draft colour images for a future exhibition-Peter Ranyard

Peter Ranyard's Coast exhibition images and Terry Moore's catalogue essay

Coast Exhibition 

"The image survives the subject and becomes the remembered reality."

John Szarkowski (Director of Photography Department, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962 – 1991

The images included in this exhibition have been made over a number of trips to a stretch of the NSW South Coast. The coast always holds fond memories from youth and is often the first experience of a natural environment away from suburban lives. The coast is an infinite adventure full of small nooks, hidden paths, smells, the changing kaleidoscope of sky, sea and forest and the excitement of a new day. The crescent inlets of the south coast appear as a child vast and seemingly endless and allow for continual exploration. In retrospect they are intimate spaces easily traversed. There is something spiritual in the feel, smell and sound of the coast and the dramatic plunging of the forest into the dunes and onto the ocean. Why does the sea and beach hold such importance in our imagination and memory? What do we desire from proximity to the sea? How are our memories formed by beach trips? Joseph Campbell wrote-

“We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with his planet”.

The original photographs themselves were all made using Kodak Tri X film-a relic of another era-which in itself is part of a changing past-Kodak itself has faced change or ruin. Film is a finite resource and forces a slowing down of image making. There are long periods of watching and the careful arranging of the images. The prints have been made using archival photographic paper and inks. They are editioned in a series of 10 in the sizes 20 by 30 and 30 by 40 cm.

Time in childhood is fluid from racing to quietude, intensely physical and languid. The viewpoint of the images is low and the focus selective. The intention is to draw the viewer into a private world-every day refreshed but the constancy ever present. As each day passes at the coast we see life and death constantly paraded.

The spiritual world is a decidedly troublesome concept in intellectual thought today. The word itself is difficult to use in the politicised, thin skinned, touchy world of contemporary scholarship and criticism. We whisper it as some people once whispered “sex”. But spiritual does not suggest any kind of close-mindedness, any kind of fundamentalism, or even of deity, for that matter. In using the word, I am not speaking of any religious movement, but merely of reverence, mythic reverence, for things that for centuries have been revered. They are things which, except in sleep and dream, we seem to have forgotten this century”. 

“ which is a way of translating thoughts into the language of feeling… it evokes the poignancy implicit in the transitoriness of all things”

John Wood

Coast-a series of images

I am reminded of my own empathy to the seaside, my search for detail that accompanies explorations along the shore. A shell on the beach that needs collecting, the plants that grow in unlikely places, the sand and water patterns, the rock pool with its diverse life, colour and shapes. All these things are here. In looking at this work I am reminded of this but also of the work of Karl Blossfeldt and the way he introduced such detail to us in the early part of the last century. In fact Peter’s ‘Sea Patterns 1, 2 & 3’ have a sense of Blossfeldt’s Photogravure images without having much to do with his images’ content or his medium. Blossfeldt produced a fascinating series of plant photographs, which were the essence of a modernist view of such forms. He recognized how photographs can function as an aid to memory and pursued purity and truth in his images with a modernist’s passion.  

Life depends in the main on movement and the frozen moment in ‘Sea Patterns’ are able to suggest to us the movement that is taking place. A photo is able to suspend in time a precise moment yet this moment itself is timeless. Blossfeldt’s photographs of plant stems such as ‘Impatiens glanduligera’ and ‘Cornus nuttalli’ appear like wrought iron castings; we need reminding that they are in fact plants. Interestingly enough Blossfeldt was originally apprenticed as a decorative cast iron worker.  His isolation of seed, flower and leaf segments draw us into a world that we could be unaware of at least in its detailed form. Blossfeldt’s images inform us of the fine structure of a plant or how they become a pattern of nature such as occurs in Peter’s ‘Sea Patterns’. Peter’s striking images of plant and seashore life have this much in common with Blossfeldt’s. However compared to the prints in this exhibition Blossfeldt’s images seem static, no wind ruffled these plants. 

