There are centuries worth of modes of depiction that are not restricted to the single viewpoint, for photographers to inspect.
(Myles, N. 2020)
When investigating Noel Myles’ work further, I realised that there was more than just a passing affinity with my own practice. This was initially sparked by seeing the above image. I had first seen this as a reproduced, fully Black & White palladium print in Into The Woods. When I saw this version that features both colour and Black & White, I knew I had to dig deeper.
My initial findings are logged here:
AGM62 Compound Tree Photography 7 December 2020
In this video, Noel Myles discusses his work shown at the Minories Gallery in 2013.
The following are relevant transcripts and notes taken from this video:
“Single frame photographs don’t really depict our continuum of life and our sense of transition. I don’t feel that the static viewpoint and that fractional moment that might be comitance to the ‘decisive moment’ adequately conveys our experience of being alive. So I started to explore the pulling together of individual single frames taken over an extended period of time from several viewpoints.”
When discussing two composite images of the same tree using different images, Myles says that, by hanging them side-by-side, it shows:
“There is no definitive view, there’s no definitive composition: you can make as many versions and approaches as you like. And the more you look at these two, the more you see the differences.”
Myles continues with a further breakdown of the story behind these images:
“They started life as palladium prints and what I wanted to do at that time was to break away from the rectangle, the rectangular photograph and, even in some cases, break out of the little individual rectangle.”
When looking at this image, Myles focuses on the details on the upper part of the piece to point out how the individual branches have broken the lines further. Myles states ‘why’:
“I was trying very had to break out of this normal rectangular framework.”
Myles then moves onto these three pieces in which the images have been split up.
The reason behind it, Myles explains, is:
“To try to give a nod to the way the eye moves over a subject. Although the world is not broken up in our vision, we concentrate on certain aspects and half ignore what’s surrounding them. This is one of the motivations behind making these images. The other concern was to try to bring the image up to the surface of the paper to try and deny this recessive depth that you get with in most photographs. You sort of look ‘into’ and you look ‘down’ and I wanted to bring the image up to the surface and stay on the surface.”
“I was also very much aware of one my strongest influences and strongest likes and loves was Cezanne’s watercolour paintings where there are just small, discreet areas of colour and pencil and large areas of white, and the white of the paper is the white of the Provencal light. They’re wonderful evocations of this intense light and it’s almost as if what he was just painting, the little bits of colour you would see, are what was going on in the shadows. These (images) refer to that.”
Myles then moves onto another compound image called ‘A Short Film of Rough Water’.
In the same way Myles photographs his trees by returning to the same one multiple times, he took these images of water from the same bridge over the River Stour. This is of another river, which was taken over a relatively short period of two days.
Myles explained that there is a central image, which was taken when the water was at its shallow-most point. This gives a ‘central weight’ to the image. Myels then ‘builds’ two ‘wings’ (one either side) coming out from this central point, a method that he has used in many of his pieces.
With this work, Myles is questioning ‘what constitutes a photograph as depicting landscape and how varied that depiction can be’.
This video ends with showing further examples of Myles’ compound photography work.
To give a deeper understanding, this an extract from Reframing Photography written by the photographer regarding his Still Films series:
The challenge I faced with photography was that the instantaneous static viewpoint, provided by the camera’s lens and shutter, didn’t represent the continuous flow of the act of looking. It seemed as if the still photograph had been held back to the level of the dictionary; the single word. It was the visual equivalent of overlooking the potential to link words to convey ideas and meaning. I couldn’t accept the notion of an isolated, decisive moment being capable of encapsulating our experience of life.
I photograph whatever catches my eye; accumulating this material over hours, days or weeks. Several visits might be made to the same location. I think of these frames as the components of the photograph, not photographs themselves. The creative part of the process takes place in the studio, away from the camera. I look for formal qualities of line, tone, texture and colour, as well as subject matter, to link the individual units. The composition evolves by adding and removing; searching for harmonious connections. I have worked with both negatives and prints. The negatives were exposed onto a single sheet of platinum and palladium paper. Recently, I have added colour contact prints to earlier palladium photographs; in some cases photographing the same tree a decade later.
It seems to me that photographers have largely adhered to the pictorial conventions that prevailed at the time when photographs were first made permanent. I am surprised that when painters broke away from following renaissance laws of perspective at the end of the 19th century, photographers didn’t go with them. It makes no sense to say photography liberated painters to explore new modes of depiction. It is worth noting the first exhibition of Cezanne’s watercolours in America, was held in Stieglitz’s own gallery, ’291’ in 1911 but seemed to have had little influence on photographers. There are centuries worth of modes of depiction that are not restricted to the single viewpoint, for photographers to inspect.
Perhaps it’s true that good photographs are made, not shot, taken or captured. The task for photographers is to transcend the mirrored anecdote to reveal significance in our surroundings that makes us pause for thought. Perhaps it’s always been this way. I think of my own work as exploring the territory between still photography and moving image, hence the umbrella title ‘Still Films’. My reference points are within painting, not photography. I find constant stimulus in Cezanne’s watercolours, Cubism, Romanesque art and Rothko’s painting.
At the time of writing, I was still processing the information I had discovered. I knew I would have to let it simmer, reread it then see what would result.
After posting this entry, I came across the following video featuring Myles and the collage piece he created while Artist in Residence at ITN.
Images
Figure 1: Noel Myles, Still Film of an Oak at Wormingford No 7, 2011
Figure 2: Montagne Sainte Victoire 1905-6 Paul Cezanne 1839-1906 Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Walpole 1941
Figure 3: Still Life with Water Jug c.1892-3 Paul C?zanne 1839-1906 Bequeathed by C. Frank Stoop 1933
References
Shaw-Miller, L., 2020. Noel Myles: Joining At The Edge :: September 2012 :: Cassone. [online] Cassone-art.com. Available at: <http://www.cassone-art.com/magazine/article/2012/09/noel-myles-joining-at-the-edge/?psrc=photography-and-media> [Accessed 11 December 2020].
Myles, N. Youtube.com. 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0XVBoywgWQ> [Accessed 8 December 2020].
Noel Myles – Artist in Residence at ITN. Youtube.com. 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDwPiAzWIdo> [Accessed 11 December 2020].
Noel Myles | Reframing Photography. [online] Reframingphotography.com. Available at: <https://www.reframingphotography.com/resources/noel-myles> [Accessed 7 December 2020].
Tate. 2020. Paul Cézanne: An Exhibition Of Watercolours – Exhibition At Tate Britain | Tate. [online] Available at: <https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/paul-cezanne-exhibition-watercolours> [Accessed 9 December 2020].
Tate. 2020. ‘Still Life With Water Jug’, Paul Cézanne, C.1892–3 | Tate. [online] Available at: <http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N04725> [Accessed 9 December 2020].
Jennie Meadows MA Photography 