Photo-essay - If you go down to the woods
Fig.1 Halsall 2024 If you go down to the woods today
As part of my practical research into adolescence, I wanted to explore night photography. The woods at night represent a veritable playground for adolescence and many others. Unlike a street alley, or a park wooded areas at night represent a stark contrast to daytime visits. At night it feels, ominous and carries with it a potential for folklore and childhood dares. Using a simple point-and-click with built-in flash, the camera focuses on the foreground, capturing colours and shapes the eye can’t perceive.
In low light conditions, the human eye can only perceive black and white, the opposite of photopic vision. Photoreceptors, Cones and Rods, are responsible for capturing light, Cones, for colour and fine detail, Rods for vision in dim, dark light. It’s much faster for our eyes to adapt to bright light than to adjust for the darkness. Cones attain maximum sensitivity in five to seven minutes while rods require thirty to forty-five minutes or more of absolute darkness to attain 80% dark adaptation. Total dark adaptation can take many hours.
This allows me to consider images taken at night, with flash for example, as otherworldly, it is an instance where we allow a camera to reveal a world hidden to us, we are limited by our biology.
Martina Lindqvist, A Thousand Little Suns, 2010. We see the exploration of place, described by alternative light source. The effect of light pollution and its illuminatory qualities, play into Lindqvist’s intention to utilise metaphor.
Fig 2. Linqvist 2010. Untitled 03 (A Thousand Little Suns)
"In this sense, the artifical light encroaching on the forest might be seen as a metaphor of a nature/culture dichotomy. Located by the photographer at a threshold between culture and nature, do we dare take a few steps farther into the forest - into the unknown " (ALEXANDER, 2021)
The darkness, the ‘suggestion’ of a path, which may or may not exist in the negative space with the images maybe why photographing familiar places at night become loaded with a sense of foreboding.
Similarly Paul Seawright, The Forest, depicts liminal spaces, familiar yet empty, his work, The Forest, depicts trees illuminated by the orange glow of streetlight.
“Because there is such a division between what we can see and what we cannot see (the fall off of the light does not allow for much penetration into the forest edge) what belongs there (the trees, underbrush and roadside curbs) and what doesn’t belong there (us), these are photographs that place the viewer into the shoes of the vulnerable.” (Whiskets 2007)
Fig 3. Seawright 2001. From the Series The Forest
I intend to refine this process, what intrigues me is the concept that through this process a familiar landscape becomes unfamiliar, and the existence of the image as a photograph creates conflict with our notion of what is depicted, what we can see, and what we can’t.
REFERENCES
ALEXANDER, J. A. P. 2021. Perspectives on Place: Theory and practice in landscape photography. ROUTLEDGE.
LINDQVIST, M. 2010. A Thousand Little Suns. Martina Lindqvist [online]. Available at: https://www.martinalindqvist.com/athousandlittlesuns01.html (accessed at 30 August 2024)
WHISKETS, L. .2007. Forest by Paul Seawright. 5b4 Blogspot [online]. Available at: https://5b4.blogspot.com/2007/11/forest-by-paul-seawright.html (accessed at 30 August 2024)
SEAWRIGHT, P L. .2001. The Forest. Paul Seawright [online]. Available at: https://www.paulseawright.com/the-forestight.html (accessed at 30 August 2024)
FIGURES
Fig 1. HALSALL 2024 If you go down to the woods today.
Fig 2. LINDQVIST, Martina. 2010. Untitled 03. A Thousand Little Suns. Martina Lindqvist [online]. Available at: https://www.martinalindqvist.com/athousandlittlesuns01.html (accessed at 30 August 2024)
Fig 3. SEAWRIGHT, Paul. 2001. The Forest. Paul Seawright [online]. Available at: https://www.paulseawright.com/the-forestight.html (accessed at 30 August 2024)