Pepper Trail | Essays | Image and Absolute

My house has been the site of a lively intergenerational debate this summer, about nothing less than the nature of reality. The immediate topic of debate is: what is a photograph? In media-saturated America, photographs are the currency with which we trade in reality. But what do they tell us, and how do we weigh their value? These questions have opened a revelatory dialog between myself and my son.

There is no doubt that my own relationship with photography was bequeathed to me by my father. Professionally, he was a photographer for the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station. From 9 to 5, he labored for the taxpayers, doing his best to make shiny farm equipment impressive, new apple varieties appetizing, and shyly smiling agronomists interesting. But after hours, he used the camera in the service of his artist's eye and naturalist's heart, and photographed the flowers, insects, and birds whose lives he knew so well. One of my favorite spots as a boy was a tall stool in my father's darkroom, where I perched amid the sharp and commanding smells of mysterious chemicals, and watched as images swam up out of pools of dim red light. It was a moment of truth. Was the hoped-for picture there, or was it not?

This spring, I visited Zion National Park, and found myself paying homage to its beauty with roll after roll of film. The Navajo sandstone cliffs were so red that they bled their colors into the waters of the Virgin River, which ran in Easter-egg pastels of pink and purple. The cottonwoods along the banks were a soft and tremulous green in the depths of the shadowed canyon, but flared into breathtaking incandescence when speared by shafts of sunlight. On the high slickrock plateau, mounded stone hoodoos and wind-twisted junipers twined in a fluid but frozen dance. I spent hours seeking that perfect image of azure sky, carnelian stone, and viridian leaf that would capture the essence of the place.

For me, a nature photograph is, or should be, the record of a particular and irreproducible moment. My instincts -- by which I suppose I mean my accumulated tastes, preconceptions, and crotchets -- refuse to have it any other way. I hunt for a photograph in much the same way that, as a naturalist, I search for an animal. That is, I try to put myself in the place where the image, an extremely wary, fleet, and fleeting creature, may allow itself to be seen. I prepare as much of my vision as I can, selecting subject, angle, and composition, but then must wait for visitation by that most ineffable and unpredictable element: the light.

As I carefully composed shot after shot at Zion, I found myself musing about the nature of images, and the essence of the absolute. Was the picture in my viewfinder a finished portrait, or was it a sketch? Was it the end of the creative process, or the beginning? Was it reality, or was it raw material? This new perspective came courtesy of my 14-year old son Graham, who had his own photography project this spring.

		IMAGE AND ABSOLUTE My house has been the site of a lively intergenerational debate this summer, about nothing less than the nature of reality. The immediate topic of debate is: what is a photograph? In media-saturated America, photographs are the currency with which we trade in reality. But what do they tell us, and how do we weigh their value? These questions have opened a revelatory dialog between myself and my son. There is no doubt that my own relationship with photography was bequeathed to me by my father. Professionally, he was a photographer for the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station. From 9 to 5, he labored for the taxpayers, doing his best to make shiny farm equipment impressive, new apple varieties appetizing, and shyly smiling agronomists interesting. But after hours, he used the camera in the service of his artist's eye and naturalist's heart, and photographed the flowers, insects, and birds whose lives he knew so well. One of my favorite spots as a boy was a tall stool in my father's darkroom, where I perched amid the sharp and commanding smells of mysterious chemicals, and watched as images swam up out of pools of dim red light. It was a moment of truth. Was the hoped-for picture there, or was it not? This spring, I visited Zion National Park, and found myself paying homage to its beauty with roll after roll of film. The Navajo sandstone cliffs were so red that they bled their colors into the waters of the Virgin River, which ran in Easter-egg pastels of pink and purple. The cottonwoods along the banks were a soft and tremulous green in the depths of the shadowed canyon, but flared into breathtaking incandescence when speared by shafts of sunlight. On the high slickrock plateau, mounded stone hoodoos and wind-twisted junipers twined in a fluid but frozen dance. I spent hours seeking that perfect image of azure sky, carnelian stone, and viridian leaf that would capture the essence of the place. For me, a nature photograph is, or should be, the record of a particular and irreproducible moment. My instincts -- by which I suppose I mean my accumulated tastes, preconceptions, and crotchets -- refuse to have it any other way. I hunt for a photograph in much the same way that, as a naturalist, I search for an animal. That is, I try to put myself in the place where the image, an extremely wary, fleet, and fleeting creature, may allow itself to be seen. I prepare as much of my vision as I can, selecting subject, angle, and composition, but then must wait for visitation by that most ineffable and unpredictable element: the light. As I carefully composed shot after shot at Zion, I found myself musing about the nature of images, and the essence of the absolute. Was the picture in my viewfinder a finished portrait, or was it a sketch? Was it the end of the creative process, or the beginning? Was it reality, or was it raw material? This new perspective came courtesy of my 14-year old son Graham, who had his own photography project this spring.