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I’m sitting here in my little office at the back of our house looking over the trees and bushes in the old abandoned farm yard which sits next to our house. The trees are starting to get little patches of brown in their leaves, and this morning whilst drinking coffee in the kitchen I watched some squirrels raid the big walnut tree which looms large over the back garden for the green husked nuts.
Before too long it will look like this
Even though we’re in the middle of an Indian Summer, Autumn is just around the corner. It’s all very lovely, gentle and peaceful. Totally the sort of thing my 20-year-old art school self would have found terribly dull and unphotogenic. Yesterday I received an email from one of the members in the new cohort intake. They were talking about how they don’t consider themselves to be ‘artistic’, though accept that photography is an art. This got me thinking. For most of my life as a working photographer, I did consider myself to be an Artist, or at the very least, Artistic. I always wanted to create deep, meaningful, profound imagery that would change the world.
Alex Kilbee - A for ART - Cherbourg
Of course, in hindsight, this is probably the pretention of youth! In a lot of my ramblings on YouTube there is a common theme that to create great photography (at least great as you as the photographer are concerned) you should try and be true to yourself. That everyone is an artist capable of creating unique images that stand alone from the crowd. As a result of this, I may have overlooked something so glaringly obvious that I’m almost ashamed to admit it. Not everyone WANTS to create ‘Art’ (with a capital A), they just want to take a photo they are proud of. In retrospect, it seems a huge oversight from me. Especially given that I find watching Bob Ross deeply comforting! His paintings will never grace the walls of the National Gallery, or be inducted into the pantheon of art history. I’m sure a lot of those who consider themselves to be ‘serious’ artists would dismiss his work as naive, agricultural, and maybe even populist. (Some big words for a Saturday morning - must be the heat!)
See all the happy little accidents
The hundreds of thousands of people who watched his shows and followed his lessons just wanted to create something they could hang on the wall and be proud of. So what if it’s hard to distinguish one original Bob Ross from the sea of copies? Everyone who painted a happy little cloud and a little log cabin in the woods was happy. So what has all this got to do with photography I hear you cry out! I’ve only ever dabbled with landscape photography. It wasn’t really my thing when I was younger, and whilst I deeply enjoy being out in nature, I don’t really want to photograph it.
Alex Kilbee - Oban, Scotland
Alex Kilbee - Garden Route, South Africa
Alex Kilbee - Llandudno, Cape Town
(except when I do of course! I am a man of contradictions :D) So perhaps that somewhat colours my view of landscape photography - especially in the modern setting where ‘instaworthy’ images abound. I’m encouraging people to seek out better, unique images which stand out - to channel that artist, to be, in a word ‘Creative’ (again with the capital C) But I’ve overlooked that not everyone wants to create a Daliesque landscape when confronted with a Ross mountain. Near where I live, in a place called East Bergholt, there used to live, one of the greatest British painters. John Constable.
John Constable - Salisbury Cathedral
“Constable's usual subjects, scenes of ordinary daily life, were unfashionable in an age that looked for more romantic visions of wild landscapes and ruins.” - Wikipedia The area around his home is now known as Constable Country, and it’s immortalized in his paintings. They aren’t of spectacular scenes with lashings of golden hour light. He didn’t travel to far-flung places in the hopes of creating unique images. He just painted, in an unassuming way, scenes that are, well, they’re just pretty. And I mean pretty in a positive sense!
John Constable - The White Horse, Flatford Mill
This letter from Constable to a friend, I think sums up what I’m trying to say: “For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand... I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but haverather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men...There is room enough for a natural painter.The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.” - John Constable
John Constable - Dedham Vale
Whilst unquestionably Constable was a technically talented painter and he is certainly an Artist in the true sense of the word, he wasn’t trying to be ‘Artistic’. If I look at his work, and imagine them as photographs, I would make a sad face. Or at least the 20-year-old pretentious me would. But if you don’t consider yourself to be an Artist, or have Artisitc abilities - how would you feel if you photographed, what Constable called ‘the truth’?
John Constable - Wivenhoe Park
Just gentle landscapes (which still exist) in a simple, unassuming way full of happy clouds and trees?
Flatford Mill - Now, and Then
I’m sorry if I gave off the impression that everything has to be always pushed forward, upping the ante of creativity. Sometimes it’s O.K to just create a pretty photograph of a pretty scene that makes people feel content. I think the need for an afro though is optional.
Owen Wilson in "Paint"
Thank you again so much for spending time with me. I appreciate you reading these weekly musings - if you have any suggestions for topics of discussion please drop me a line. Alex
