Photography (and neither painting nor film) is the nearest artistic source of contemporary conceptions of the natural sublime.  And with good reason:

This image just about stops my heart.  It is majestic and serene, austere and wild, menacing and yet perfectly balanced. And far more than its informative caption: “Icebergs float in the calm waters of a fjord, south of Tasiilaq in eastern Greenland August 4, 2009.”  (To get the full effect of this Arctic vista, see it at The Big Picture.)  The broad, encompassing horizontal field seems to expand infinitely, and yet the sharp angle of the berg in the foreground is paralleled by the ominous thunderhead on the left, as if they were two tectonic plates shearing across each other.  Between them the light of a fading sun recedes to the vanishing point.  Could Valhalla be too far beyond that horizon?

This scene is so elemental–water, air, earth, and fire–that it seems to bring us to the edge of reality itself.  And yet we are the supernatural beings here: for we see but are not seen.  And we can view the cold, harsh elements at the world’s edge because we stand safely on some unseen platform–most likely, on a boat.

This photograph of the port of Nuuk on July 6, 2009 is in many ways the opposite of sublime.  Instead of elemental and awesome, it is crowded, busy, varied, jumbled–even when stilled, supposedly at rest, it is a riot of color and variation.  Boats of every size, shape, and purpose are wedged together.  Nature’s dangers are still implicit in the scene: the boats huddle together because the barren hills will provide little protection from northern winds whipping down a narrow channel.  But this is an image of vitality, of life thriving far beyond moss on a wind-swept rock.

Although no people are visible in this picture, we are everywhere: bustling and creative, but still having to hug the shore.  The welter of masts, poles, cranes, and wires makes a mess of the visual field, but those boats are the only basis on  which we can even see other images of natural beauty.  One problem is that these two visions are kept apart, even though they come from and need to coexist in the same place.  There are many factors in this enforced separation: social, political, and economic practices not least among them.  We need to consider, however, how the artistic medium itself is part of the problem.

It remains easy to see nature in one place and human activity somewhere else as long as each is sequestered within its own visual field.  To have both–in reality, not merely as images–we have to think carefully about how we use our images.  Without images of natural splendor, an important incentive for conservation is lost; without sustainable economic and social practices, the natural environment will continue to be ruined while images serve a psychology of denial among those otherwise separated from the leading edge of destruction.

Fortunately, photography also can be a part of the solution.  Just as the individual photograph can both inspire (think of the image of the whole Earth floating in space) and mislead (as when nature and culture are placed in separate still images), photography can help lead the way to imagining how to integrate separate visions.  Sound ecological design has to include both the sublime and the practical, but not in separate places.

Photographs by Slim Allagui/AFP/Getty Images and Bob Strong/Reuters.

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You might wonder what you are seeing in this photograph:

Look closely, and you will see a clump of trees.  Some might also recognize the even rows of high-tech, monocultural agriculture stretched across the plain.  But I’ve given too much away, as you also could have seen a clump of mold or cells bunched together in some microscopic field.  Beneath the surface, one might also “see” some more elemental social form such as herd animals pressing together for warmth or even an ark adrift in barren sea.  Whatever it is, it is visually striking: one blot of rich green on a uniformly reddish-brown background etched with small modulations in black.  Scale becomes elastic while form and color dominate in any register.  There is something basic here, but what?

Perhaps some content would help.  The caption in the New York Times read: “Small islands of forest dot the landscape of farms and ranches, fulfilling regulations to maintain percentages of native forest on agricultural properties. Driven by profits derived from fertile soil, the region’s dense forests have been aggressively cleared over the past decade, and Mato Grosso is now Brazil’s leading producer of soy, corn and cattle, exported across the globe by multinational companies.”

OK, it is a photograph of trees in a field.  Trees saved to maintain a forestation quota, in a field of soybeans produced for the international commodity markets.  The additional information and the political subtext are helpful, but a problem remains.  Note how the photo’s ambiguity in scale is also there in the text.  We are seeing something “small,” and also something that extends “across the globe.”  And, sure enough, the story behind the picture is one that identifies the tension between localized benefits and global costs.  Life might be simple if one could focus exclusively on one dimension or the other: manage the forests for the planet, or allow economic development wherever possible.  But, of course, the problem is that both are needed.  One has to be able to see both locally and globally, a bifocal vision that itself does not come cheap.

Some might argue that the picture is unfair.  It looks as if only the trees are natural, whereas in a few months the entire field also would be a vibrant green.  Frankly, “nature” is becoming an outmoded term, and protecting nature or biodiversity or carbon dioxide levels or any other ecological value involves both technological savvy and a recognition that life is everywhere, even in burning forests for commodity cropping.  The photo is not so much fair or unfair, however, as it is profound.  It captures something essential, a sense of what is at stake.  That small island of trees can stand in for everything from a tiny cell to the planet itself, and the point is always the same: no matter what the scale, life on earth is a small, precious island amidst a void.

