Iskra Fine Art

  • Prints
    • The Tarmac Residency: Airport Landscapes
    • Ink Painting Abstractions
    • Immersions | At The Shore
    • ColorBath: Images of the Harbor
    • The Floating World
    • Industrial Strength | Urban Industrial Landscape
    • The Scaffold
    • Industrial Pastorale: The Rural/Urban Landscape
    • Botanical Prints | The Natural World
    • Construction | Reconstruction : Urban Landscape
    • Infrastructure
  • Drawings
    • Pencil Drawings: Pandemic Pause
    • Drawings in Dust 1
    • Signs & Symbols (Archive)
    • Botanical Drawings (Archive)
  • Photography
    • Seattle Waterfront Park Photography
    • Architectural Photography | Construction Sites
    • American West Landscape Photography
  • Mixed Media
    • Modern Botanical | Mixed Media on Plaster
    • From the Sea | Water Paintings
    • Sleep Studies
  • Journals
    • Wayfinding Journal (Archive)
  • Shop
  • About
    • Contact
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Photography / Thoughts on the Act of Editing: Photographic Reality, and How you Look at a Forest Fire

Thoughts on the Act of Editing: Photographic Reality, and How you Look at a Forest Fire

December 6, 2020 by Iskra Leave a Comment

 

Forest Tree Portrait photograph by Iskra
Interregnum, ©Iskra Fine Art (Available in two sizes, click image to see details.)

New Directions: Western Landscape Photography Part 1

 

Today I have been living with this tree, captured originally in full color (though muted and overcast) in a forest east of the mountains. I say, “this tree,” but you, the viewer, might not be seeing the same tree I am. You might be seeing the tree on the right, scorched by fire, and interlaced with the bleached needles of a pine that may or may not see spring. I am aware of that tree also. But in the moment of stepping into this meadow what stood out against the uneven and patchy hill was the shimmering tree with yellow leaves and white bark. In a soundscape emptied of birds the wind in its leaves made the only sound.

As I go back in time to this moment the digital darkroom allows me to ask “What is this story about?” countless times, and each time to come up with a different answer. A voice I’ve heard often says “People don’t like dark. Make it light, make it hopeful.” Leonard Cohen speaks up on another station and says, helpfully “Make it darker,” as for that poet the darker the shadows the brighter the illumination. In developing a photographic print I cycle through decision after decision, undoing, saving, revisiting, doubting, knowing, unknowing. Each revision of value rewrites light’s story, saying: the point is the mountain, or the pines, or the sky. Finally it may land on this, perhaps a tale of the heroine in white, surrounded by courtiers and knights and armies in the distance.

In the forests around Yakima the shape of the aspens tug at a memory of the archaic, and make me think of Joan of Arc in a book I saw as a child. The pages of the book were engraved and brown at the edges, pungent with age. Joan sat on her horse deep in a copse, her armor camouflaged by dappled light, her sword glinting. The style was detailed, each leaf individually drawn and burnished against a pewter sky. In the grove, momentarily safe, Joan was thinking, and gathering herself. On my hikes I kept looking for her, expecting her to ride forth, tossing her hair as she leaned under a branch, turned a corner on the trail, and paused to look out into the distance. What would Joan have said? Dark or light, or a middle tone? I am not sure, but her horse would have led up the canyon into the fire, which was still smoking.

Longmire Lane Smoking Log Photo by Iskra

Charred Forest Fire Sepia photo by iskra

Value Study of a Fire
What would Joan of Arc say? Dark, light, or somewhere in the middle?

Deluged with other apocalyptic news in September, I had not heard about the Evans Fire, and only stumbled into the site by accident, having taken an unplanned scenic route on a journey east that led to a road called Longmire Lane. The Evans Fire burned over 75 thousand acres in Yakima and Kittitas. My first glimpse of its aftermath came at dusk. Chalk and soot, cast in a pink glow of sunset from the sky. It was a somber and haunting scene. The light was too dim for good pictures without a tripod, and I resolved to return the next day. The pictures from that day have been emotionally challenging. Darkness visible is not easy to live with.

Longmire Lane Fire Iskra
First Glimpse, dusk, shot with a cell phone

And yet. The landscape was arresting. Each bend in the trail brought a new tableau. Casually beautiful arrangements made by lightning and fire and wind have been staged in the landscape for centuries, unwitnessed or remarked upon except in the language of nature. As I look now through the language and lens of modern photography, I am tempted by color, of course: the sky was blue-gray, the trees were pale salmon and brown and black – yet the sensibilities of another time speak more surely of the emotional space. Elegy, time, the bell jar of the aftermath. I want the spare means of photography in its origins: light hitting glass under a black cloth, the syrup of chemicals and fumes with little room for error, but hand tinting available after as corrective. Or perhaps, the satin washes and dense linework of lithography, color invented by memory. Something that reminds me of Lewis and Clark, and a postcard he might have sent back from the trail.

How do you look at a forest fire? I walked with a friend this morning and we had a tug of war. She wanted hope. I wanted reality. She said we can’t know the future real before it gets here, and any photographer who’s gone into the dark and watched an image emerge under red light would agree. Depending on the paper and the fix, or today’s digital gamma and offset, it could all be a brighter day or an under-exposed night that leaves us barely seeing the outlines. I find solace in staring head-on at what’s in front of me; I don’t trust hope.  I’d rather take the soot of the fallen branches and draw on the cave. What’s ahead? Gaugin said “I shut my eyes in order to see,” and that is part of it too: drawing to see, with one’s eyes shut.

