I am writing a new picture book called LEVELS OF INTIMACY. It is about my relationships as a photographer, to individuals, society and to the earth we share.
The paragraph below from the beginning of the book.
“Within Protestantism, especially of northwestern Europe and the U.S. , it is believed that we have rightful 'God given' dominion over all living things. Therefore, we may do with them as we wish, with this notion often only regarding corporate profits while disregarding the well-being of plants, animals, societies and individuals, including our own grandchildren.
We leave in our wake across the earth, in the soil and the seas and now in the atmosphere terrible scars of our avarice, ignorance and pride.
In the midst of this, I imagine an intimacy between myself and the eternity of nature. It is imagined because it is compromised by our collective ignorance, by my own limitations of knowledge and by my inability to fight every necessary battle.
Standing before nature I have a private dialogue: ‘can the elemental light and forms of my images reveal the eternal nature of mountains and oceans?’
Of course not, but it is a compelling engagement with my own destiny.”
CHAIR, TERRACE AND LANDSCAPE, Tuscany; where a spell cast by cloud cover, fog, mist, haze and the shrouded distant buildings and mountains viewable from the single chair upon the otherwise empty terrace topped turret. Ancient lands, ancient stories revealing the struggle between wilderness and civilisation. Mid 1980s Photograph: Robert Golden/TopFoto
I never thought of myself as a landscape photographer but nor did I not think of myself as a photographer who, in many circumstances, would be drawn to photograph broad vistas or details of nature within a landscape.
I grew up thinking of myself as a photographer, a person who would frame anything which spoke of beauty, purity, innocence, simplicity and perhaps of images that could take part in describing human endeavour and/or human folly as part of a way to tell a story or elaborate an essay.
Lake District, UK, Mid 1980s; Photograph: Robert Golden/TopFoto
Coming across this view was as if being transported into a fairytale with the path both calling us down but also asking others to come up the winding path to our hilltop vista.
HILLS AND CLOUDS, Lake District, UK, early 1980s Photograph: Robert Golden/TopFoto
The elements – clouds, rain, hills and valleys were embracing each other.
This image, with little shadow detail and simple but imposing forms reveal each other. They address the power of simple images.
FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS The three landscapes above were shot with the square format Hasselblad on film rather than digitally. You can see the softness and the grain structure of the film. The limited range of tonality, from 1 to 264* disallowed seeing into the shadows and the highlights in the same picture but for the use of the joint invention of two great American landscape photographers, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, both of whom were responsible for the construction of the ZONE SYSTEM which allows an analogue photographer to find a greater control over the exposure, processing and printing for greater than normal tonal detail. See THE ZONE SYSTEM MANUAL
HILLSIDE TREES AT DUSK, nr Sarteano, Tuscany, Italy, 2018 Photograph: Robert Golden/TopFoto
For me there is wonder in the extraordinary ability of digital photography on advanced professional cameras to look into shadows and highlights** and to grasp and enhance details. It should be clear to the viewer that these three images are profoundly different in appearance than the first three.
This is partly because knowing that I can utilise this technology to enhance the look of, as in the case above and below, the sharpness of detail, what previously may have been less attractive has to my taste and desires become desirable to use as metaphor. There is visual richness and enhanced storytelling in the details of things I discover in front of me.
FAST FLOWING RIVER AT DUSK, Veneto, Italy, 2018; Photograph: Robert Golden, TopFoto
NOTES *The human eye is able to see from the darkest shadow to the brightest highlight a ratio of 1: between 1 and 2 million. **My present camera is able to see from 1: 32,000 meaning the silvers and greys of a low English sky are now read by my camera rather than being left as burnt out whites and because of the greater amount of information the lenses, the electronic system and the new digital media are capable of capturing there is hugely enhanced detail.
