The Flat View by Richard van der Horst

BOB NEGRYN THE FLAT VIEW

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHS

THE FLAT VIEW LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHS

© 2009 Bob Negryn, © 2009 Miriam Windhausen © 2009 Uitgeverij d’jonge Hond Published by Uitgeverij d’jonge Hond PO Box 1353 8001 BJ Zwolle The Netherlands info@dejongehond.nl www.dejongehond.nl Text and editing Miriam Windhausen Translation Mike Ritchie Design Richard van der Horst riezz.biz Printing Thieme MediaCenter Zwolle More information www.bobnegryn.com Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Fonds BKVB (The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture), and is supported by the K.F. Hein Fonds Utrecht and the City of Amersfoort.

ISBN 978-90-89101-46-4 / NUR 653 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

BOB NEGRYN THE FLAT VIEW LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHS

TEXT BY MIRIAM WINDHAUSEN

The Flat View Anyone who walks in the mountains is aware of the promised view. Full of anticipation, you climb the last stretch of mountain path with an image in your mind of what you are about to see. Your expectation is formed by previous experiences of standing on mountaintop, or by their depiction in photography, film, art or literature. As you near the summit, suddenly, in an instant, it presents itself to you: the mountain landscape. Of course it has been there all the time, but it becomes truly present only now that you see it. It is not how you had imagined it, different to memories, different to the postcard, different to your dreams. It is now. At the same time, it is intriguing how, for the remainder of your time there, the mountain continually renews itself, like a viewing screen constantly reconstructing an image. The light, the composition, your viewpoint, the colours all change. The landscape presents itself in a constantly different guise, altered by light and cloud movement but more particularly, it is changed by your passage through it and by time. A landscape exists only when you see it, it is a view. The observer determines the moment at which it reveals itself. It is individual and subjective. A landscape is a personal experience. Bob Negryn (The Netherlands, 1961) makes photographs of landscapes in which two aspects are central: the moment at which the landscape is revealed to him and the position he thereby assumes as an artist. These parameters, time and place, determine his artistic leeway, they interact with one another, yet unpredictably, he has them under control. Although Negryn claims to regard himself and the landscape as equals, his photographs show his power over it. He walks, searches and waits as long as it takes for the scene to free itself from cliché, from the universal, from the sublime or the narrative to become purely his own private landscape. His photographs allow the scene to say precisely that which it has to say to him. Through his personal view he addresses the universal – how people relate to their surrounding landscape. Just as time and place interact with each other, so too do mobility and material. Ideally, Negryn would take a view camera with him on his trips through the natural world, but the weight of such a camera would impede his reaching places where the landscape is revealed to him. His choice of one camera (6 x 9 cm), with just a single wide-angle lens, provides him with sufficient technical possibilities to be mobile without having to make concessions on the desired quality. Negryn aims for the greatest possible depth of field in his photographs. That which is nearby, the stones, the moss, the grass, that upon which he stands, as well as the horizon, the sky, and everything in between, is intended to be as clearly in focus as possible. This indicates no hierarchical position between elements that are close by and those at a distance. For Negryn, all the components of the surrounding landscape are entirely equal ingredients in the composition of a two-dimensional image: the flat view. For years Negryn has been photographing the same countries, which – literally – provide the material for his work. Those countries are primarily the antipodes New Zealand and Australia, his second home in Ireland and his country of origin the Netherlands. He has also travelled repeatedly through The Alps and Canada. Recurrent visits to the same geographical areas give him the opportunity to work in an investigative manner and to explore the central theme in his work – the (ancient) relationship between mankind and the landscape. His first encounters with a country have the character of a study trip, whereby he regards the photographs he makes as sketches. On subsequent trips the theme is given shape and elaborated upon. This produces photographs that are linked to, and reflect upon series from previous years. Negryn deliberately avoids the typical clichés that define the character of a country’s landscape. In Ireland he does not photograph the bogs, renowned for their intriguing myths, nor the glaciers that inch towards the sea in New Zealand, not the vast legendary seventeenth century skies of the Netherlands. In a world where every square metre is known, has been travelled and photographed, Negryn is able to approach the landscape in such a way that it reveals to him its relationship to humankind.

