Landscape Photography Repertoire
Reshooting the American landscape—again
Union Point | Yosemite Valley | Carleton Watkins & Eadweard Muybridge
Part One The Black Art
They called it the black art because of the silver-nitrate. It stained your fingers. There was no way to avoid getting it on your hands—you were always in too much of a hurry. You had to coat the glass plate evenly with a liquid solution of gun cotton and ether, sensitize it in silver-nitrate, transfer it into a holder in total darkness, make your exposure, remove the plate and develop it all while it was still wet. Once it dried it was not nearly as sensitive to light. This was the wet collodion process and it was the height of photographic technology in 1872 when Eadweard Muybridge lugged himself, his mammoth plate camera, his portable darkroom, and all the necessary chemicals to Union point above the Yosemite Valley to make a photograph that was the beginning of a tradition.
Muybridge was not the first photographer in the Yosemite Valley. Carleton Watkins made his reputation there ten years earlier and by 1872 was already selling prints in his extravagant San Francisco gallery. But by placing his tripod in almost exactly the same spot where Watkins made his photograph, Muybridge was beginning the tradition of going out of his way to capture an image almost exactly like one previously captured by another photographer. He was shooting the repertoire—that collection of familiar locations that have gradually become the staple of landscape photography. Year after year, these same locations are photographed in nearly the same way and year after year publishers print the shots in magazines, books, calendars, cards and advertisements.
The musical repertoire includes works from the sixteenth century through the late twentieth century, but the repertoire—the idea of the repertoire—began on March 11, 1829 when the twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn, having emerged from a career as one of history's most celebrated child prodigies, took a break from writing his first string quartet and arranged a performance of a monumental piece by a composer unknown to the German public: J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion. This enormous work, lasting about three hours, must have been unlike anything the audience at the Berlin Singakademie had ever heard. This was the first performance of the St. Matthew Passion since its premiere in 1727. Until then, music was generally forgotten after a composer's death. According to legend, a substantial amount of Bach's work was lost because the music held less value than the paper upon which it was printed. With the exception of a few librarians such as Barron von Sweetow, remembered for astonishing Mozart with a few glimpses of his collection, history had forgotten Bach and his music. The nineteenth century audience craved new work and, much like today's pop stars and movie studios, composers catered to this demand, constantly churning out pieces. Perhaps the audience demanded more than Mendelssohn could create or maybe he was frustrated at his failure to surpass his exceptional teenage works such as the String Octet and the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture. Whatever the reason, when Mendelssohn reached back into the past and presented his audience with a work unheard for over a century he changed the course of music in a way he never could have by composing. He created the repertoire—the old was new again. The St. Matthew Passion has been performed consistently ever since.
The music repertoire has evolved gradually since Mendelssohn's day. The consensus with musicians is that history chooses the repertoire and, like dirty water passing through limestone, the best works are retained while the rest are filtered out and quickly forgotten. To predict which works would survive has proven impossible. There is no feature common to the works of the repertoire; neither form, size, nor style guarantees a place. Initial audience reaction is no assurance, either. The musical repertoire has as many works that were loved at their premiere as were booed off the stage. The only common thread that ties the repertoire together is the vague notion of creative genius and impeccable craftsmanship.
Tempting as it may be to imagine a similar process at work with photographs—that of all the possible locations, a few are consistently photographed and published only on the basis of some nebulous attribute inherent within them—there is one thing common to almost all popular landscape photography subjects. Almost every piece in the landscape photography repertoire can be shot from a parking lot.
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©2003 Mark Meyer