Tideland by Marit van der Meer

TIDELAND

David Batchelder

with an essay by David Campany

Vision and

David Batchelder made these photographs between 2010

Batchelder has made thousands of images in this manner.

and 2015 in the tidal zone on the beaches that fringe Isle

That is a large number but compared to how many could be

of Palms, a small barrier island off Charleston, on the east-

made, it’s a drop in the ocean. More to the point, making

ern coast of the United States. Unless you are an expert in

photographs like this is akin to beachcombing: you have to

geology or marine biology, you would not know this from

do a lot of it to get the real treasure. And of course, the lon-

looking at the images. Like much of our surroundings, these

ger one does it the more one’s sensibility is refined and the

beaches could be many places in the world, and many more

deeper one must go into the unknown heart of the project.

places in the mind.

To make this work Batchelder has, literally and metaphorically, kept his head down.

The technique is simple but the results are infinitely varied. The camera is hand-held (a tripod would sink into the sand)

In 1962 the film critic Manny Farber made a comic but seri-

and pointed downwards. The photographer keeps his feet

ous distinction between what he called ‘white elephant art’

out of the frame. The camera records and makes permanent

and ‘termite art’. White elephant art is made in the self-

a world in flux. The seawater soaks away, the sand slowly

conscious pursuit of transcendent greatness, in the chan-

dries and the wind remakes the surface. These are appear-

nels where greatness is conventionally noted. The white

ances that never repeat. With every tide, unique shapes and

elephant artist will “pin the viewer to the wall and slug him

configurations that no human could create are written and

with wet towels of artiness and significance.” By contrast,

erased. It has been going on since before we were here

termite artists get on with their work with little regard for af-

and it will continue long after we have gone.

firmation or posterity. They are “ornery, wasteful, stubbornly

Beyond

David Campany

self-involved, doing go-for-broke art and not caring what

So here we have a book, a large book, of Batchelder’s sus-

comes of it.” The work of the termite artist is an “act both of

tenance. You will make of it what you will. Indeed, I suspect

observing and being in the world, a journeying in which the

that with such imagery ‘making something of it’ is unavoid-

artist seems to be ingesting both the material of his art and

able. Nature’s abstractness, typified by beaches and rocks,

the outside world through a horizontal coverage.” He has a

tends to provoke us to great extremes of reaction: the uni-

“bug-like immersion in a small area without point or aim, and,

versal or the particular; the sacred or the profane; the pre-

over all, concentration on nailing down one moment without

cious or the pointless; the significant or the meaningless;

glamorizing it, but forgetting this accomplishment as soon

the lofty or the low. It has something to do with the involun-

as it has been passed; the feeling that all is expendable, that

tary rush, the intuitive projection we make upon both nature

it can be chopped up and flung down in a different arrange-

and what seems abstract. It seduces our unconscious wish-

ment without ruin.” Many of the greatest photographers were

es into revealing themselves. Is it possible to look at these

(are) termites. Think of Eugène Atget, for example, pursuing

photographs without seeing something in them?

his affection for old Paris as it disappeared under the tide of modernity. In his own domain, almost invisible between the

The New Yorker once ran cartoon showing a returning sol-

worlds of art and commerce, Atget did what only he could

dier being given a Rorschach test. One by one the doctor

do. I am inclined to think of David Batchelder in a similar way,

holds up those infamous cards of blotches and splodges

making his work because he wants to, has to, and nobody

and the soldier responds: “A woman’s breast. A woman’s

else will. Imagine him on that island, walking from his home

face. The silhouette of a naked woman. A woman’s ass. Two

on Seagrass Lane to the sands that sustain him.

women.” It is dollar-book Freud of course, but it would not 5

Left to right: Cover of Alfred Ehrhardt, Das Watt. Ein Bildwerk 96 Aufnahmen, Verlag Ellermann, Hamburg, 1937 Alfred Ehrhardt, Geriffelte Sandfläche, Watt, 1933-36. © Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung Alfred Ehrhardt, Strukturen im Sandboden,Watt, 1933-36. © Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung Alfred Ehrhardt, Strukturen im Sandboden, Watt, 1933-36. © Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung

be funny if the underlying principle were not true. Seeing

atlas. The better known examples include Karl Blossfeldt’s

is motivated. On some level we cannot avoid seeing what

1928 book of plant studies Urformen der Kunst (literally

we, or some part of us, is given to see. We do not have the

translated as ‘Archetypal Forms of Art’, but published in

cold indifference of the camera’s glass eye, and yet we un-

English as Artforms in Nature); and Albert Renger-Patzsch’s

derstand that if we recognize an image as a photograph we

1928 book Die Welt ist Schön, or The World is Beautiful. It

know the glassy eye did record at least something, without

is worth dwelling on the titling of such books, because we

knowing what it was. So in our reactions we are forever

are dealing here with forms of imagery particularly open

caught. Something in us may want to see the cosmos or

to interpretation. Titles can be very leading, or misleading.

monsters, or dreams but we know we are looking down at

There are endless ways to read Blossfeldt’s close-up photo-

a bit of a beach.

graphs, but he was interested in looking at how plants had solved many of the problems faced by artists and designers

If there is a lineage for Batchelder’s work, it must surelyin-

in the modern age. The perfect arch, the flying buttress, the

clude Alfred Ehrhardt’s Das Watt, a book of ninety-six black

reinforced corner. He wanted the plants seen, at the very

and white photographs of wet and rippled sand, published

least, as ‘archetypal forms of art’. But Renger-Patzsch’s Die

in Germany in 1937. Ehrhardt’s title does not translate eas-

Welt ist Schön is something of a cautionary tale. It is a book

ily. Sometimes it is rendered as ‘mudflats’, sometimes ‘tide-

of one hundred photographs ranging across everything from

land’, which is of course the title of the book you are hold-

plants, animals and trees to fabrics, architecture and indus-

ing now. Ehrhardt’s volume was a late entry in an important

trial machinery (there are even a few taken on the beach).