Aarlanderveen, Netherlands 2002

Harderbos, Netherlands 2005

Vogelweg, Netherlands 2005

Hondweg, Netherlands 2005

Zoetermeer, Netherlands 1998

Breukelen, Netherlands 2007

Noordeinderpolder, Netherlands 2001

Zuideinderplas, Netherlands 2002

Nuldernauw, Netherlands 2002

Lekdijk, Netherlands 2004

Graafkade, Netherlands 2004

Zwolse Tocht, Netherlands 2006

Varik, Netherlands 2001

Zoetermeerse polder, Netherlands 1998

Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand 1998

Lucifer Flat, New Zealand 1998

Motuakiki Island, New Zealand 1998

Ozonsac Twins, New Zealand 1998

Upper Young Valley, New Zealand 1998

Rat Point, New Zealand 1998

Dart Valley, New Zealand 1998

Starlight Trail, Canada, 2001

Kathleen Lake, Canada 2000

Saw Spur, New Zealand 2002

Mc Kellar Saddle, New Zealand 2004

Home Hill, New Zealand 2004

Watering Hole, Australia 2007

Euriowie, Australia 2007

Ochre Valley 1, Australia 2007

Ochre Valley 2, Australia 2007

Homestead Creek, Australia 2007

Darling River, Australia 2007

Salzburg, Austria 1991

East Tyrol, Austria 1991

Bearna, Ireland 2003

Lakagh, Ireland 2003

Bearna, Ireland 2005

Gordons, Ireland 2005

Newmarket on Fergus, Ireland 2008

Yield, Ireland 2005

Garda Station, Ireland 2006

Bus Eireann Commuter, Ireland 2006

Cockatoo Island, Australia 2009

Woolloomooloo, Australia 2009

Mc Callum Pool, Australia 2009

Cahill Expressway, Australia 2009

Vathorst, Netherlands 2008

Line in the landscape The layout of the Dutch landscape is determined by the eternal triangle between people, land and water. Viewed from above, the Dutch patchwork of polders, ditches, roads, towns and rivers reveals the historical battle against water and the struggle for space. In many places the interdependent relationship between people, land and water is visible in a concentrated form. Nature competes with the built-up environment, fields and meadows border on industrial areas, highways traverse nature reserves, rivers are busily navigated. Following in the tradition of designing the environment, and as if to make up for a certain absence, ‘new nature’ has been developed in the Netherlands since 1990. Nature reserves are linked, rivers are given space for their winter beds and a farmer is no longer just a farmer, but an agricultural nature conservationist. New Nature as a defence against – or attack on – the advancing urban and industrial expansion. It is as though there are two sorts of irreconcilable landscapes, the urban and the natural. The idea that New Nature is a haven or refuge for the exhausted and tormented town-dweller is a romantic notion that many Dutch people are all too eager to belief in. Walking through a forest in the Flevopolder or the water meadows of a river, the romantic soul imagines itself to be amidst ‘nature’, while it is actually in an artificially laid-out and sustained environment, in a decor. An even stronger mythical appeal is exerted by a nature reserve such as the Oostvaardersplassen, to which public access is restricted. The landowner, the State Forestry Service (Staatsbosbeheer), endorses it as follows: ‘A visit to the Oostvaardersplassen is an encounter with the Netherlands of another millennium. An unspoilt marshland with vast stretches of water and wild grasslands.’ The reserve was created only forty years ago. Negryn has an exceptional eye for the decor that is the Dutch landscape, which he approaches without judgement. He does not seek the apparently untouched nature, or the ugliness of the advancing urban development, nor the conflict between the two, or the love-hate relationship between land and water that is so typical of the Netherlands. His starting point and source of inspiration is the constructed and designed character of the Dutch landscape. He depicts that which he comes across in carefully balanced compositions. Light and sky play an important role in Negryn’s photographs. Consequently in his images of the Netherlands, you might expect him to make eager use of the famous ‘Dutch light’ and the dramatic banks of clouds, which have defined the image of the landscape since the seventeenth century. For Negryn, the essence of light is less about creating an atmosphere or drama, and more about its influence on the details and the sharpness in his photographs. From this point of view, flat light is more useful to him than the erratic cloudy skies through which rays of sun burst. This makes the clouds and skies barely relevant as subjects in his images. They are, as is also the case in his New Zealand photographs, ‘merely’ an element in relation to the total picture, a part of the composition. This is also apparent in the way he divides the surface of his photographs. In traditional Dutch landscapes, one often sees a low horizon where the sky fills more than two thirds of the picture. Negryn places just as much emphasis on the foreground and horizon; the skies often occupy less than half the picture’s surface.