The image is ironic as well: trees having no need of human intervention evoke something like sympathy, whereas the field is an achievement of human productivity that will produce historically astonishing yields capable of feeding millions. But, of course, it’s not that simple.  The fields will wither if the carbon dioxide levels get out of whack, and the deeper irony is that what feeds us can kill us.  Just as indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin learn to discriminate poisons, medicines, and foods carefully in the forest, moderns need to learn to do the same in respect to their remaking of the forest.  In each case, one needs to learn to see, but not in the same way.

In this case, the photograph provides one lesson in how to see modern development: as if cultured for observation, both up close and from a distance, on behalf of sustainable growth, and capable of extinction.

Photograph by Damon Winter/The New York Times.

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One of the attractions of the beach is that so many distinctions seem to melt away into the broad expanses of  sun, sea, and sand.  Nature offers the same three elements to whoever is there, and there seems to be room enough for everyone, and–for the day, anyway–what more does anyone really need?  But, of course, even when life’s a beach, it is a life lived one way rather than another.  This image from the Hamptons is one example of what I mean.

I had to stare at this image initially to make sure that it was a photograph.  The pictorial values are evocative of the seaside reveries that were a favorite subject for painters around 1900.  (For one example having a tone similar to this scene, see Calm Morning (1904) by Frank Weston Benson.)  But if life is following art at the Hamptons, the closer source might be a J. Crew catalog.  The causal wealth on display here reflects that narrow niche of class and ethnicity, starting with the gorgeous blue and white beach towels.  The rest of the scene is more subdued, but the pattern continues: her pink and white shirt, the white breaker of the emerald wave,  white umbrellas on orange or yellow poles, the green chair between sand and sea foam.  Somehow this world is both colorful and very white.

The blue and white towels create a space of privileged intimacy within the scene, one mirrored by the second couple as well.  One member of each pair is eating and listening, savoring, as if there is no hurry, no need to worry about running out of time or anything else.  We see them from behind, while standing at a respectful distance, as if servants waiting to be summoned.  The photo depicts a summer idyll and also the image of an ideal life, but only for the few.

It should not be surprising that people of wealth can seem so at home in an image that appears to be an oil painting.  The photographer’s achievement has been to capture a representative moment in a social stratum by evoking the appropriate pictorial tone from another art and time, albeit while also channeling the commercial iconography that defines that way of life the present.  There is more than one beach, however, and more than one way to use a camera.

The caption in the Times (the source for both photos) read, “An early arrival at Orchard Beach in the Bronx staked out his territory on Saturday.  Estimates put the crowd at 59,000 by 5 p.m.”  I think this shot is hilarious.  It might as well be Rodney Dangerfield taking a break from Caddyshack.  The guy is a scandal according to the social and aesthetic values of the other photo: damn near naked, exposed to the world, but not before drawing a line in the sand that serves as a big “Keep Out” sign.  He looks like a beached whale with attitude, and instead of being huddled in luxury he’s stripped the day down to its essentials: bike, just enough clothing to be decent, a towel just big enough for his body, and a poor man’s moat to keep the 59,000 other people out of his face.

This slice of life on the other side of the cabana is presented courtesy of another photographic perspective. Instead of the faux intimacy of the painting, we have a documentary angle, seeing the subject from the side and set in context, as if a subject for sociological study.  And yet the distance is still respectful, allowing him the sovereignty of his temporary kingdom.  Unlike the Hamptons photograph, there is no implicit invitation via the fashion code to wish–or buy–our way into the scene.

One photo is from the beginning of summer and the other comes much closer to the end, but that is the least of their differences.  The question, however, is not which is the better way of life.  I’m not sure there even need be a question.  May you find your beach in what little summer remains.

Photographs by Jemal Countess/WireImage and Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times.

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Photographs can show us not only what was in front of the camera but also ways of seeing.  Two recent photos from Afghanistan each present a scene and at least two different perspectives on what is seen.  Although not representative of all the images being taken there, they can illustrate a dilemma confounding attempts to understand that distant country.

The caption at the New York Times stated that “An Afghan police officer stood guard Thursday in Kabul during a campaign stop by Ashraf Ghani, a presidential candidate.”  But is it the policeman or his silhouette?  Are we seeing his shadow cast on a wall, or is it him with everything but his outline obscured by the intense contrast between darkness and light?  One can’t be sure whether we are seeing reality or a mirage.

This illegibility that comes from casting the Afghanis in darkness can be taken in at least two ways.  We may be seeing the continuing projection, as if a movie on the wall, of a colonial world.  The local (client) militia are there in our stead, complete with colonial cap and weapons supplied by the West, but they remain shadows rather than people, much less a force to be reckoned with.  Dark, ephermeral, and mere cutouts of the Western military they are imitating, they represent only the outline of civilization against a barren backdrop close to the state of nature.  Their culture is likewise located in darkness, signified here only by the enigmatic figure in traditional garb on the right–is he being guarded or merely a spectator?  Mystery and danger are mingled together in the darkness that hides those who, for whatever reason, avoid the light–and enlightenment.

