Assignment 5: Virtual Essay
Option 2:
Find (online or in books) at least five images that remind
you of the work of a particular photographer by your choice and write 600 words
explaining the similarities and possible impact your photographer had on
these images.
You should explain the most important aspects of the work of
the photographer you have chosen. Post the assignment on your website and
submit the link through Blackboard Assignments.
From this essay, the photographer I have chosen to focus on
is David Muench, because like him, I like taking landscape photographs and shooting the nature. In addition, the way he took photos was inspiring. He is an American photographer, graduate from the University
of California, and from the Art Centre School of Design in Los Angeles. Muench
has been in the field of photography for over half a century and is famous for his landscape photographs of Western America. Muench is the son of well-known
photographer Josef Muench in his early time. Although many photographers
capture nature and landscapes, there is something that is very particular and
distinctive in Muench photography in his 4 x 5 large format cameras. For him, “all
of nature is a context, each tiny element of critical importance to the
magnificence of the whole, nothing is more important than presenting his beloved
wilderness to viewers”. In more recent years Muench has lingering outwards
across the world. He is shooting in places such as Patagonia, Russia, Japan,
Morocco, South Africa, the Galapagos, Antarctica, New Zealand, Australia,
Iceland, and Belarus.
David Muench Photography
“Top rock” photos bring his substantial memories of lugging
his 4x5 camera to the tops of mountains. He had been carried it to the top of over 50 of
the major western peaks, as well as the Appalachian Mountains in the Eastern U.S.
Because of these fantastic photographs of the rock and the sky, he won at the top; he was recording his own emotions. The photos were completed by impulsive moments of fantastic light. He quoted, “…those moments you can plan for only by being ready. We can never know what the earth will present us, but we need to be prepared for whatever it is”.
“Natural connection between near and far” photos had been evolved
out of himself and wish to portray the landscape in a way that had not been
done before. What he developed was a way of shooting the distant landscape
by connecting it to a close-up detail, associated by a middle ground of line, form
and color.
It was the technique that takes the viewer’s eye on a three dimensional trip, but imaginably the importance of it was the way of linking the viewer to the whole of the landscape. He believed that like other viewer, he is a viewer too. The connectedness he found was in a sense of his own connectedness to the landscape in which he stands and which he viewed.
“Ancient Bristle cone Pines” photos were the timberline ancients
who have been telling him their stories for a long time. Perhaps these were the
oldest living plants on Earth, these fantastically sculpted trees on the barren
tops of ranges in the west provided him the subject for one of his favorite
books—Timberline Ancients. He never got tired of these trees, he returns again
and again to the high, bare heights that are their home. With its transcendent
quality of light: the brittle, brilliant, and magical, he found this landscape
compelling.
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