From an observational viewpoint, I chose to use video on what could be argued as Romantic landscapes with aesthetic qualities similar to that of Turner or JohnMartin. One of the ideas of the Romantic is its focal point on what is complex in the world such as the overwhelming power of nature. (Brown,2001) The camera was set up like that of those in nature programs, hidden and camouflaged so as not to disturb the natural flow of the environment
Video worked well for my piece as my aim was to capture the subtle things in landscape we wouldn’t usually notice, eg a bird flying past or an autumn leaf falling to earth. This relates to Graham Gussin’s “the Fall” in which an object makes impact with a lake on a wide panned out shot of a landscape.
However, I deliberately kept a clue of human presence in the shot, relating to Casper David Friedrich’s paintings. These clues included a metal railing, a wooden bridge and a ruined chapel. I did not make them to focal point of the shot though; I kept the focus on natural. This was done by the surface of the water being disturbed by, rain or something landing in it distorting the image of the human. However, the image of the natural was also distorted, blending the two worlds rather than setting them off against each other. Hinting at the idea that nature and humans share this planet
Bibliography
Brown, D.B (2001) Romanticism, Phaidon Press
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