The darkness will be cooler than the sun-blasted street, however, and the photographer could be showing us not only what was there but also how little we can know about it at a glance.  (The image will have been selected for its visual distinctiveness, of course, but that doesn’t solve the interpretive problem.)  In fact, the silhouettes (whether actual or apparent) present a more accurate corollary to the caption: we are seeing exactly that–an officer standing guard–and nothing more.  For the rest, you have to not only see more but know more.  Stated otherwise, you know almost nothing about “Ashraf Ghani, a presidential candidate” from this photo, or about anything else of the event it depicts.  Thus, the photograph does the neat trick of not only documenting what is there–which may include traces of colonial relationships still present today–but also highlighting our ignorance about what we are seeing.

In sum, the photograph presents one scene but two mentalities: Someone can see it through the lens of orientalism, where the exotic other is not quite real and so a blend of fact and fiction, mystery and danger, an object of fear or desire but never an equal; or one can see it with an awareness of the ignorance that comes from not being there, not knowing the language, and having to depend on this small fragment of an image to add to what meager knowledge we might have.  Nor does one have to choose which interpretation is most real–that would be like trying to determine whether one is seeing a person or his silhouette.   And, of course, if you have to ask. . . .

With that tension in mind, take a look at this photograph:

The Times caption identifies these figures as Afghans at a cemetary in Kabul.  And so they are.  And, as above, the adults (those wholly socialized into their culture) are black figures, unidentifiable save as types.  Like the seated figure above, they have their backs to the viewer.  Are they shrouded in their culture and still oriented toward the past, or are we being reminded of how little we know about this place and the people who love, grieve, live, and die there?

Photographs by Tyler Hicks/New York Times and Massoud Hossaini/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images.

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Whether traveling or just hanging out at the beach or barbeque, summer is thought of as a time to actually look at the world.  You might be watching an ant working at a giant crumb, or boats bobbing in the harbor, or accidental patterns in the crowd at the ball park, but you are looking at something instead of merely scanning as you would when going about your business.

Photography can do the same: not merely record the world but bring one to see it anew, if only because one is looking for more than a few milliseconds and without a specific objective in mind. So it is that we might value the image of a water droplet on a leaf or of ice cream clouds in a blue summer sky. But there is more than one way to open the doors of perception.  Like this:

This big, vibrant image is of a hot air balloon being inflated at the 13th European balloon festival at Igualada, Spain.  But is it a photograph of a hot air balloon or of a mandala?  Both, of course, and for some viewers other analogies may come to mind, say of an enormous Japanese umbrella.  Part of seeing slowly is letting one’s imagination come into play.  Even so, the mandala struck my mind as surely as the photo struck my eye.

But what kind of mandala is this?  It would seem to be an accidental pattern more than a sacred object.  Taken from another angle, the balloon would have looked much more deflated or conical or uninteresting, yet here the perfectly symmetrical form is perfectly centered to focus perception.  The mandala is created not so much by the balloon but by the photographer.

That said, the photograph does nothing to draw attention to itself.  The focus in entirely on the archetypal design.  That form is not quite complete but, better yet, emerging smoothly from the ground into its own space.  The ascension into an all-encompassing form is marked further by its relation to the figure in the center, who is dwarfed but not harmed by the larger power that he serves.

Come to think of it–and to look again–he could almost double for a priest performing a ritual.  Perhaps there is a sacred dimension to this image of cosmological coherence after all?  Art and nature are unified in a single design that induces serenity while offering an aperture to the inner light of a transcendent reality.  The response to the photograph would be just what could be induced by ritual use of a mandala: a more contemplative state of mind.

Which you might need when looking at this:

This is from a photo-essay at The Big Picture on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under consruction by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The caption read: “View of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB) in the cleaning room. The CMS is one of two general-purpose LHC experiments designed to explore the physics of the Terascale, the energy region where physicists believe they will find answers to the central questions at the heart of 21st-century particle physics.”  True enough, but it’s still a mandala.

I would not say it is a particularly serene mandala, however.  The machine looks angry–as if it were some cybernetic monster from a sci-fi flick, its tentacles lashing to and fro, all garish colors of a vital but alien biology, a gaping maw, and somehow I also sense both fire and frenetic ants.  If it were a deity, it would be one representing voracious nastiness and other unsanctioned pleasures.  But, of course, it is not that, and this is not the place to allude to Frankenstein and moralize about scientific overreaching.  Instead, look again, longer, and see the unity of art and nature. Consider how the photographer has created another mandala for you, and other that may be a bit more challenging than some of the others.  Or, one that can allow us to think about the not so serene parts of who we are, individually and as a civilization.

Two mandalas, each unique and yet the same, for you to use as much or little as you wish.  As if on a summer’s day, with all the time in the world. . . .

Photographs by Susi Saez/EPA and Maximillien Brice/CERN.

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