again then look again. The photographs appear to be quiet, thoughtful moments, ordinary yet extraordinary while transcending the logical and entering the realm of the spiritual. Beasley’s landscapes beckon the spiritual world as “prayer-like offerings” that contemplate being human on earth.