When does a photograph become a painting?
My dad saw one of my recent photographs and told me how it brought to mind a particular favorite author, Zane Grey. He went on to say that the image reminded him of The Call of the Canyon, his most liked story. To have catalyzed such a memory, any memory, any emotion, is the desire of the photographic artist, at least it is for me and I thought I should explore further. Since I had never read a word by Zane Grey, I downloaded his complete works from Amazon where you can get all of his stories for about six dollars! Firing up the Kindle, I started in on "the canyon" wishing I could conjure the uniquely musty smell of old pages.
The story, if you are unfamiliar with it, concerns the neurotic musings of a young New York sophisticate in love with a WWI soldier. He returns to the US, damaged, nearly dead in body and soul, and flees to the West in search of healing. Bewildered by his abandonment and realizing he may not return to the East, several months late, she chases after him only to find a virile and robust man somewhat aloof to her charms. All of this takes place within a small area that I can see from my back porch, Oak Creek Canyon. Anyway, through many ups and downs, her unrequited love is seduced by the West and she learns about hard work and determination, committing to becoming a rancher way out West, not far from "her" man. I won't spoil the outcome, but will tell you that her narcissism is transformed by the staggering and terrible beauty of western life although her lesson is hard won, demanding that she abandon the dilettantish ways of Eastern arrogance and privilege. Mr Grey paints pictures with words, adjectives, which resonated with me.
I've touched on this before. For me, a photograph should convey a sense of wonder. And, of course, wonder, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It is a little known secret 😉, but photographers are known to take liberties at times in order to enhance your sense of wonder, beauty, horror, amazement, it depends on the image. We are trying to draw your attention to something interesting, something perhaps you'd not seen before it was highlighted in a photograph. Of this I hope we can be forgiven, but a fair question is whether a photograph can be manipulated too much. At what point does it become something else, a painting perhaps? We photographers are greedy for your attention, your love if you will, and we will go to great and varied lengths to find those... those, je ne sais quoi... those thousand words, nay adjectives! We seek a connection, a connection that stirs something inside you, perhaps your sense of wonder 😲. But can we go too far?
I was out on a photo shoot with friend and fellow photographer, Pam Jenks. She'd fled the Canadian winter only to encounter the hail and snow of a weird Arizona spring. We stopped at what looked to be a promising spot, crept under a barbed-wire fence with our cameras, and began shooting on Dry Beaver Creek near Jack's Canyon and the Village of Oak Creek. The rains had brought abundant water, which lazily wandered through the draw. Sycamore and Cottonwood trees along with Arizona White Oaks filtered the light. It was almost perfect. I say almost because it was still a little early in the afternoon for the light to be perfect. Nevertheless I was enthralled by the water, the rocks, and the beautiful spirit forms of the trees. I was slurping up all the visual goodness I could see with my camera, not really pausing to consider what was calling to me.
A few days later, in my digital studio, I was reviewing the images I'd captured, scrolling through and trying to figure out what exactly had resonated with me. What had taken my soul? Although Spring had sprung, some of the trees were not fully leafed out, but the shape of one seduced my eyes. I knew something was there, speaking to me, but whatever it was, for sure it was elusive. Harkening back to previous lessons, I began to play with the photograph. It became no longer anything resembling the original capture, yet I felt I was getting closer to that subliminal calling to my eyes and spirit. The result below:
Tree in Winter
Wait a minute, I am obviously confused! This was taken on a rather nice Spring day! Why a winter tree? Maybe I had snow on the brain! Maybe I had a premonition of things to come. As I write this at the end of May, six weeks after taking the above photo, it is barely above freezing and we are still getting snow at the higher elevations. I'm ready for some Arizona hot! My point is that I was feeling my way along, letting the image guide me, attuning myself to what I was subjectively experiencing. I was not really sure where I was headed, but I'd know it when I got there. Life is like that sometimes.
As I meandered through Photoshop, the photograph took me to a place I had never been. Other than the form of the tree, the rock, the stream bed, none of it exists. Did I go too far? Maybe for some tastes, but one thing is sure. The image took me on a journey of wonder that I was not expecting. Your mileage may vary. I printed it large and the framed image looks spectacular on my wall.
Some photographers believe that a photograph should reflect reality, at least in some respect. But it turns out that reality is very hard to define. Everything you ever thought was real occurred in the past. If it ever did. We are disconnected from "reality" in surprising ways. In time, as I just mentioned, even if only by microseconds, the time it takes for light to travel through the lenses of our eyes to impact our retinas, which triggers a chemical reaction that triggers nerve impulses, which must be integrated by the visual cortex of our brains and then cognitively recognized in our minds, the cumulative results of all of this can never coincide with the originating stimulus. In time, you can't believe your eyes. How about the contact of a lover's touch? Hands pressed together as we walk entwined down the garden path? Including the delay in sensory recognition, as hard as we might squeeze our friend, we are never in contact, our atoms are never pressed into the atoms of another, repelled as they are by the negative charges of electrons. Everything you perceive is indirect! Physics dictates that we can never join as in truly melding, one with another. In effect, we are starved for connection.
We are deluded by what we call reality. It creates appetites for that which can never satisfy. Except somehow, inside our minds, inside our souls if you will, we can dream a dream of connection, of love, of being joined, even of reality. So I come to it, the essence of Tree in Winter; I have created an altered reality that I hope speaks to your soul. It is perhaps a bridge, one soul to another.
So I say, to my photographic critics, don't worry about it, it isn't real anyway. It never was!
My cousin, Tonia Martin (her blog), a wonderfully talented artist and poet, was inspired by Tree in Winter to the point of sharing a poem she spontaneously created when she first saw the photograph. Now that's a bridge! Below, I share it with you:
Creation stared into the face of the divining waters and saw itself, new born.
Too young, too fragile, comprehension could not abide and it held its breath.
Not one element alone or elements conjoined could conceive the intricacies of light, the immensity of dark.
Not even Time, yet unconstrained by choice and folly, escaped the bright chime of the morning sun,
the ministry of the moon, the worship of the whippoorwill ̶̶̶̶
– praiseforallthings; praiseforallthings; praiseforallthings.
Swaying to the music, God wove a veil with quiet breath, cradled its fragile heart until
it matched the beat of its Father and cried crystal tears of silence.
--Tonia Colleen Martin 2019