Scything the meadow: an outdated technology; or is it?

The scythe swings rhythmically in my hands, the grass, sending up its seedy stalks on this early summer morning, slides along the long thin blade and parts from its roots with a satisfying 'Ahhhh' before being deposited in a windrow along the edge of the swath I am cutting through the meadow. The tool, the grass and I are working smoothly together in an ancient ritual.

My father, once an English farmer, taught me how to do this when I was young and now I don't suppose there are many people in the wealthy West that know how to use a scythe anymore. Perhaps they have only a vague idea what 'cutting a swath' really means if they read the phrase used metaphorically in a book.

I do own a lawn mower and a weedeater and use them regularly: they are noisy, use gas, wear out eventually and need replacing, but they do specific jobs very well. My scythe usually hangs under the eves with its sharpening stone, waiting for this time of year when its own particular qualities come to the fore.

I pause regularly to sharpen the long, thin, curved blade; holding the scythe upright with my left hand and, with my right, sliding the sharpening stone down the cutting edge on alternate sides, just like I do for sharpening the carving knife at home. Cutting grass for hay is not a test of strength, but of finesse, and I wish to perform this dance smoothly and accurately.

Each stroke begins as I bring the curved handle back to the right, line up the next strip of grass stems and then swing back to the left, pulling my left arm back to my body as I do so. The blade runs along parallel with the stems, slicing them cleanly and the final curve lifts and deposits the cut pieces in a neat windrow, there to cure and dry. So smooth, so very satisfying, so quiet, and so cheap.

That simplicity, the long life and inexpensiveness of a scythe, the basic skills, are of course not popular in our market economy. Why, if everyone lived this way, made their own hay, used no tractor, no fuel, had no overhead ,surely the world would collapse! Perhaps it will anyway, and then my simple scything and hay making skills will be in demand once more.

Photographs do have a point of view.

'Images from the Likeness House.' Dan Savard.

In our Ganges library I found a fascinating book about early photographs that now reside in the Royal BC Museum and were taken of First Nations peoples along this coast from the 1850's to the early years of the last century. Perhaps it is my background of studies in Anthropology, my childhood carvings of totem poles and early friendships with native children in a small coastal community, but this material draws me in big time.

The photographs provide so much information about how things were; the portraits, the communities, the little details about canoes and carvings, how the boards were laid on house sides and roofs. One’s eyes are such great gleaners of information and the camera has recorded all this for me in detail; but not without the filters of the mind of the photographer and the social conventions of the time.

That is always the hard concept to get across; that photographs, like written accounts, drawings and paintings, have a point of view and are not simply the 'unvarnished truth'. That the photographs we may take today 'in living colour' are also just as tightly constrained and project a cultural bias that others can read. The images we take while travelling abroad are, like these images made by early photographers, reflective of a certain suite of attitudes. Some local people squat around a fire and we do not think to ask permission to take their image, not thinking that they may be uncomfortable about this thoughtless capture of their likeness. We look down and shoot ' local colour' from above, as part of our safari, rather than squat down in their sides and, with permission, make a likeness.

These unconscious prejudices come through in these old photographs. Indians are so often shot for their 'quaintness' their interesting savagery and the commercial value of their images. We see the romantic photographs of Curtis, the American photographer, eager to re-enact images of 'the noble savage' using models who, having neglected to die off as expected, obligingly doff their European clothes and pose in feathers, buckskin and bark clothing. Another photographer in Victoria poses an old couple on the linoleum floor of his studio and exposes his own attitudes at the same time as he trips the shutter.

But then there are also photos taken by survey parties in the interior of BC, at the same time as Curtis was making his re-enactments on the coast, that show local men and women in their normal working dress, at the blending frontier that is closer to another truth of the times.

An action photo taken by an Indian crew member of a whaling canoe in Juan de Fuca Strait is to modern eyes a masterful image, so close to the action that, despite the scratchy print, we are in the midst of the hunt!

The images in this book tell a lot about the relationship between the 'ghosts' with their cameras and the real people. The white ghosts got to write the histories and make the visual record but still, hidden in photographs like those in this book, one can read another bigger story stitched between the lines.

All the arts share so much in common: how a painter can have much to say to photographers.

  

Edward Hopper 1882 – 1967. Transformations of the Real. By Rolf Gunter Renner ( in our Ganges library)

A couple stop in a late night diner; we are aware of the reality of the moment, of the isolation of individuals in society, even in this case between the two at the counter. This is a painting from another era, but the theme is universal and versions of this image can be found in many photographer's portfolios. In fact 'alienation' as an idea came to be recognized through the Arts ( including writing and music) long before it finally appeared in the images of photographers today.

