41 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

Friday, 14^th September, 2012

Left Right Here

Aughris/Dunmoran, Sligo

Copyright Mark King 2012

 

40 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

Friday, 14^th September, 2012

Easkey, Sligo

Dreams of riding 3’-4’ clean, smooth left handers at Easkey Left are disappearing. Since we have been here it seems the wind has been blowing, blowing strong and blowing in the wrong direction. Today seems no exception.

We drove across late yesterday afternoon from Lackan Bay after checking a couple other spots. The wind, whilst coming from the southwest was strong but hadn’t completely ripped apart the waves. Last night it switched, broad siding us with north westerlies. Rain lashed down in droves and a restless night was had. It’s beginning to depress me.

The sun is shining this morning but I feel rain is inevitable. We need to find a computer and check the wind for the next few days.

In 11 days I have had 1 day of near perfect waves. Oh the wind!

Having had a brief look at a swell chart it looks like we should be getting plenty of swell but with it the wind which ranges from west to southwest through to northwest and strong whichever direction.The only thing to do, I guess, is sit it out.

I wonder if Shaun’s around.

Aughris/Dunmoran

 

 The corner of the beach offers us some shelter but again no-one is in. A couple of guys have checked it but both have left. One guy was Irish; the other I think was Ozzie, although he may have been a Kiwi because he seemed to be of Maori or Aborigine in descent.

Talking to the Ozzie (?) guy he mentioned Kilcummin Harbour. I should have checked it out because it works on a westerly. It doesn’t matter how many times I read this guide book I always seem to miss the obvious.

Lackan Bay is the other side of Kilcummin Harbour and I missed it.

On listening to them talk I heard the Irish guy say that this beach is best surfed high or low and not in-between, so for now I will wait. Although the guide book states it can be surfed on all tides local knowledge is key and the book can misinform.

On The Spiritual

Vernon posits that to be hesitant in regards to religion runs the risk of staying your spiritual life. It is possible to be spiritual without being religious but you might not get very far. How can I align myself with a religion such as Christianity when I hear of Koran burning bigots like the American pastor I heard yesterday on the radio speaking in regards to the recent anti-Islam film?

It is easy to love thy neighbour when your neighbour belongs to the same group as yourself. However, as Vernon goes on to say this connection to your own is also likely to lead you to reject those who are from a different group, as they are deemed a threat.

Sympathetic love was for Plato thought to be morally admirable. To love your friends is easy; the true moral hero would be the person who can love those with whom they have little natural sympathy.

In the words of humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), calm your spirit. Then you will see the power of the divine – of life – all around and flowing through you.     

Bibliography

Cotton C, 2007 The Photograph As Contemporary Art Thames & Hudson: London

De Botton A, 2003 The Art of Travel Penguin: London

Grunenberg C and Pih D, 2011 Magritte A to Z Tate/London

Newby E, 1995 A Book of Travellers’ Tales Pan Books Ltd: London

Perlmutter D and Koppman D, 1999 Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art: Contemporary Cross-cultural Perspectives State University of New York Press: New York

Smyth D Editor, 2012 British Journal of Photography Oct Issue 7805

Sontag S, 2002 On Photography Penguin Group: London

Tolstoy L, 1969 What Is Art? And Essays on Art London: University Press Oxford

Turner V, 1967 The Forest of Symbols Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

Turner V, 1969 The Ritual Process Penguin 1969

Various, 1987 The Age of God-Kings 3000-1500 BC Time Life Books: USA

Vernon M, 2012 God The Big Questions Quercus: London

 Mark King 2012

39 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

Thursday, 13^th September, 2012

Lackan Bay, Mayo

Woke up to a clean 1’-2’. Joy

With the day came the wind. Howling westerlies blew off-shore making conditions very unfavourable. The wind I could cope with but the waves mostly closed-out. Maybe later?

 

 Progress – Vernon states is a relatively recent notion that developed out of the Renaissance relating to “the organizing principle of social life and human learning within the West”. (Vernon. 2012. P.61)

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) believed that “we can no longer be “lookers on”, passive contemplators of Nature and her mysteries, but must connect to this mission, to progress”. (Vernon. 2012. P63) Yet for the most, it seems to me that we still seem to be passive observers as photography and painting often highlight.