With Peter’s ‘Fern’ and ‘Strap Plant’ a similar sense of resolution seems possible. But intentions differ as do the exhibited print quality. When viewing Blossfeldt’s prints you are left feeling somewhat flat. With Peter’s work you enjoy a feeling of deep satisfaction, which has to do with the subject matter and it’s context, but also with the very richness of the prints. 

Walter Benjamin remarked, “What is again and again decisive for photography is the photographers attitude to his technique.” 

In this exhibition, unlike Peter’s last where the photographs were printed using the wet process, a technique in which Peter excels, we have a digitally printed exhibition. Peter’s pursuit of excellence with the digital technique and the different challenges that such printing entails is very apparent and very successful. The richness of the prints does indeed remind us of what can be achieved using the wet process and is here achieved using the digital medium. In the two images mentioned above and in ‘Seed in Water’ the tonal contrast is wide and complex with the lovely rich blacks beautifully achieved.

A similar richness can be seen with ‘Feather in Sand’, ‘Rockpool’ and the two ‘Bird Tracks’. When viewing this exhibition we understand we are in the presence of a modernist sensibility. Given the post-modernist critique, to be modern seems also to be seeing things as they were. The pleasure we can obtain from the fragments portrayed in this exhibition have something to do with our desire to possess such moments, objects that we may collect, a shell on the sand. In this way the modernist moment is very much alive. The photographs place fragments in a context that we feel familiar with and comfortable with. They record not only Peter’s experience but also our own memories of the coast encouraging us to look more carefully at what we see and feel there. A number of the images work well because of his use of depth of field as in ‘Seed in the Water’ with its rich contrast, which provides a thought provoking image through the use of the narrow focus. This image constantly asks questions of you.

‘Flower’ has a similar effect. ‘Plant in the Sand’ has an air of mystery to it with its lonely depiction of what you assume to be a plant but which could also be a piece of debris. When dealing with a fragment it is often possible to achieve a monumental quality to the image. In both ‘Propeller’ and ‘Cola’ you are made aware of this possibility. The scribbling patterns you see under the wording in ‘Cola’ are very evocative of another existence beneath the surface. The size of the vessel that the propeller drives remains a mystery. And so with all of these images you have a thoughtful and thought provoking photograph that asks the viewer a number of questions that the subject matter only begins to suggest. The images’ ability to awaken in the viewer such questions takes us well beyond the photographic record and what ostensibly the image is. It has this subject, it has this suggestion. Photography like all art has the ability and the responsibility to say more than just the literal statement of what a subject is, in this case a two dimensional representation of a subject.

The photograph we look at is the vision of the photographer and we view it seeking to share that sensibility while at the same time seeking our own interpretation of the image, we can make our own story. In this manner the work is successful, we have a fine set of prints, which are supported by Peter’s desire for, and achievement of print perfection, they are quiet images in a very modernist way. These images fulfill the need in art work to be raising a question, telling a story, provoking a meaning that you can appreciate and where you understand the photographers intention in the photograph while providing an entry to your own view of the work. 

The image ‘Island’ provides a signature to the exhibition with the wonderful tonal graduation of the sky but above all the placement of the horizon line in the lower 15% of the portrait image, an echo of ‘Monte Alban’ in Peter’s last exhibition. Not so much a fragment but very much the photographer’s way of seeing. This image (like all modern photographs) provides a visual record of a subject seen; such representation is taken as being real. This acceptance enables us to relate very strongly to the subject portrayed. We all perhaps have our own memory of a lone plant in the sand, a seabirds feather washed ashore and in our memory we can see, perhaps even feel and hear, the environment the images set for us. It is this aspect that gives the quiet reference and the satisfaction that we have when viewing this exhibition. 

With this exhibition we are called upon to not only confirm in ourselves the experience of the Coast but also to seek new truths, new stories and understandings of the things portrayed. The best way to judge a photograph is if it makes the viewer pause, consider and to think, about the aesthetic and about its meaning. It remains one of the enigmas of photography that Black and White prints provide a more profound sense of what is real. Peter works deliberately with Black and White images and through this medium provides us with an aspect of his view of the world producing a successful and thought provoking exhibition.