![]() We see a reduced landscape in which many things are left out. It knows we are only seeing a pars pro toto (a part of the whole) and we now can concentrate on what we are really seeing. In fact it isn't very important whether we see more of the surroundings or not. We have no idea if the lake is surrounded by mountains, hills or a plain. The photographs show us but a part of a landscape with a lake. "Waiting For the Catch" by Ahmed AbdulazimĪnd now something completely different - the graphical landscapes by Ahmed Abdulazim and Wei Tang. And so, in a surrealist or Dadaist way, an inherently tragic situation is made lighter by a delightful, possibly even ironic sense of humor. Life goes on as it is - big brother rebuking the little one. They have no eye for their problematic environment. The landscape becomes a dreamscape with two trees on a green meadow lost between water and clouds, possibly the sole survivors of a flood or other catastrophy. The photo gets its surreal touch by its message and its supernatural reality. The dark, threatening clouds, the reflection of the trees in the water, the play with the light, are all elements of the Romantic era. In his photograph "Family" José Antonio Sánchez attempts to wrap his surreal message into the aesthetic of the Romantics. For the surrealists however the beauty could be found primarily in the message that was conveyed to to the viewer. ![]() The Romantics sought beauty in the aesthetic. They have however different views on the subject matter of beauty. They wanted to dream and show it in an original way by combining the tangible reality with a supernatural reality. Both wanted to free themselves from the bourgeois reality. In a way the surrealists can be considered the grandchildren of the Romantic artists. The photos are usually very formal, stark and purely documentary and, so it seems, show an aesthetic of the banal. It really takes time to discover their beauty. The new topographics don’t have that factor of awe, as often seen in the more traditional landscape photographs. The New Topographers with Robert Adams as one of the most prominent representative, showed that the grandeur of the landscapes as photographed by Ansel Adams for example, was but a one sided view, which excluded the human intervention in the landscape such as the construction of roads and suburban developments. Missing from this list are examples of the " New Topographics or Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape" movement. In addition to the romantic landscape, other categories of imaging landscape are for example: the surreal landscape, the abstract landscape, the flat landscape, the graphical landscape. Of course Romantic approach with its emphasis on the purity of nature, the majestic mountain ranges and waterfalls isn't the only way of viewing a landscape. The Romantic painters were possibly also influenced by these artists and passed it on to landscape photographers. However when browsing in my art history book, I discovered this atmosphere also in Chinese landscape paintings by Ma Yüan and Kao K'O-Kung, who lived in the thirteenth century. Max Rive's photo is an example of the Romantic look and feel of the nineteenth century.
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