Bibliography

Cotton C, 2007 The Photograph As Contemporary Art Thames & Hudson: London

De Botton A, 2003 The Art of Travel Penguin: London

Grunenberg C and Pih D, 2011 Magritte A to Z Tate/London

Newby E, 1995 A Book of Travellers’ Tales Pan Books Ltd: London

Perlmutter D and Koppman D, 1999 Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art: Contemporary Cross-cultural Perspectives State University of New York Press: New York

Smyth D Editor, 2012 British Journal of Photography Oct Issue 7805

Sontag S, 2002 On Photography Penguin Group: London

Tolstoy L, 1969 What Is Art? And Essays on Art London: University Press Oxford

Turner V, 1967 The Forest of Symbols Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

Turner V, 1969 The Ritual Process Penguin 1969

Various, 1987 The Age of God-Kings 3000-1500 BC Time Life Books: USA

Vernon M, 2012 God The Big Questions Quercus: London

Copyright Mark King 2012

38 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

Wednesday, 12^th September, 2012

Left Right Here

Lackan Bay, Mayo, Ireland

Copyright Mark King

 

37 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

 

Wednesday, 12^th September, 2012

Crab – Not Reading a Newspaper

Lackan Bay, Mayo

Copyright Mark King 2012

 

 

36 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

Wednesday, 12^th September, 2012

Lackan Bay, Mayo

Yesterday evening brought a super clean wave in the corner of the bay. As the bay swept around the waves grew in size with the wind having an effect. On the headland huge waves crashed against the solid, immovable headland. It bode well for the morning but we were greeted by north westerlies which as I look out of the van are having a detrimental effect on the surface of the ocean. Whilst the swell has calmed down chop is forming across the small waves. Maybe later?

Since finishing at university I have adopted a system of rational thought when it comes to picture making. This I feel maybe counter intuitive because rather than producing images that are felt they are more thought. I think this is often the case with art rather than producing feeling the work in front of you tends towards thought. Thought tends to be rational. We take a step back and objectify. Whilst we may initially adopt a Kantian perspective of first exercising judgements of beauty based on taste we then begin to make judgements based on categorization, classification, conceptualizing or intellectualizing. The latter set of criteria appears to me to be related to modern science.

 

 The camera is able to make, as William James highlights, the ordinary become extraordinary but as Sontag sets out this approach is part of photography’s historical perspective. Ultimately, for Sontag the photograph, unlike painting can never truly transcend its subject or the visual itself. Whilst the photograph discloses, the painter constructs. For photography the “identification of the subject…always dominates our perception of it” whereas this is not necessarily the case for painting, what is of primary importance for photography is what the photograph is of and until the viewer knows this Sontag believes that they are unable to react. (Sontag 2002          H Edgerton “Milkdrop Coronet” 1957                                                          P92)  In  highlighting a image by Harold Edgerton (1903-90) Sontag states that what looks like a bare coronet becomes more interesting when it is perceived as a splash of milk. However, for me the image then becomes less interesting because I know it is a splash of milk.                                                  

This notion brings to mind the work of the Belgian surrealist artist Magritte (1898-1967) who questioned the relationship between the image and the written word

Is changing the ordinary into the extraordinary enough? What more can a photograph achieve? Maybe I need to follow the manifesto Provoke by Japanese photographers Takuma Nakahira (b. 1938), Daido Moriyama (b. 1938), Yutaka Takanashi (b. 1935) and the writer Koji Taki (1928-2011) and implement the transformation, “First, throw out verisimilitude”.

On Objects

I have collected objects from each site. These objects marked my taking a souvenir from each site of pilgrimage.

If we look at Magritte and his influence during the mid 1920s from the work of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) we see that he found the idea of “creating an image abstracted or separated from a real object abhorrent”. (Grunenberg and Pih. 2011. P6) Whilst Magritte’s ideas related to abstract, non-figurative or formless art, for me, they can also relate to the photographic image hence the representation of the found object with the photographic image.

In reference to Provoke does the work of Moriyama, Nakahira, Takanashi, and Taki not reinforce Sontag’s view that “photographic seeing has to be constantly renewed with new shocks, whether of subject matter or technique, so as to produce the impression of violating ordinary vision”? (Sontag. 2002. P99) As the work of the then Japanese avant-garde, Paul Strand (1890-1976) and Edward Weston (1886-1958) become more assimilated their ways of seeing simply become, as Sontag posits, a cliché.

What were Provoke attempting to battle? Was it the photographic tendency towards beauty and order?