These images are part of a new series about The West, which itself is an idea based on unreasonable hope. I will return in the spring and see what has changed in the canyon. Perhaps the next landscapes will be almost entirely green, and then I may have changed my mind entirely on how to look at a forest fire.

The Bent Tree Iskra Landscape Photograph
The Bent Tree, ©Iskra Fine Art, Available print, click image for details

Filed Under: Photography, Prints Tagged With: evans fire, forest fire photography, hope versus reality, landscape photography, Leonard Cohen, photography and reality

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Join Iskra’s Mailing List

Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to receive show announcements, first peek at new work and my semi-monthly blog by email. I primarily use the blog for news and updates but by signing up you will also receive the occasional newsletter and special offers for items in my shop.

Iskra Fine Art Blog

the creative process | conversations with artists | the contemplative impulse in art

Instagram

I’ve written a wild-mind sort of blog post in wh I’ve written a wild-mind sort of blog post in which I let the story of place, museums, witness and culture unfold as it wishes. It’s an old-style post before I had “newsletter consciousness.” (Sigh….when you send out a post with one image and a show announcement and maybe five more words and someone writes, “perfect length to view on my phone” you may be tempted to perform more of the same and forget the original muse, born long before success was judged by how well thoughts fit within 2x5” square inches. A few excerpts here and first link in bio to read the entirety. Witness and elegy is where I seem to live. Painting is acrylic ink on panel, a piece I have yet to resolve but like to see into for the next step.
If you are born on 9.11 take back this day. It’s If you are born on 9.11 take back this day. It’s still yours! Yesterday I started early and went to an island in the middle of the blue sea to be in beauty and celebrate life. As we walked the beach we met a young boy also born on 9.11. His parents had brought him to Vashon for the same reason, and he had found a perfect moon shell for his own birthday present sent from the sea. It was such a lovely moment, to remember the world is young no matter how old we are.
Taking the last golden days of summer for study. T Taking the last golden days of summer for study. The Volunteer Park museum has an exhibit showing the influence of the Edo arts in Japan on Toulouse-Lautrec and I went to see it last weekend. As you can see from these images, I seem to have no interest in Lautrec— True! But these details of woodcuts and paintings on silk fill me with a quiet rapture.
Walking Meditation Walking Meditation
RIP Brian McBride, The Stars of the Lid RIP Brian McBride, The Stars of the Lid
Sunday Morning Meditation: River and woods, stone Sunday Morning Meditation: River and woods, stone and light.

Featured Posts

  • How to Purchase Artwork from Iskra Fine Art
  • About This Blog
  • New Directions in Contemplative Art: Conversations with Artists
  • What is a Transfer Print? (Artist Statement)

Categories

  • Abstract Calligraphy
  • Airport Landscapes
  • Architecture & Sense of Place
  • Art Reviews
  • Art Sales
  • Artist Studio Visits
    • The Mystic Muse: Artists Working in the Contemplative Traditions
  • botanical art
  • Botanical Art Cards
  • Collage
  • Construction/Reconstruction
  • Digital Collage
  • Drawing
  • Essays
  • Featured Post
  • Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past
  • Iskra Sketchbooks & Journals
  • Iskra Writing on Medium
  • Living With Art
  • Meditation & Buddhism
  • Mixed Media
  • Music
  • Object Lessons: Essays and images inspired by "A History of the World in 100 Objects."
  • Painting
  • Photocollage
  • Photography
    • American West Landscape Photography
  • Poems
  • Print Sale
  • Prints
  • Recent Posts
  • Road Trips
  • Social Media for Artists
  • The 100 Day Projects
  • The Alaska Way Viaduct
  • The Garden
  • The Gardener's Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena
  • The Spiritual in Art
  • The Street
  • the Tarmac Residency
  • The Water Tower Project
  • Transfer Prints
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Watercolors

Archives

Search

Connect on Facebook

Iskra Fine Art Facebook Page

Creative Inspiration

  • Alternative Photography
  • An Artist's Retreat
  • Anonymous Chinese Textile Genius: Moo Won
  • Chocolate Is A Verb
  • Contemplative Art Process: Danila Rumold
  • Eva Isaksen
  • Old Industrial Japan
  • The Altered Page
  • The Heart Sutra Loop
  • The Patra Passage

Galleries for Contemplative Art

  • ArtXchange Gallery
  • Seattle Asian Art Museum

Links

  • CollageArt.org
  • Iskra at SAM Gallery
  • Iskra Fine Art on Houzz
  • Seattle Art Museum Blog
  • Seattle Artist League
  • Seattle Print Arts
  • Seeing Fresh: Contemplative Photography
  • The Painter's Keys

What I'm Reading: Online Magazines and Books I Love

  • 16 mi.
  • Essays by David Whyte
  • Evening Will Come: Poetry
  • Hyperallergic
  • Painter's Table
  • Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art
  • Streetsy
  • The Original Van Gogh's Ear Anthology
  • Tricycle Magazine
  • Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty
  • Vanguard

Let’s Connect

  • Contact Iskra
  • How to purchase artwork
  • Iskra Fine Art Blog : The creative process, conversations with artists, the contemplative impulse in art

Join Iskra’s Mailing List

Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to receive show announcements, first peek at new work and my semi-monthly blog by email. I primarily use the blog for news and updates but by signing up you will also receive the occasional newsletter and special offers for items in my shop.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

All Images Copyright © 2023  Iskra Johnson · Site by LND · WordPress