Netherlands

In the photographs Negryn made in the Flevopolder, he shows both the vastness and uniformity of the area and the proximity and detailing of the vegetation. The top half of the photograph Vogelweg 2005 (p. 11) is dominated by rows of poplar trees, the bottom by grassland and countless dandelions. The light is filtered through the clouds and the roof of foliage, which produces virtually no shadows and makes the yellow flowers glow. Here the landscape has been formed with generous strokes of planted trees standing like rows of dominos, the ground seeded with abundant flowers usually seen only in meadows. In Harderbos 2005 (p. 10) the woods and cloudy sky are layered behind a mass of tangibly close Cow Parsley. Hondweg 2005 (p. 20) is as if on a late afternoon a painter roughly sketched in large brush strokes an outline of a landscape with cabbages and trees. Negrynâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s depiction of non-natural forms in the scenery reveals the human hand in the design of the Dutch polder landscape. By making these unintentional lines, forms and constructions visible, he is engaging in a form of Land Art. This may involve a manmade facing (Zuideinderplas 2002, p. 16), a sand dyke (Breukelen 2007, p. 17) or part of a ditch (Noordeinderpolder 2001, p. 15). The comparison with Land Art also has an extra dimension. Land Art artists journeyed to remote regions, where they left their mark using, for instance, stones or pieces of wood. In order to make the relationship between their intervention and the landscape visible to the public, they made photographs or videos of their actions. The original pieces could be visited only with extreme difficulty. In the course of time some have disappeared and in many cases continue to exist only as photographs, which have thus taken on the position of the work itself. For Negryn, the moment of making the artwork coincides with the taking of the photograph and that is reassuring. Nothing is lost, there is no memory, no nostalgia. There is only time and place, recorded in an image.

The flat sublime In search of places with interesting landscape characteristics, Negryn made several lengthy study trips to New Zealand, Canada and Australia. During long excursions on foot or by bicycle, he penetrated deep into the landscape. For this he pushed himself to the limit in order to reach the ideal position, the spot at which the land reveals its essence to him. The unspoilt mountains, forests, seas, lakes and deserts of New Zealand, Canada and Australia may seem like an Eldorado for photographers; it is difficult not to make a beautiful photograph as it were. That is not the case for Negryn: he finds the standard scenic highlights visually uninteresting, because they have become clichés. He avoids the beaten tracks and heads into the wilderness to places where nobody ever goes. The landscape is pure and unspoilt, the human hand is nowhere to be seen, here he concentrates fully on observing and experiencing the land. He questions the essence of what he is looking at and with his photographic eye combines the vast panorama with the direct surroundings. The mountain peaks in the distance with the bushes in front of him and the moss on which he stands. He searches for a composition in which the visual elements (the components of the landscape that reveals itself to him) have an expressiveness that is independent and unconnected to existing images or depictions. The observer, who is inclined to make connections and associations on the basis of what he sees, will just have to concentrate on the composition, image and colour in Negryn’s photographs as if it were an abstract painting. Not an abstract painting however in the sense of an abstracted landscape, but one that is composed of landscape elements. The clear compositions of the photographs and the vast panoramic views have an inviting effect on the observer. The temptation to allow oneself to become absorbed into the infinite space, to feel reassuringly insignificant, is strong. That, nevertheless, can only partly succeed, perhaps even leading to disappointment, because the anticipated sublime experience does not occur. You have been set on the wrong track, for you think you are standing in front of a landscape photograph – or maybe in a landscape – but you are actually in front of an abstract art work. Still, it is not unusual for the observers to imagine themselves in the depicted space while looking at landscape photographs. Photography is, after all, a fairly truthful representation of reality and the human eye is trained to translate the two-dimensional into three-dimensions. Landscape photography can entice the observer with overwhelming vistas, dramatic skies, mystical hazes and dazzling sunsets. But that is not the effect that Negryn aims to achieve and it is this challenge, to resist the visual enticement, that he places before the viewer. Whoever observes carefully can see that Negryn offers a helping hand. Firstly by striving for the maximum possible depth of field. The human eye can see things sharply either nearby, or at a distance, but never simultaneously. We constantly focus on the subject of our attention. If that subject is nearby, then we see it in sharp focus while the background blurs; if it is at a distance, then the foreground loses focus. This difference provides the image we see with depth. Everything is in focus in Negryn’s photographs, both near and far. Thus, in his photographs we see an image in a way that is impossible in reality. The lack of a subject, a focal point, is another alienating element in these photographs. There is nothing (figuratively speaking) that comes to the fore. The artist does not take us by the hand to say: ‘look, how beautiful the skies are’, or: ‘see how the majestic trees are reflected in the water’, we are not asked to see ‘the wonders of nature’. Negryn appears to make his photographs almost without an immediate cause. He avoids the scenic highlights (the tallest mountain, the deepest canyon, the largest glacier) and neither does he seek metaphors for these natural wonders. His compositions consist of a balanced distribution of visual elements: the horizon often lies in the middle of the photograph, with equal space above and below for skies, mountains, water and land.

