Final Statement

Jenny Hall

http://jenny2809.blogspot.com/

I began by examining our human relationship with nature. Using video in an observational way, I chose to film that which could be argued as Romantic landscapes with aesthetic qualities similar to that of Turner or John Martin. One of the ideas of the Romantic is its overwhelming power of nature. 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 were some stones in the foreground, which at first appear natural, but studying them reveals where they have been shaped by human intervention.  I did not make them the focal point of the shot though; I kept the focus on Nature. The ambiguity of the stone natural or human presence blended the two worlds together, rather than segregating them as the placement of the stones suggest. This hints at the idea that nature and humans share this planet.

The surface of the water being disturbed by rain, or something landing in it, encourages the viewer to look and take the time to notice things. My work aims to make the viewers aware of their own viewing.