Intuitive Landscapes
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My first attempts with landscape photography were of the high country, the wooded slopes below Wheeler Peak, northeast of Taos, NM. I moved to Taos from New York City when my business of photography was all but lost, like so many other brave souls, in the early 2000’s. I sought sanctuary and solitude in the mountains for the better part of a year before I actually began making pictures. I came to photograph the landscape through the process of grieving, and on the other side of that, realized that I am inextricably part of the landscape. In the sage words of Dorr Bothwell, “I’m no better than a tree just because I can move”. My first landscape pictures were on one hand, fit for the round file, but on the other, fodder for learning a new visual language. I have been a figurative and portrait photographer for 30 years, often using the landscape as a supporting background, but never picturing it as principal content.
I worked on and off for two years without creating any tangible results; countless excursions into the forest, or up high on a ridge, the familiar feeling of serenity, all my senses in overdrive, but what to photograph… haunted by a Nathan Lyons quote, something about there being “more photographs in the world than there are bricks”… what new perspective could I bring to this?
I photograph the landscape as an intuitive response with my hand held super wide 4x5, a spontaneous reaction to the moment. I utilize the wide view and the vignetting of the lens as a way to recreate my vision with one eye closed, minding the periphery. There is no viewfinder, I simply place the camera in front of my eye at approximately the same angle at which I am looking to make an exposure. The traditional approach of studied composition with a large format camera on a tripod brings into play the linear thought pattern I seek to avoid. Hand holding the camera is tantamount to the realization that I am one with this landscape, making pictures is just a part of this whole experience. For me, photographing people is conversation, photographing the landscape is meditation.
It was many exposed sheets of film before I discovered Wild Rivers National Recreation Area, and the Rio Grande Gorge north of Taos. I would sit for hours at the convergence of the Red River and the Rio Grande, in awe of the power of the place, and overwhelmed with the idea of putting the experience on film. Some days I would hike out at dusk with only 6 exposed sheets, one spent Grafmatic film magazine. Other days I would stumble upon light and shadow on smooth rock, or spatial relationships between what was in front of my nose and that which I could not touch, exhausting my film supply within the hour. Wild Rivers is a visually full and complex environment, of which I am continually looking to simplify.
I like to photograph what is familiar to me, and with the landscapes I stick close to home, Wild Rivers was a short distance down the western slope of the Taos Mountains where I lived. When I returned to Albuquerque in 2007, I began to photograph the Volcanoes, a mere 30-minute drive west of the city. The five cinder cones are protected as part of the Petroglyph National Monument, and have been my retreat since 1980, the year I moved to New Mexico to attend graduate school. The Volcano environment is extreme; hot, unobstructed sunlight and cool, deep shadows. Sharp volcanic rock thrusts skyward from flat plains, the long views seem infinite, Wheeler Peak 150 miles away is visible on a clear day. Visually, the environment is uncomplicated and rich. The simplicity of the Volcano landscape poses extreme visual challenges for me; if I attempt to photograph too frequently, I am left with the feeling that I am finished, I see nothing new. This, of course, is folly, and is remedied by completely digesting the most recent work before returning. Encroaching development has all but ruined the total Volcano experience; the silence pierced by small aircraft, long views disturbed by industrial complex, and noticeably less wildlife. As an image maker, I approach the Volcanoes as I approach Wild Rivers, but with a more focused need to create a record, a body of work reminiscent of this magnificent place.
My landscapes are created through the meditation of being present, having no preconceived ideas about the work at hand. No waiting for the light to be right, because it always is. No waiting for the perfect cloud formation, because they all are. Ground I have tread upon scores of times previously is always new. These pictures are about my inner landscape as much as they are about the exterior, there are no beginnings or endings, only meditations upon the real world.
DANIEL PEEBLES