Along Sourdough Trail

I surprised myself a bit with the photograph in the last post. It has so much dark to it. I’m very fond of darkness in general, but in the context of this series I’ve been fairly diligent in lightening my palette. Actually, I consider it one of my achievements to have learned to tolerate—even embrace on occasion—the burning out of bright areas to pure, shocking, detail-less white.

But I have made a couple other mostly dark photographs in the last month; both were in the side light that is the first or last of the day, and that only reaches in from the edge of the woods in fleeting patches. Realizing this, I was prompted to re-read Junichiro Tanizaki’s essay, In Praise of Shadows. I can strongly sympathize with his idea that “we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.” In the images here, it is not the illuminated bark itself which attracts me, but the way it glows among obscure and obscuring surroundings.

Tanizaki’s language, though it seems fulsome today, and was already heavy with nostalgia in 1930’s Japan, is nonetheless wonderfully evocative.

Lacquerware decorated in gold is not something to be seen in a brilliant light, to be taken in at a single glance; it should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light. Its florid patterns recede into the darkness, conjuring in their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery, of overtones but partly suggested. The sheen of the lacquer, set out in the night, reflects the wavering glow of the candlelight, announcing the drafts that find their way form time to time into the quiet room, luring one into a state of reverie. If the lacquer is taken away, much of the spell disappears from the dream world built by that strange light of candle and lamp, that wavering light beating the pulse of the night. Indeed the thin, impalpable, faltering light, picked up as though little rivers were running through the room, collecting little pools here and there, lacquers a pattern on the surface of the night itself.

In Praise of Shadows is concerned entirely with the interior darkness of home or inn, but the concept certainly carries over to the outdoors, or wherever one spends time. Tanizaki believed that the development of an aesthetic sense lies in our response to the conditions around us:

A light room, would no doubt have been more convenient for us, too, than a dark room. The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.

Some photographs are more meaningful than others, independently of how they turn out. Making the one here, I had fun being out at first light and trying something new. I also covered ground in my exploration of Japanese aesthetics, and generated some ideas around photography and place, the soul and maybe heart of this project.

It began with recent reading about the native Japanese (not borrowed from China) artistic style called yamato-e, which typically emphasizes larger areas of flat color (or tone, translating to my case). It seemed this might tie in with my desire to practice control of tonality and gradients. To get simpler, larger shapes instead of full forest complexity, I thought it would be better to work at a small scale, so I thought to use the macro setting on my lens for nearly the first time (I’ve only done one or two leaf details, as far as I can remember, and not with macro).

I was attracted to this scene by the light spilling across the main leaf, the darker leaves around it, and the very dark background as negative space. This somewhat subverted the original concept, as classical Japanese painting pays almost no attention to light and shadow. However, high contrast and localized detail are acceptable, according to my understanding. And my interest in abstraction means I care about light as much for how it paints surfaces as for its modeling capability. Plus I definitely liked the fewer, broader shapes.

(I hope it’s clear, by the way, that I’m not attempting to copy traditional Japanese or any other style. I’m simply developing and broadening my own approach by learning about other perspectives and seeking to understand them from the inside, as it were, by experimenting with them in my photography.)

Although it might seem opposed to the “flat tones” notion, texture in the negative space can be quite important (see the discussion at Art and Perception). In this picture, I wanted the negative space of the background to retain some structure, including two bright spots where sunlight has penetrated through trees. Even if casting those areas to black might satisfy a purist’s ideal of simplicity, it would also result in isolating the leaves from their surroundings, removing them from their context. The background in this particular picture is not very effective in capturing or suggesting very much about those surroundings, but I can easily imagine a better version. And I’ll be looking for it next time.

In all things—not only our relationship to places—I think we’re as likely to remember details as generalities. And as for what we care about most, the details may well win out. So there’s a clear case for including close-up photographs as part of this study along Sourdough Trail. But I will be most satisfied if I can keep some of the larger in the smaller.