Image Deconstruction: Diffuse Landscapes in Photography

Impressionistic Landscapes - Images by Aaron Fahrmann

A recent photography project under development is my impressionistic landscape imagery. These images are photographic deconstructions of landscapes created to break images down to their basest patches of light, shadow, and color. While technically not an art-science project, I had considered shooting this type of imagery for a many years, but only recently embraced it. I needed to build a sufficient library of traditionally-made imagery before I could confidently make this change. It has been liberating.

These images are distinctly disadvantaged in the online and electronic world—they suggest no distinct place, no product, no activity, not even defined landscapes. These images actually look much better printed on paper than they do online—an uncommon and welcomed trait for this project indeed. The locations are ambiguous and could exist anywhere. They tap into anyone’s memories of virtually any landscape within the same visual language subset. They pick at our basic recognition of shape and color combinations but also contain subtlety of form to create their mutable reality.

It is this expressly non-digital feel, and non-traditional use of the camera that is so attractive to me in this age where the general public expects the camera to face-detect, autofocus, expose, color enhance, and correct their photos. My images oppose the expected results provided by technological crutches.

While there is an indication of subject matter, there aren’t areas of sharp definable spaces beyond the impression of transitions between color areas. I use digital technology, but the basis of the final product is visually non-digital, non-commercial, non-stock, non camera-enabled.

I started to call these impressionistic landscapes, but in reality, they are the diffusion of landscapes into component colors, shades, and tonalities. The images emphasize the importance of composition in photography. The camera becomes, once again, a tool for artistry, rather than just a crutch for the masses to use in surveillance, online auction sales, social networking, “citizen journalism,” or stock imagery.

While it sounds like I am a Luddite, I am actually the opposite. I sell stock imagery, have an online presence, and have several blogs. I use image editing technology, scanners, digital asset management programs, and digital camera technology. I feel, however, that the reflection on, and the exploration of progress requires a nostalgia for the artistry it originally supported. This type of grounding experience can provide necessary real-world footholds for transitions in thought creation and better use of existing technologies. It is a means of exposing what is really important and useful in technology in opposition to that which creates false confidences and uncommon results. This project both embraces the imaging technology and simultaneously deconstructs the intent and commonly embraced visual language of the imagery. If nothing else, I hope you enjoy it as a departure from the daily bombardment of traditionally created online imagery.

Vote for People's Choice Award on PDN

Like the images in my recent Art-science Photography project called: Photographer-centered Non-linear Temporal Networks as Expressed through Street Portraits? Please vote for them on the PDN Faces Contest People's Choice awards. It can be reached by going to http://facesphotocontest.com and then typing "Aaron J. Fahrmann" in the Search Photographer Name box or, this link will take you there directly. Please vote soon--the contest is going on right now!

Thanks for your interest in these photos!

Blowing Bubbles: An Art-science Installation Re-imagining Time Interactions, Choice Behavior, and Human Convergence in Eleven Dimensions

Artist’s Statement (as posted in the 2007 installation)

Linear, or chronological time, is something that we have been conditioned to think that we experience daily.  Time can be a second-by-second obsession for some and a second thought for others.  We often let it go unnoticed until we have scheduled a meeting with someone else, at which point time becomes all that we can think about.  We try to control the universal rhythms of synchrony with other events by rushing to get somewhere “on-time.”  We get angry when we can’t move through space at the pace that we desire to reach our destination on-time, often only to find out that our rush was unnecessary. 

But what is time?  How do we really experience it?  Just because the clock says that time moves in one direction doesn’t make it necessarily so.  This project is designed to show a new way of moving through time, one that is based on networks, synchrony, chaos and complexity and ultimately human choices and movements within it—not necessarily through it.  This is a physical installation designed to mimic the realm of my theory of Personal Bubble Universes.  This project looks at time as existing in all directions simultaneously and each of us as centers of our own individual bubble universes.  Our birth, in this new idea of time, is a small “Big Bang” into which our universe begins expanding outward in all directions similar to the traditional scientific concept of the larger universe.   Our death similarly is the contraction of this universe gradually, beyond our passing.  The universe, in my opinion, is made up of an infinite number of Bubble-verses and each of us occupies one, or potentially even more than one of these personal universes.

To demonstrate the grander universal need to synchronize, I have placed a number of blinking metronomes on a pedestal with clear plastic.  If they are not synchronized, just wait a few hours—they will.  One can see that the metronomes are not connected by any wires and their only common ground is the clear plastic surface on which they are mounted, yet after enough time has passed, these metronomes will begin to synchronize.  They will blink either opposite of each other, in a progressive circle, or all in unison.   This is not a construct of anything that I have done to them; this is just a mysterious organizational quality in the universe that creates this synchronization.  The metronomes are set to similar time frames (beats per minute,) but they will eventually synchronize to some distinctive blinking pattern even if they were set to random time frames—the synchronization would just be more obscure in its pattern.  There is even the potential that the digital photo frames will synchronize as well.  These frames are also unconnected with the exception that they share a power bar and a single extension cord.

The metronomes are just one element of synchrony to discover in this space—and they are but one feature of the universe demonstrated.  Watch the pedestals for ideas on time, dimensionality and directionality.  Think about the path through which you traveled the installation and how your choices affect your experience of the space.  Think about the relevance of the words you see on the paper pyramids and how they relate to your life.  If your attention is drawn to something, especially if it occurs more than once, acknowledge it and it may make sense to you either now or later.       

I invite you to move through this space and lose track of linear time.  Use the finger labyrinths placed in the space to aid your mind in letting go of linear time.  Watch the water movies and try to determine which way time is moving in the video (some are backward, some are forward, and some are mirrored.  Attune your mind to the experiences in this space and notice everything as a component of the whole experience.  Ask questions of yourself and see if your movement through the space starts to synchronize to the answers.       

This is an Art-science Installation project.  The creation of this project is the culmination of my interest in the sciences and passion for the arts.  Its conceptual nature is designed to provide you with an experience of a new idea of time which I call Personal Bubble Universes.  Time and space have always been an area of interest for me since I first read of the strange and wonderful occurrences that are a part of Einstein’s theory of relativity and the resulting odd quantum world that has emerged in its wake. 

My hope is that in working your way through the installation that these choice points will become clearer.  I have designed this environment to amplify one’s experience of synchronistic events.  Chaos theory is involved in many ways, but the most direct and observable influence is on the movement of the paper pyramids.  Each of our movements within and around the space of the installation affects the air currents in the installation.  Further affects are observable when a ventilation system turns on.  The pyramids contain words which change orientation with these air currents.  Your location and choices within the installation affect the words and experiences you have in the installation.  In order for the installation to work, you need to be involved in it.

-Aaron Fahrmann