Intimate Landscapes
At a photography workshop recently, Eddie Soloway suggested photographing "intimate landscapes". He showed a few of his own images as examples and I realized this was an important part of my own photographic practice and that I wanted to create and teach a class on photographing "intimate landscapes".
Intimate landscape? Is that even a thing?
A landscape is big, and intimate implies small, or close, so what the heck is an intimate landscape? Georgia O'Keefe is famous both for her landscapes and for her intimate flower closeups.
Here is one of her landscape paintings:
Georgia O'Keefe, 1930, Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie's II
People have been depicting landscapes for millennia; t0 be very obvious, we can say a landscape image incorporates, well, land. And sky, and possibly a body of water. And if we have land and sky, we probably have a horizon. We can even broaden it, if we like, to include seascapes and cityscapes.
Spring Fresco, unknown artist, from the Akrotiri site on the Greek island of Santorini, 1600-1500 BCE. Wikipedia commons.
Whether it includes land, sea, or city, a landscape has to include a lot of space in three dimensions, with the side-to-side, up-and-down, and front-to-back distances potentially very large, as far and wide and high as the eye can see or a camera can capture. We expect “up” to be at the top of the image (though the recent surge of drone images might bring this into question). We know from our training as artists and photographers that leading lines, perspective, and foreground and background elements all give a sense of depth. Take a look at your favorite landscape photographer’s or painter’s work and see if this all seems true.
Ansel Adams - The Tetons and Snake River
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118192
This famous image by Ansel Adams has it all. Sky, mountains, horizon, river. Leading lines, dynamic range--lights and darks, drama. The distances are large, the mountains high, the river wide. Even the nearest trees seem tall.
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But what would make for an intimate image? A sense that the viewer is close to what is depicted, that the scale is small, perhaps a feeling of safety or coziness. Here is one of Georgia O'Keefe's intimate flowers. Intimate, yes, but not a landscape.
Georgia O'Keefe, 1924, Red Canna
So what, then, is an intimate landscape?
Here is one of Eddie Soloway's examples (take a look at his website here). We are very close to the tallest mushroom and the whole scene is only a few inches wide, yet it is not only picture of a mushroom; it is a forest scene, a place of green foliage and mushrooms against an abstract background of blurred trees and sky.
Perhaps we can say that an intimate landscape depicts a scene or a place like a landscape does, but at a small scale, not encompassing all that our eyes might see in one scene but only what is close and immediate.
After Eddie's workshop, I was curious and did a Google search to see what other artists have been doing intimate landscapes. I quickly learned that Eliot Porter, a pioneer of color nature photography, was especially known for his seminal work photographing intimate landscapes. I knew Eliot Porter from my teenage birder years in the 1970’s when his wonderful book, Birds of North America, became a prized possession of mine.
I got hold of a used copy of his book, Intimate Landscapes, a compilation of photos from a 1979 Metropolitan Museum exhibition, and found images inside that resonated with me deeply. I knew I had found someone who responded to nature like I do. When I photograph nature I am often drawn in by a sense of intimacy in place and time, and and a sense of wonder about shapes, colors, and textures. Porter’s images make me feel like I am right there in the same moment, appreciating a special place.
Anne Houde, Midday in the Forest, 2019
What is your idea of an intimate landscape? It seems to me that everyone can have their own idea—we're artists so there's no need to agree. Does yours include only nature, or does it include people or human artifice? Is it outdoors or inside? Is it at a very small macro scale, or larger? Does it show sky and a horizon? Is it realistic ("straight out of camera") or more abstract? Can you find some intimate landscapes in your photo catalog? Can you find some on your next photowalk? What might you want to convey when you photograph an intimate landscape beyond just a beautiful scene?
Just for fun, here’s another artist’s goofy take on what he might call an intimate landscape:
Jesper Johansen