genre of inter-war visual culture: the typology or picture

Although a bestseller at the time, Die Welt ist Schön has

Cover of Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt

Plate 55 from Karl Blossfeldt, Urformen der

ist Schön (The World is Beautiful), Kurt Wolff

Kunst (Art forms in nature), Ernst Wasmuth,

Verlag, Munich, 1928

Berlin, 1928

a slightly dubious reputation because some notable critics

hoped to unite everything with an aesthetic outlook; the

disapproved. In his classic essay ‘A Small History of Photog-

photographer wanted to stare at discrete objects and

raphy’1931, Walter Benjamin felt it showed the medium at

phenomena that do not necessarily add up and cannot be

its most conservative and complicit. The voracious and in-

reduced to beauty alone. Even the name of the movement

discriminate camera is permitted to eat up anything and ev-

with which all these photographers are associated, Neue

erything, only to spit it out as aestheticized mush for re-con-

Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity or New Sobriety), doesn’t

sumption by equally voracious and indiscriminate viewers:

really get at the strange delirium that comes from trying

“The creative in photography is its capitulation to fashion.

to be new and soberly objective. Images will not carry

The world is beautiful—that is its watchword. Therein is un-

meanings the way trucks carry coal. They are too wayward

masked the posture of a photography that can endow any

for that.

soup can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists, even where

‘Das Watt’ and ‘Tideland’ are commendably restrained titles:

most far-fetched subjects are more concerned with sale-

just a word to indicate the kind of place where the pictures

ability than with insight.”

were taken. But there are very real differences between the projects. Ehrhardt seems to have kept faith with the idea

How different it might have been had the publisher not in-

of the typology, with the promise of reliable visual evidence

sisted upon that title. Renger-Patzsch himself had wanted

and classification. He was looking for representative types

to call his book Die Dinge. Things. No ‘world’, no ‘beauti-

of pattern in the sand. Although he wrote of “flowering

ful’, just things, seen in and as photographs. The publisher

forms” he restrained from following that line of thought, 7

paintings. In 1951 they were published posthumously under

plane. It is not cute cats, nor touchdowns, nor nudes; moth-

the suggestive title The Fertile Image. Nash had a way of

erhood; arrangements of manufacturers’ products. Under no

using the camera to preserve those flashes of recognition,

circumstances is it anything, ever, anywhere near a beach.”

or misrecognition, when he saw something extraordinary in

These words were used as a wall text in an exhibition at

nature. A fallen tree resembles a horse. The roots of another

New York’s Museum of Modern Art, no less. In truth, Evans

tree resemble stone, which in turn resembles Laocoön,

adored the coast. He was a keen swimmer and made pic-

the classical Greek sculpture thought by Gotthold Ephraim

tures near beaches throughout his career. So why put a dis-

Lessing to be one of the great works of human civilization.

tance between the beach and ‘valid photography’? Perhaps

But it’s a dead tree, in a field in Dorset, England, on an in-

it was the ever-present lure of the cliché, the beach as stage

different day. Wayward imagination leaps the dull facts of

set for organized pleasure and populist photographic ritual.

life. Or rather, the dull facts are the essential prompt for the

But not all beaches are like that, and none of them are like

wayward leaps, through the hoop of the camera’s frame.

that all the time. Or perhaps Evans had in mind the clichés of the camera club: sunsets over deserted coves, crashing

A beach encourages this leaping, but there are risks. This is

waves, the child’s forgotten sandal at dusk. While it is true

the photographer Walker Evans in 1956:

that clichés are truths worn out by use, invariably they clus-

“Valid photography, like humor, seems to be too serious a

ter around those things that are not so easy to comprehend.

matter to talk about seriously. If, in a note it can’t be defined

The clichés of the beach are there to tame something wild

weightily, what it is not can be stated with the utmost final-

and profound, but they never really achieve it: even when

ity. It is not the image of Secretary Dulles descending from a

we are sat on the sand with family, friends and ice cream,

something in us senses great planetary forces, beheld in our

of his vision, had he not been held back by such a cumber-

insignificance.

some, emulsion-based process? What if he had been able

And so David Batchelder continues to pick over his beach,

to readily make thousands of images of the desert rather

Beckett-like, never knowing quite what will be encountered.

than a few dozen?”

Indeed, this book may turn out to be a snapshot, a record of his project at this moment only. The images continue to

Of course, one always can argue that labor and cost exert

accumulate, thanks in part to the ease of the digital camera.

the necessary discipline on an artist, without which the art

He writes:

soon gets flabby. But the digital is with us and we must work

“The very large number of images I have been able to make,

with the new possibilities and pressures it exerts. More to the

made possible by the ease of digital imaging, has been criti-

point what interests Batchelder is precisely what lies beyond

cal to my being able to break free of the quotidian view of

discipline, beyond rationality:

the beach. I had made hundreds of prints of the beach...

“My ability to see has grown because I have been able

a lifetime of photographs in the film era, before I was truly

to make and see many thousands of photographs, nearly

free of the forces of memory and subconscious seeing that

two thousand proof prints and 1200 finished prints. My vision

are naturally at work […] Would Edward Weston’s vision of

has grown as a result. I see so many interesting things in the

Point Lobos have grown into a landscape beyond his early

sand now that were there before, but beyond my vision.”

conceptions had he been able to make many thousands of photographs there, if the digital had allowed? […] What

That is a humble confession. It is also a generous invitation.

would Frederick Sommer have discovered in the landscape

These are photographs for your vision. And beyond. 11

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