“Slowness as an idea is to suggest something still in the photographic image. If not still, it suggests something tectonic or glacial in pace”
Slowness in photographic terms reflects an indebtedness to a few varying factors. One is of course technical. Large cameras take by comparison a very long time to set up and manouever. This can be exacerbated by weather conditions, the size of the plates and the setting up of the tripod. Inclimate weather can also produce a hazardous condition for gear and operator alike. The other is conditioned to what lies within the frame itself.
Slowness as an idea is to suggest something still in the photographic image. If not still, it suggests something tectonic or glacial in pace. In audible terms, it suggests a silence or a low hum that wavers in and out of the chaos of life. This is of course a hard dynamic to reinforce as the printed image exhibits these traits, but executes their denial by the material and 2-dimensional nature of the printed photograph. However, the stillness that occurs in all photography is based on the impulse to perceive the moment as shuttered, stopped or calcified in the amber of silver nitrate, color film or digital pixel.
In many photographic images, there is an anti-stillness-a speed un-realized reminiscent of Umberto Boccioni’s futurist sculpture Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio (Unique Forms of Continuity In Space) from 1913. Boccioni’s sculpture gives the impression of movement within a physical space, yet it is cauterized from completion by the material of bronze thus suggesting an arrest of time. Photographs often bear this same weight of condition with their unnerving need of moments left incomplete-street photographs in particular exemplify this trait. Movement arrested, the photographic image holds the view in anticipation of what could have bled off frame-the whispey long locks of a child caught just off the bottom left corner, the tail end of automobile lights illuminating the faces at a crosswalk, or the birds bleeding in and out of the sky above-all breed a contempt for stillness.
“In many photographic images, there is an anti-stillness-a speed un-realized reminiscent of Umberto Boccioni’s futurist sculpture Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio (Unique Forms of Continuity In Space) “
In suggesting what stillness and slowness are not, it would be best to speak perhaps about how slowness is. Slowness, with its pointed emphasis on the limitations of chaos and noise in frame is a way of concentration, perhaps the closest form to meditation that an artist can find. You must wait for slow images to occur. It takes a methodical eye to roam vast vistas to understand what the image may look like as a photography. From there, there is an emphasis on the conditions of when and how to shoot and achieve the desired photograph. The pace of slowness is about the process of looking and not all image-makers are able to create a space for themselves to embellish the patience needed to create an image. They must clear an amount of time in an ever-busy world. In effect, the artist who thinks through the idea of slowness is not necessarily stopping the world, they are canonising an attempt to slow it down. It does not suggest ultimately that the artist desires its end in stopping its motion. It is as if to encourage the extended moment and to focus well..slowly..on that which would normally be overlooked in contemporary society.
Hinterland by Hans-Christian Schink’s Hinterland (Hartmann Books, 2020) is a book of slowness and stillness, if not to beg an association (not dis-) quiet. The images throb rather than pulse and the winter within lies heavily on the cooling hearth. There is a silence and a stillness in the images of the rural countryside of Germany with its fecund trees laden with snow, with the cold piles of frozen manure and there is an attempt by Schink to consider the banality of what romanticism can offer if stripped of the easy mechanisms of saturated color found in many German paintings focussed on ruins and the grandeur of the forest. Here, Schink exhibits the control over his art. Within, he realizes the gravity of not giving into simple and direct visual pleasure. He denies impulsive looking and in doing so captures the majority of his views “at rest” in the sense that these images would look like this an hour, a day or possibly a month before or after he has composed them in his frame. They also move glacially and their change is seasonal, not daily or by the minute. This is slowness. This is consideration. Schink asks the viewer to observe at a rate unprescribed by the encroaching speed of modern life and in doing so reminds us to breathe, to see and to remain passionate of our daily bread. Highly Recommended.
“Slowness as an idea is to suggest something still in the photographic image. If not still, it suggests something tectonic or glacial in pace”
Slowness in photographic terms reflects an indebtedness to a few varying factors. One is of course technical. Large cameras take by comparison a very long time to set up and manouever. This can be exacerbated by weather conditions, the size of the plates and the setting up of the tripod. Inclimate weather can also produce a hazardous condition for gear and operator alike. The other is conditioned to what lies within the frame itself.
Slowness as an idea is to suggest something still in the photographic image. If not still, it suggests something tectonic or glacial in pace. In audible terms, it suggests a silence or a low hum that wavers in and out of the chaos of life. This is of course a hard dynamic to reinforce as the printed image exhibits these traits, but executes their denial by the material and 2-dimensional nature of the printed photograph. However, the stillness that occurs in all photography is based on the impulse to perceive the moment as shuttered, stopped or calcified in the amber of silver nitrate, color film or digital pixel.
In many photographic images, there is an anti-stillness-a speed un-realized reminiscent of Umberto Boccioni’s futurist sculpture Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio (Unique Forms of Continuity In Space) from 1913. Boccioni’s sculpture gives the impression of movement within a physical space, yet it is cauterized from completion by the material of bronze thus suggesting an arrest of time. Photographs often bear this same weight of condition with their unnerving need of moments left incomplete-street photographs in particular exemplify this trait. Movement arrested, the photographic image holds the view in anticipation of what could have bled off frame-the whispey long locks of a child caught just off the bottom left corner, the tail end of automobile lights illuminating the faces at a crosswalk, or the birds bleeding in and out of the sky above-all breed a contempt for stillness.
“In many photographic images, there is an anti-stillness-a speed un-realized reminiscent of Umberto Boccioni’s futurist sculpture Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio (Unique Forms of Continuity In Space) “
In suggesting what stillness and slowness are not, it would be best to speak perhaps about how slowness is. Slowness, with its pointed emphasis on the limitations of chaos and noise in frame is a way of concentration, perhaps the closest form to meditation that an artist can find. You must wait for sow images to occur. It takes a methodical eye to roam vast vistas to understand what the image may look like as a photography. From there, there is an emphasis on the conditions of when and how to shoot and achieve the desired photograph. The pace of slowness is about the process of looking and not all image-makers are able to create a space for themselves to embellish the patience needed to create an image. They must clear an amount of time in an ever-busy world. In effect, the artist who thinks through the idea of slowness is not necessarily stopping the world, they are canonising an attempt to slow it down. It does not suggest ultimately that the artist desires its end in stopping its motion. It is as if to encourage the extended moment and to focus well..slowly..on that which would normally be overlooked in contemporary society.
Hinterland by Hans-Christian Schink’s Hinterland (Hartmann Books, 2020) is a book of slowness and stillness, if not to beg an association (not dis-) quiet. The images throb rather than pulse and the winter within lies heavily on the cooling hearth. There is a silence and a stillness in the images of the rural countryside of Germany with its fecund trees laden with snow, with the cold piles of frozen manure and there is an attempt by Schink to consider the banality of what romanticism can offer if stripped of the easy mechanisms of saturated color found in many German paintings focussed on ruins and the grandeur of the forest. Here, Schink exhibits the control over his art. Within, he realizes the gravity of not giving into simple and direct visual pleasure. He denies impulsive looking and in doing so captures the majority of his views “at rest” in the sense that these images would look like this an hour, a day or possibly a month before or after he has composed them in his frame. They also move glacially and their change is seasonal, not daily or by the minute. This is slowness. This is consideration. Schink asks the viewer to observe at a rate unprescribed by the encroaching speed of modern life and in doing so reminds us to breathe, to see and to remain passionate of our daily bread. Highly Recommended.