New Zealand, Canada, Australia

A third handhold to prevent you, as observer, from abandoning yourself to nature can often be found in a discordance that the artist incorporates into the composition. Many works contain such a ‘disrupting factor’ that seems intent on hindering the thoughtless enjoyment of the image. Almost imperceptibly, it closes off the view, giving observers the feeling that they want to change something in the picture. One such ‘disrupting element’ is the tree in the photograph Saw Spur 2002 (p. 30), or in Dart Valley 1998 (p. 31). Or the bush in Rat Point 1998 (p. 34), which shamelessly protrudes above the ferns in the foreground, extends to the horizon, but stands slightly out of the pictures centre. Elements that assume a prominent place – that seem to demand subject status in the image – paradoxically, are illogically placed or even stand in the way. Instead of the pleasant feeling that these landscape photographs perhaps suggest, they rouse a certain irritation and create a distance towards the observer. The sharpness, the balanced composition – apparently with no subject – and the discordances (that are not always literally present, but which can also lie within the composition) result in the observer not being absorbed into the images, but thrown back on their own resources. It encourages contemplation.

Built landscapes In addition to its magnificent scenery, Ireland has long been known for its poverty and troubled history, as illustrated by the historic migration (mainly to the United Kingdom and new world countries) of millions of its people. Ireland experienced spectacular economic growth in the nineteen nineties, which made it the second richest country in Europe (after Luxemburg) and one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Many American companies, including Dell and Intel, established their European manufacturing operations in Ireland. The island was attractive due to its low rates of corporate tax and the availability of a highly educated English-speaking workforce. The economic boom, also referred to as the ‘Celtic Tiger’, caused the country to undergo a metamorphosis. The traditional Irish rural based agricultural economy made way for industry and international companies providing high-tech products and services. Signs of the new wealth started appearing everywhere in the Irish landscape, particularly in the form of large new cars and even larger white houses. The economic growth changed the landscape, both visually and environmentally. Irish farmers subsidised meagre agricultural incomes by selling their land privately per half acre, the minimum site required to accommodate a sewage treatment plant. In the past fifteen years, 800.000 new units have been added to the existing housing stock to house a population of 4 million people; 1.5 million of whom live in the greater Dublin area. Sixty percent of these new buildings appeared as white detached catalogue houses dotted over the rural landscape. With the credit crisis in 2008 such an oversupply of housing led to a large section of the Irish economy suddenly collapsing. Negryn, who has for many years spent long periods in Ireland, was particularly surprised by the attitude of the Irish to their rural environment during this economic boom. It is as if the Irish, while leaving their poverty behind them, have also turned their backs on the cultural history and the inherent beauty of their landscape. Understandably perhaps as for generations it seemed as though the two, poverty and the natural environment went hand in hand. Fascinated by the relationship between man and nature, Negryn depicts this aspect in his photographs of the ‘built’ Irish landscape. The incongruity of the new houses in the ancient rural countryside, the decline of the traditional village and the unspoilt pastoral world are his subjects in Ireland. Similar to the photographs he made in other countries, the composition also plays an important role in these works. A series of photographs from 2003 shows the advancing construction work in the Irish landscape. What position do these great white Mac Mansions assume in the traditional rural countryside? What is their relationship to the surroundings? And what is the relationship of their inhabitants to their environs? These are the kind of questions that Negryn explores in his compositions.