Beside thematic content, we can also look closely at individual Hopper paintings and learn much about making photographs. His interest in the play of light, how it delineates the scene and sets the mood, and in this 'Diner' image how the space around the central characters is so important to his idea. Imagine cropping this down closely to the central three people: a lot less lonely, less isolating and less effective.

'Bridge in Paris', painted in 1906, could be a modern photograph with its interest in colour and tone and in using closely confined, almost abstract forms to express a larger idea.

If we take time to browse through this artist’s images we see that his imagery may change but the theme is always present. That is what gives his work such cohesiveness, such believability. When a photographer does the same, instead of skating all over the map we can see him go deeper, grow roots and stand firmly upon the mountain of his work.

Historic photographs. The work of C.D.Hoy in Quesnel and Barkerville at the turn of the last century.

I recently found a book in the Ganges library that chronicles the frontier days of B.C.

'First Son. Portraits by C.D. Hoy.” by Faith Moosang, combines reproductions of Hoy's photographs with a thoughtful account of the early days of Barkerville and Quesnel, especially the easy going relationships between Native, Chinese and Caucasians in this frontier environment compared to the racist attitudes prevalent in the major centres at that time. It is the photographs that drew me into this little book and it just goes to show that all these years later that it is the person of the sitter that remains important rather than the 'artistic' treatment that I might favour in my own portrait work.

It is the hands of the sitters that are prominent. Working with available light only, Hoy, especially when working indoors, was restricted to long exposures and wide open apertures with their narrow depth of field. By his putting the hands in sharp focus we are drawn by what they reveal about every sitter, irrespective of race or nationality. It would also explain why so many images were made outside in natural light. It is in the fringes of the photos, what we would crop off today as distracting, that so much detail emerges about conditions at the time; a Caucasian family poses on the porch of their nice home, the steps however are roughly built of raw lumber.

Perhaps because the photographer was Chinese himself, the people before the lens seem so relaxed, so secure within themselves and this is for me the real appeal of Hoy's photography. They look at us across the hundred years of history that separate us and we feel ourselves to be their kin, we smile back. We know them.

Looking up! Photographing subjects in difficult places.

I recently painted and then mounted a bird-form piece of driftwood on the top of a tall pole in my yard. Not difficult to make and only mildly dangerous up the ladder, but a challenge to photograph later. 

From ground level, even with my maximum zoom lens, it still looked like a tiny blob so out came the step ladder which I could move around to try different angles. From one angle the 'Raven' was bigger, but still a black silhouette, and when the sun burned through the overcast I had glare into the lens. Only then did I realize that my 'problem' was really my best creative solution. Raven, in coastal mythology is the one who stole light and released it into the heavens, and here, if I could control it, was Raven and the sun together. By putting the bright light behind a fir branch and then turning the camera to achieve a more dynamic angle for the pole I got a useful shot.

I also decided to photograph the crow on its nest of twigs that faces back across the driveway towards Raven. Once more I used the step ladder, tried a number of angles and settled on one that showed the detail of the carving, its forward leaning stance and 'nest'.

There was something creative but practical about this self assignment. In reality, although the subject matter was unusual, the same concerns applied here as in any other photograph, how to achieve the best possible image within the lighting and physical conditions present at the time. As in a wedding assignment, or garden spread for a magazine for example.

Hand tinting your paper print using powdered graphite

It is easy enough to 'photoshop' one's monochrome image but there is another way altogether that has a different look and harkens back to the early days of photography; hand tinting.

I have experimented with adding colour, usually water soluble pencil crayons before now, but the other day I bought some graphite powder from Island Blue Print in Sydney for a drawing project. Only later did I find that I could use it on two matte finish 12x18 black and white photos that had never seemed quite right. The images were far too busy with intricate details and I had put them aside. With nothing to loose, I started rubbing the graphite powder into areas on my Burgoyne image that I wished to tone down and later pulled fine detail back up with a sharp eraser. A touch of colour in a foreground detail for accent and I had created a one-and-only photo. A quick spray of odour free varnish sealed everything in.

In the second, Ruckle Park beach photo, the back lighting in the mid-distance was overpowering and I solved this in the same way, toning down the bright trees and emphasizing some detail in the foreground, altering the emphasis among the textural and tonal relationships.

These were subtle adjustments, but the sky is the limit when you start to hand adjust your printed images. The feel is quite different from doing this in advance on the computer screen, it is closer to darkroom manipulation, but making adjustments directly on the paper print has a directness, a personal touch and uniqueness that is very satisfying.

Picture with words. Breaking down the barriers of photographic tradition.

Most of the images we see actually have words in them. I am talking about advertising, posters, cards, films ( those credits and titles) and so on, and yet we have an ethic that says that a pure photo should not need or have words within it. True, but in reality we are accustomed to titles placed below and they tell us a lot about the photographers intent. Many photos work well with words so I decided to do some to explore the possibilities.