There is always a subjective aspect in landscape art, something in the picture that tells us as much about who is behind the camera as about what is in front of it.
Interpretation
Landscape art reflects the artist's perspective as much as it represents the scenery.
Robert Adams emphasizes that landscape art is not just a depiction of nature; it also reveals the artist's personal interpretation and identity. The subjective nature of art means that each landscape is filtered through the lens of the artist's experiences, emotions, and intentions, suggesting that both the subject and the creator are equally important in understanding the artwork.
In practice
In an art class discussing the importance of personal style, one might say, 'As Robert Adams noted, there is always a subjective aspect in landscape art.'
Part of the reason that these attempts at explanation fail, I think, is that photographers, like all artists, choose their medium because it allows them the most fully truthful expression of their vision... as Robert Frost told a person who asked him what one of his poems meant, 'You want me to say it worse?'
If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share - animation. They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it.
When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do not know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does. Each photograph that works is a revelation to its supposed creator.
We have names for everything. What if we forgot about those names? And we stopped seeing things as something? What if we just observed things, watched things, without giving them a name, without coming to a conclusion? What do you think would happen? You would transcend everything.
The only things that distinguish the photographer from everybody else are his pictures: they alone are the basis for our special interest in him. If pictures cannot be understood without knowing details of the artist's private life, then that is a reason for faulting them; major art, by definition, can stand independent of its maker.
Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace.
There's no line between a designer and consumer.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
Retire? I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the only one left
Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.
You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like 'Finnegans Wake' and Picasso.
You could make the most beautiful film, and that weekend it's raining too hard on the East Coast, and no one goes out. Artists should have a chance to do it again. That's the challenge: Women artists don't get a second chance. People-of-color artists don't get a second chance. You're put in director's jail, and that's a wrap.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.