Ireland, Australia, Netherlands

The photograph Sea View, Bearna 2003 (p. 51) shows a row of large new, white houses on the horizon. The houses are partly hidden from view by the rolling landscape in the foreground, which consists of wild grasslands intersected by a typical Irish dry-stone wall. Thus, at first sight, a row of houses in a landscape setting. However the emphasis in the image is on the foreground with its grasslands and stone wall. The fact that the houses are partly hidden makes this an image, not of a row of houses in a landscape, but a landscape photograph in which stands a row of houses. The primary subject of this photograph remains the landscape. With this image, Negryn enables the observer to imagine how the scene looked before the arrival of the buildings, how the horizon would have offered endless rolling vistas. Now, we are denied that sight, as the houses block our view. Negryn, however very subtly draws the gaze of the observer beyond the houses: the vanishing point of the stone wall is in the middle of the photograph, precisely at the spot where a gap exists between two blocks of houses and where a pole with high-voltage cables forms the central point of the image. It’s true that this does not make the buildings the subject of the photograph, but it does dictate the viewpoint of the photographer. Only on this spot, exactly on this square metre, is Negryn able to make this photograph go beyond the buildings. The photograph Lakagh 2003 (p. 52) also seems to ignore the new construction work. This time, a large tree in the middle of the picture demands all the viewers’ attention. To the left of the tree and at more of a distance stands a just-completed white, detached Neo Georgian house. Still ill at ease in its new environment you might think. Uncomfortable too, in the enormous confident, historically rural space; an alien in the landscape. Yet, with his viewpoint and composition, Negryn does indeed place the house in relation to the other landscape elements, whereby beauty or ugliness, old or new appear to play no role. The trees, the house and a small stonewall stand on a par as entirely equal actors in their surroundings. As a counterpart to the series of photographs showing the new housing, Negryn made photographs of old Irish villages. These are places where Irish people lived, often in poverty, for decades, and from which they are now departing to live in their new ‘one off’ houses outside the village. They are images of deserted village squares and streets, with powerful compositions of shapes, lines and colours. In this series the built environment is almost like a still life where the sunlight and the strong shadows it casts are frequently recurring factors. They lend the picture a certain optimism, while at the same time there is also something ominous in the stillness that Negryn infuses into the image. The scarce social and community life that still remains in these so-called doughnut villages (the empty village centres with the new construction around them) is also doomed to disappear, bringing the threat of vacancy and decline. Negryn, though, does not wish to make pessimistic depictions. Here, again, he focuses not on a single expressive or ominous image defining detail, but instead seeks a composition in which the mutual relationship of the pictorial elements expresses his personal view of the situation in Ireland.

Negryn’s work is emphatically not just about the social narrative. He is not a documentary photographer; his actions are not determined by a journalistic viewpoint. It’s true that he is involved with his subjects, very involved even, but above all he searches for that point, that situation, that light, where he can make a unique image. Besides the composition, as mentioned previously, colour and texture are also important elements in his work. They can be both the point of departure and the meaning. These photographs are in fact independent autonomous images: still lifes of the built environment. Garda Station 2006 (p. 57) is one such still life. An idiosyncratic composition consisting of a number of disparate objects: a white wall, behind which a tree crowns, a blue house, a flower box and a blue refuse container. The intangible pictorial elements in this image are the shadow cast by a lamppost linking it with the tree trunk, which is echoed by the shadows of a tree falling across the blue house. In this photograph, Negryn has brought together the apparently random mixed lot of forms and colours in such a way that chance appears to be out of the question. Negryn demonstrates that his approach as an artist to the built environment is comparable with his approach to the rugged New Zealand wilderness. He is in search of the reciprocal relationship between pictorial elements. Whether that is a mountain, a lake, a cloud, a telephone pole, a tree, a signpost or a wheelie bin, each element is treated equally and is depicted as though part of an underlying plan. Negryn has more to say than simply a story about composition, form, colour and texture. One would be too hasty to draw the conclusion that the absence of a direct event, cause or subject – the lack of the narrative – renders Negryn’s photographs without significance or engagement. We have already seen the intrinsic basis of Negryn’s photography in his approach to the New Zealand landscape, in which he confronts us with a wilderness by avoiding the sublime. He could have also opted for this approach to the vast and mystical Irish landscape. The fact that he does not do so, instead choosing to base his work on the Irish people’s relationship to their changing surroundings, testifies to his courage and above all to great insight into the way in which landscapes and the human environment manifest themselves. For Negryn, all his Irish photographs have this content, the changing relationship between people and their environment, but because his work is not narrative, he neither literally, nor metaphorically depicts it. Through his structuring view, he offers us insight into the essence of the built landscape

Ireland, Australia, Netherlands

BOB NEGRYN (1961, THE NETHERLANDS) MAKES UNBIASED PHOTOGRAPHS OF LANDSCAPES, VILLAGES AND CITIES IN THE NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND. IN HIS WONDER HE APPROACHES THE SURROUNDING WORLD AS AN ENSEMBLE OF COLOURS AND SHAPES, WHICH HE WILLFULLY CAPTURES IN BALANCED COMPOSITIONS. NEGRYN TAKES IN HIS PHOTOGRAPHY THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED; HE SEARCHES AND WAITS FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO CAPTURE A LANDSCAPE ON HIS TERMS, LIBERATED FROM THE ROMANTIC NOTION OF THE SUBLIME AND GOING BEYOND THE RECORDINGS OF DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY. THIS BOOK SHOWS SEVEN SERIES OF HIS BEST PHOTOGRAPHS AND GIVES A SPECTACULAR IMPRESSION OF THE EXCEPTIONAL VISUAL VOCABULARY OF THIS ARTIST. TEXT BY MIRIAM WINDHAUSEN