Sacha-thesis outline

[hi Sacha. I see the last entry here was at about 10:00 am - 7-12-2021. OK, you have 800 + words which is a good start, and you have provided a good overview of your practice. The text would benefit from lavish illustration:-) I'm confident that you will make a great thesis. The key is to design a plan which will maintain your interest and be productive for the work you make. We meet again in January. Between now and then I suggest you experiment further with the modes of address you outline below. Remember to look at Sonia's bibliography and look at the Non-human Photography book]

• personal diary to describe experiences while photographing
• method description of my work

(* a fictive diary of constructed landscapes?)[are a personal diary and a fictive diary the same? Please try to be more precise about the modes of address you want to use in this text, and experiment with them]

• studies on the Anthropocene
• how do (native) people see their environment? [I think this is far too general a question. Please make a more precise formulation or discard it. There is a book in the bootleg library called Indigenous Research Methods which may help you formulate a more precise approach to this]

The making of mountains: In this research project I’m making a method description of my work. Describing all steps and experiences within the making process, then the selection process and eventually the presentation process. This will help me reflecting on why I’m taking the steps that I take. It will also give more depth and inside into the experiences I have while taking my photographs.

Introduction

Before I came to Piet Zwart Institute I already had a strong interest in how we, as humans, interact with the landscapes around us. I've been researching this relationship in my work for a long time now and themes as romanticism, escapism and the sublime are at the core of making it. In this introduction I’ll do a retrospect on what I made before and what I’m working on now.

Earlier work

About ten years ago, I made a shift in the media I used. While studying in the painting department of my Bachelor's, I started using photography. I became attracted to remote and vast landscapes, but they also urged me to manipulate them. I did that by putting a person and/or object in the landscape, to make the scene feel alienating. I wanted to play with nature as we observe it when we, for example, go for a walk in the forest. This way I showed that our recognizable environments can be transformed into a space for mysterious dreams.

The objects I used were, in contrast to the landscape, very man made. Materials like plastic sheets, balloons, pvc pipes or rope. I always tried to find a contrast as well as an agreement with the objects and the landscape. Sometimes I want to emphasize the playfulness or turn the human figure into some divine creature that has floating objects around itself. Human beings are predominant on this planet, but at the same time we are just little creatures in this massive environment.

What kind of role we take in as human beings in nature is still something I want to explore in my work. The human figure in my images is always me, because for me it’s important to really experience that particular moment within the landscape myself. It is about searching for that sublime experience. The experience that is always bound to nature and makes you feel powerful and very small at the time.

Recently

In 2020, I started doing my Master’s degree at Piet Zwart Institute. The covid-19 pandemic broke out in this year and traveling was out of the question. Under Covid restrictions, I started working in the studio to make self-constructed landscapes. I wanted to escape the reality I inhabited. Missing the possibility to go places, at first I wanted to make landscapes that look like Earth. When I was forced to cancel my trip to the Alps I started to build my own snowy mountains. Later I became interested in traveling even further and became inspired by distant expeditions and images from other planets. I started to incorporate the alien aspect in these self-constructed landscapes. Some of the images evoke uncanniness that speaks of alien landscapes, dreams of the ‘otherworldly’ and science fiction cinema. Through my miniaturisation of landscape photography, I have been able to focus on photography as image making rather than recording. Instead of capturing an image, I created an image from scratch by building a landscape myself. This gives a lot of control in the image-making. I developed interesting methods within this project to explore themes of escapism and traveling within strict limitations. The works deceives the viewer, creating a sublime landscape from otherwise prosaic materials. This way I want to challenge the notion of the imagined sublime and our willingness to believe in it.

Now

In 2021, when traveling was accessible again, I made a series of photographs in the Swiss Alps. In this series I approached the mountains as beings. They seem in constant motion by the changing light and the clouds lurking over them. Where normally the mountains of Switzerland are associated with the picturesque, I wanted to show the roughness of the landscape. After a lot of driving, climbing and walking, the mountains seemed to be ‘coming at me’. I felt shaky and light in my head. This force of nature took me over. The landscapes are isolated and in most of the photographs there’s no trace of humans. They become alienating. Through the black and white, I show the roughness and purity of the surroundings.

