Landscape Photographies

This essay is about landscape photographers and their photographs. I will compare and contrast their approaches in terms of the picturesque and the sublime. I will focus on outlining what these are and their issues. I will pertain these terms to philosophy of art and aesthetic.

At the beginning landscape was a genre of painting. Today landscape is article separation between the land and the landscape. However, land was transformed into a painting and a view that was picturesque. In philosophy of art are three main concepts: the beautiful, the sublime and the picturesque. However, in art and photography, we used to distinguish two main types of landscape: picturesque and sublime.

‘’The word picturesque refers to an ideal type of landscape that has an artistic appeal, in that it is beautiful but also with some elements of wildness’’ (Tate, 2019). It means that picturesque landscape is visually attractive, beautiful, eye catching and especially in a quaint or charming way. The beautiful is to invoke harmony, symmetry, proportion, order and balance.

In contrast sublime landscape is to invoke discord a sense of threat a contained fear, a sense of morality, fines and cultural construction. ‘’ The sublime is further defined as having the quality of such greatness, magnitude or intensity, whether physical, metaphysical, moral, aesthetic or spiritual, that our ability to perceive or comprehend it is temporarily overwhelmed.’’ (Tate, 2019).

I have chosen Ansel Adams and Antony Spencer as they are amazing and interesting landscape photographers. Their work is aesthetic, beautiful and eye catching. Ansel Adams is regarded as the master of sublime photographs. Antony Spencer is young and very talented picturesque photographer. These artists work differently, one of them is shooting on the film camera and the other on is working on full frame digital camera. I have to say that their photographs are very different but at the same time very similar and equally amazing and famous around the world.

Firstly, I want to write about sublime landscape. I will start with my favourite photograph ‘’Grand Tetons and the Snake River’’ made by Ansel Adams. This photograph is very famous around the world. Some people think it is incredible, but others are afraid. I will agree that this photograph is stunning and breath taking. On the other hand, if I would stand exactly in the same place as Ansel Adams did. I probably would be extremely frightened. Why then I still like this photograph? I think this is the issue of the sublime. I am afraid of something, but at the same time it is exciting and erogenous.

When I take a glance at this photograph I see nature itself, breath taking landscape, amazing view and aesthetic composition. As the viewer I feel pleasure of looking at this photograph, because everything corresponds so well. The contrast, storm clouds, river in the foreground, trees on the left-hand side, snow on mountains it all makes the perfect composition of the landscape. I see a river who leads to mountains and it is my focus point. From the psychological point of view, I can say that the river is very often compared to our lives and our path that is not the focal point of our journey, only a way to get to the destination that we work toward achieving. This landscape is a sublime landscape, because the photograph has few key elements such as: dangerous precipice.

The main issue of sublime is that people may think that sublime landscape is aesthetic and beautiful, but it can also be dangerous, and it can make them feel terrifying. Some people when are afraid, can feel the thrill of horror and this can awaken in them the excitement and this can cause sexual arousal. It is a circle of emotions and feelings. Sublime is impressive and awe inspiring, it is impression of an object which can be fearful but does not inspire now.

Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1757) connected the sublime with experiences of awe, terror and danger. Burke saw nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders. This Romantic conception of the sublime proved influential for several generations of artists. (Tate, 2013)

Immanuel Kent in his book ‘’Critique of Judgement’’ (1790) convince that there are two forms of the sublime: the mathematical and the dynamical although some people says that there is the third form of the sublime and they call it moral sublime. Nonetheless, Kent maintain that this sublime is absolutely amazing. Also, in his book he disagrees with Edmund Burke perception about physical object in nature as sublime or beautiful. He also argues that nature cannot be sublime or beautiful. Kent consider and determine that sublime is only in our mind. He disagrees that sublime is about objects.

The dynamical sublime can be dangerous but poses no current danger. A good example of it will be things like thunderclouds and cliff faces. They don’t make immediately danger for people. They exist, but nowhere is said that they will hurt people. In contrast mathematical sublime means fear of overwhelming in size. People can experience it when they feel very small in comparison to the nature and it is something that requires us to calculate measurements.