What Provoke seem to fit into is the then contemporary taste of the late 1970), as does the work of American photographer and filmmaker William Klein (b. 1928) and as Sontag highlights the work of French photographer Atget (1857-1927). This style of not being technically perfect goes against the modernist view of Weston whom devoted himself to the perfect print.

Imperfect technique, as Sontag sets out broke what she deemed the “sedate equation of Nature and beauty”. (Sontag. 2002. P102) Rather than Nature fitting into what I would call a Wordsworthian object of contemplation it has, for Sontag become more a subject for indignation and a sentimental yearning for the past, a notion that seems to point towards my project, “Left Right Here”.

Whether it be the work of the Bauhaus, Weston, Klein or Moriyama photography, to Sontag still beautifies and even when the camera is cruel a different kind of beauty manifests itself. It is to my mind the canon of beauty by which everyday people judge both photographs and art.

From a socially conscious point of view “Left Right Here” aims to do what moralists demand from a photograph, that it speak. However, I do feel that the written word should reinforce rather than take over, as the example of Edgerton’s coronet shows. The two should compliment each other for when the text explains, it can, I feel then diminish the power of the picture. The text also limits, as Sontag states because it is only one interpretation.

Ultimately to photograph is to produce what Sontag calls an “item for aesthetic appreciation”. (Sontag. 2002. P. 110) 

Bibliography

Cotton C, 2007 The Photograph As Contemporary Art Thames & Hudson: London

De Botton A, 2003 The Art of Travel Penguin: London

Grunenberg C and Pih D, 2011 Magritte A to Z Tate/London

Newby E, 1995 A Book of Travellers’ Tales Pan Books Ltd: London

Perlmutter D and Koppman D, 1999 Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art: Contemporary Cross-cultural Perspectives State University of New York Press: New York

Smyth D Editor, 2012 British Journal of Photography Oct Issue 7805

Sontag S, 2002 On Photography Penguin Group: London

Tolstoy L, 1969 What Is Art? And Essays on Art London: University Press Oxford

Turner V, 1967 The Forest of Symbols Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

Turner V, 1969 The Ritual Process Penguin 1969

Various, 1987 The Age of God-Kings 3000-1500 BC Time Life Books: USA

Vernon M, 2012 God The Big Questions Quercus: London

Copyright Mark King 2012

 

35 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

Tuesday, 11^th September, 2012

Easkey, Sligo

Last night brought the wind; huge gusts rocked the van throughout. With it came the rain in swathes of torrential downpours, falling like salvos of arrows, thousands of heavy arrows. As soon as it would start, it would seem to stop. 

So today we move along the coast to Lackan Bay where I hope we get some shelter from the on-shore winds.

I have been feeling a bit perturbed, chasing waves hoping to find a clean ride-able wave but as Vernon states “the fruits of the chase do not just feed the body. They also clothe the soul.” (Vernon. 2012. P. 40)

Lackan Bay, Mayo

Shelter, we have shelter. The corner of the bay near the harbour has a clean ride-able wave, off-shore even. Rain is falling now but in-between the showers the sun is shining and it was sun that shone over the bay as we dropped down over the hill, filling our vision with bright greens and blues. Large sea birds, maybe guillemots or cormorants are diving for sand-eel or maybe baby mackerel just in front. Within the stretch of these clean peeling waves no-one is to be found. The line-up is empty.

Entering the water off the rocks was again a bit nervy. Anticipation is always the biggest fear but in knowing the bottom was sand and the nearest peak wasn’t to far away and feeling the cool soft ocean helped relieve the nerves. It was good to get wet.   

 

Bibliography

Cotton C, 2007 The Photograph As Contemporary Art Thames & Hudson: London

De Botton A, 2003 The Art of Travel Penguin: London

Newby E, 1995 A Book of Travellers’ Tales Pan Books Ltd: London

Perlmutter D and Koppman D, 1999 Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art: Contemporary Cross-cultural Perspectives State University of New York Press: New York

Sontag S, 2002 On Photography Penguin Group: London

Tolstoy L, 1969 What Is Art? And Essays on Art London: University Press Oxford

Turner V, 1967 The Forest of Symbols Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

Turner V, 1969 The Ritual Process Penguin 1969

Various, 1987 The Age of God-Kings 3000-1500 BC Time Life Books: USA

Vernon M, 2012 God The Big Questions Quercus: London

Copyright Mark King 2012

 

34 IRELAND - The Quiet, The Green, The Clean Empty Waves

Monday, 10^th September, 2012

Left Right Here

Easkey Right, Sligo, Ireland

Copyright Mark King 2012