While photographing outside again, I've noticed that my gaze had changed. Whereas I normally pack a lot of materials and equipment, I now made this series with one camera and lens. I didn’t take ‘props’ but only focused on the mountains themselves. I was more focused on getting close instead of capturing the vastness of the landscape. The textures and tactile-ness in this work made me want to create mountains out of other materials myself again.

At the moment I am building landscapes out of natural materials again, but also out of very human-made materials such as 3D prints. I'm researching the question: 'What does it mean when you construct a landscape?'. We live in the Anthropocene, the 'geological era of man', in which the (disastrous) influence of man is present everywhere on earth.

What, How, Why

Series of mountains

What

A series of photographs made in the mountains of Switzerland. The photographs differ from close-ups where you can see the structures and details of the surfaces, to medium shots where you can see the mountain tops as a whole. They are made on black and white film and are all taken with the same lens. The landscapes are isolated. In most of the photographs there’s no trace of humans.

How

Whereas I normally pack a lot of materials and equipment, I now made this series with one camera and lens. I didn’t take ‘props’ but only focused on the mountains themselves and getting close by using a telelens. I used a black and white film so I could focus on the shapes and the light falling on the mountains. Also, shooting analog makes me more focused on making clear decisions where with a digital camera I’d be constantly checking the results.

Why

In this series I approached the mountains as beings. They seem in constant motion by the changing light and the clouds lurking over them. Where normally the mountains of Switzerland are associated with the picturesque, I wanted to show the roughness of the landscape. After a lot of driving, climbing and walking, the mountains seemed to ‘come at me’. I felt shaky and light in my head. This force of nature took me over. The landscapes are isolated and in most of the photographs there’s no trace of humans. By capturing the mountains in black and white, I’m showing the roughness and purity of them.

References/ (annotated) bibliography

[I added this, from your proposal.]

Conversations with landscape – Karl Benediktsson, Katrin Anna Lund

Conversations With Landscape moves beyond the conventional dualisms associated with landscape, exploring notions of landscape and its relation with humans through the metaphor of conversation. With contributions drawn from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, geography, archaeology, philosophy, literature and the visual arts, this book explores the affects and emotions engendered in the conversations between landscape and humans.

Examples: the making of 40 photographs - Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams talks about the situations around the making of his photos and the methods he used to realize them. Each image is accompanied by a text that studies the technical and aesthetic conditions of the subject and contains memories of the places and people involved.

Space is the place – Lukas Feireiss

Together with artists, designers, architects, curators, historians, theoreticians and philosophers, it questions the experience, imagination and design of spaces and places in theory and practice. The publication looks at contemporary artistic practices that turn spaces into places. Space and place are explored as topics and mediums of playful investigation and serious reflection.

Landscape and power – W.J.T. Mitchell

A studie on landscape by considering landscape not simply as an object to be seen or a text to be read, but as an instrument of cultural force, a central tool in the creation of national and social identities

The Living Mountain - Nan Shepherd

Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms.

Mountains Of The Mind - Robert Mcfarlane

In Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind, he sets out to explain what drives people to the mountains in their droves, and especially what drives those who are prepared to risk their lives in pursuit of a particular summit.

Natural:Mind - Vilém Flusser

Flusser investigates the paradoxical connection between the concepts of nature and culture through a para-phenomenological analysis of natural and cultural phenomena.

Henri Lefèbvre - The production of space

The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space and real space. In the course of his exploration, Lefèbvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city.

Aldo Leopold: Think like a mountain

Robert Mcfarlane: a lot of books

The Sublime Anthropocene - Byron Willisto

A Terrible Beauty: Art and learning in the Anthropocene - Shiralee Hudson Hill

The Sublime - Simon Morley

Timothy Morton

Clive Hamilton

Bruno Latour