Secondly, I will write about picturesque landscape and I have chosen beautiful photograph ‘’Lavender Sunrise’’ made by Antony Spencer. Lavender Sunrise is typical and popular form of picturesque landscape. When I take a glance at this photograph I see breath taking beautiful scenery and aesthetic composition. The huge and beautiful lavender farm in full bloom and admirable sunrise. Warm colour, purple and yellow and orange makes nice contrast and catch an eye. As the viewer I feel pleasure of looking at this photograph, because composition is amazing and it makes this photograph look smooth. You could say that looks like painting, because it looks too much ideally.

I would say that it is an ideal type of landscape with element of wildness. The fog looks wild and it breaks the contrast. I can say that this element is making this photograph more interesting and curious, because it is something I did not expect to see.

As the observer, I can say that this photograph makes me want to travel to this place and enjoy the beauty of it. In cultural construction, in the mechanism I would like to travel to the place where this photograph was taken and then I probably would take their photograph. I think that because of this scheme, people say more often that picturesque photographs are boring. It happens because, people tend to enjoy something unusual.

First issue of picturesque landscape is that nowadays picturesque with photographs from holidays. People very often are travelling to the other countries and take pictures of the land. Technology is easily accessed so a lot of people take the same photographs in the same place. I think that this behaviour is destroying meaning of photography as people without thinking about anything just press the button. We can ask the question if people like this are destroying photography. This is the reason why my friends’ photographer say that picturesque photographs are boring, because nothing is happening here. They very often say that if you google particular place you will find a plethora of photographs.

E.K. writes: ‘’But all as in most exquisite pictures they use to blaze and portrait not only the dainty lineaments of beauty, but also round about it to shadow the rude thickets and craggy cliffs, that by the baseness of such parts, more excellency may accrue to the principal; for oftentimes we find ourselves, I know not how, singularly delighted with the shape of such natural rudeness, and take great pleasure in that disorderly order.’’ (Church, 1894)

William Gilpin writes: ‘’We may examine picturesque object with more ease, it may be useful to class them into the sublime and the beautiful; in fact, this distinction is rather inaccurate. Sublimity alone cannot make an object picturesque. However, grand the mountain, or the rock may be, it has no claim to this epithet, unless it is form, it is colour or it is accompaniments have some degree of beauty. Nothing can be more sublime, than the ocean; but wholly unaccompanied, it has little of the picturesque. When we talk therefore of the sublime object we understand, it is also beautiful; and we call it sublime, or beautiful, only as the idea of sublimity, or simply beauty prevail.’’ (Glickman, 1998)

Paraphrasing Freud: ‘’ The pleasure derived from the picturesque beauty is a pleasure in the resorption of order, precisely what the ego (self) wants: a unity and organisation of the conscious self’ ‘’ and I am sure this explain what I am feeling about this photograph. Dej to dla picturesque

The picturesque is always beautiful and aesthetic. The beautiful is to invoke harmony, symmetry and proportion order and balance. Disputes about beauty might perhaps be involved in less confusion, if a distinction were established, which certainly exists, between such objects as are beautiful, and such as are picturesque — between those, which please the eye in their natural state; and those, which please from some quality, capable of being illustrated by painting. (Gilpin, 1794). Romanticism and the romantic landscape. It means you escape from the city to enjoy the landscape and the nature. You could apricate the nature, threes, lakes and beautiful view.

In conclusion, I would like to write that picturesque and sublime are linked together by beauty. They are different form of the landscape, but the beauty joins them together. Sublime without the beauty would not be the same. However, picturesque without the beauty cannot exist. Beautiful represents positive emotions or responses to object, while sublime represents some amount of fear or distress followed by pleasure from realizing that object is not something which poses an immediate danger. Simply sublime and picturesque does not exist without the beauty, because it completes them. The sublime is cultural construction. Sublime it is something people need in everyday life. However, in any sense landscape does not exist un the way of photographer using the landscape like Ansel Adams, Cooper. We can’t forget that these landscapes tend to be what is called.

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