Inside the follies

A short series stemming from one of the follies at Rousham. Whether any of these suffered before they died is unknown, they were dead before I got there 'onest guv'.

Derivations

Assignment two posted and so a point of reflection (which is my way of saying that I'm looking back to find a way forward)

A short while ago, maybe a couple of years, I thought the pictures below were where I was headed. F64 (or in my case F32) capturing the majesty of the land - this land is not even my land, to "un-quote" Woody Guthrie. I'm not even sure I like the root of my quest that much any more. I have more Ansel Adams on my shelves than anyone else and they are now the least picked up - it is almost as if the depth of field he covered is inversely proportional to my interest in finding inspiration in his "beautiful" images. I find wonder at his dystopian view of the utopia he sought to depict. Granted he did more than most photographers to implant the notion of National Parks and in trying to maintain the natural world in it's majesty; but I'm finding the recording of it sterile; and my derivative attempts even more so - I don't even live there, I was a visitor, a tourist  or as they call them in Brighton haemorrhoids!

This second set is even set out as a bank of postcards - cheapening both the craft and the vista. AA photographed all of these sites, maybe not from the same tripod fixtures, but maybe with the same intent.

I'm trying to work out whether it is the scope of art, or the scope of photography as art? If we assume that an "artist" is a "work in progress" and that a student in "art" is all that that person can ever aspire to be - or to put it another way; that the student can only ever aspire to be a student, and that they, unless they are extremely isolated, are likely to be influenced by previous and contemporary art and artists. If that is held to be true then can the artist only ever add accent to an extant oeuvre?

I get to that rambling point after starting to read Phaidon's Francesca Woodman monograph which says that we judge her work as a fully fledged artist at our peril - she was 22 when she died and clearly still a student, but also because Photography, unlike any other artform is more ubiquitous than any other form of expression, and to try and plough a virgin sod (for want of another expression) is the most unlikely event. I have seen, in the last twelve months or so more splinters of from the trunk of expression than I ever thought possible and I have the firm belief that I haven't scratched the surface.

Why is that when I first made this image it stirred me then and still stirs me now? I cannot work it out, or rather I don't have a fully formed opinion as to why that might be.

Again, this very simple shot has me thinking more about it than the waterfall above.

I had found ways to not start the Woodman book, as I fear it's content, but now I shall return to it.