I do find the well known  criticism of photography as representation, which   is often made but those who hold that art is composed of sensation, to be  a  strange one.  The criticism  states that with representation the  photograph erases itself, as an object in itself, in favour of the thing depicted:   that is, the  photo becomes a metaphysical window on something else, in relation to which it is inferior - the image is of a lesser reality than the thing of which it is an  mage or to which it refers; that which it apparently represents. This metaphysical window is organised around the principle or logic of sameness. Hence the idea of good copies and bad copies. 

A  photograph as an art work  as distinct from a mere product as formed matter as it formed matter that shows something other than itself, that in some way has an intellectual content or meaning. What this  criticism gets right is that a photograph is  both a representation of  bark fragments and an object in itself,  and that the viewer's response to the image is composed of sensations or affects  (ie., the ways in which I respond in my bodily  encounter with the image and which arise out of my own previous knowledge, understanding and  experiences).  connection of model and origin

I find the criticism a strange or  misleading one.   After the demise of modernism,  why would  we say that the image is a lesser reality and  the bark primary? Surely the image is real and just as real  as the bark.   What we see on the screen  is an image -- it's blurry or  indistinct, has  a rich colour palette of green and orange and it is poetic in its approach to photography.    Even though we know that this photo is a representation -- an abstracture of the  pieces of bark that have peeled of the trunk of a tree --- we do not see the image as inferior to the bark.   We do not see  the bark, we do not mistake the image for the object  and we treat the image as a thing in its own right. 

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This is a companion post to this previous one. 

That post explored the photographer being immersed in the bushland rather than separate from it. It asked the question: 'can the idea of  photography as poetics  provide a different conception of truth to the  indexical  correspondent one, which is  the traditional understanding of truth in photography.'

The photo can  disclose a moment in the bushland. Photography as poiesis is a mode of disclosure  (aletheia) of being. Discloses in the sense of opens up or unconceals. In doing so the photo is  both a poetics and is thoughtful.

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The  well known fragment  123 of Heraclitus reads: "Nature loves to hide itself'.

The Australian bush can be quite messy, dense  and chaotic  and  quite  difficult to walk in and  to photograph. Often there are no pathways through the thicket  and you have to go around it.

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From the archives. 

The photos below are of the trunk of a river gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) that were  made around  the same time as this photo. It was an early experiment, using slow b+w film with a hand held film Leica M rangefinder, to explore a different approach to Leica M photography. 

The experiment was to try to move away from the Leica reportage/street photography  tradition; a tradition that is deemed to be the very heart and soul of what photography is. The move away  approach follows the pathway that   Heidegger carved out with  Being and Time, which is  to start from the  assumption that photography always has a site in history from which it inevitably inherits a past that is ‘more or less explicitly grasped’. 

There is a traditional tendency in photography  to adopt the concepts inherited from the past unthinkingly and as self-evident and the Leica  tradition of street photography was a hardened one that can  be loosened up, and the concealments that it has brought about can  be dissolved.  

This 'twisting free' approach  is not a negation of the past as it is concerned to explore whether or not  there was an alternative to Leica's  reportage/street photography  tradition?  Could  the film Leica M rangefinder be used in a different way to its foundational heritage of street photography? If  so, would this 'unconcealment' open up a space of possibilities that could be fruitfully explored photographically? 

 What then is concealed by the tradition of  street photography tradition?  It blocks off the possibility of other ways of photography. Can we retrieve what is forgotten and hidden -- eg., photographic abstraction or  photography as poiesis?

The Heideggerian pathway indicated that  this unconcealment could be done by stepping back to the more or less hidden sources of the photographic tradition itself. that is before the origins of the Leica M street photography tradition. A stepping back to  Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's earliest surviving camera photograph, circa 1826: View from the Window at Le Gras (Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France).This stepping back to photography's mimetic presuppositions is coupled to a  step forwards; that is the  photographic past from out of which we think is re-appropriated and interpreted anew.

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From the archives: 

The reserve was originally stripped bare  farmland apart from 3 isolated pine trees straddled across  a small creek bed. The original farmland has been sold and is covered in houses. The reserve It is now fully treed and  the birds have returned. 

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I don't recall the exact occasion when I made this b+w abstraction of the trunk of a humble and ordinary tree in remnant bushland.  I remember  the location though.  I was walking in the local Waitpinga bushland on a poodlewalk with Kayla and it was an intuitive rather than a planned photo. 

I also remember that it  was  made after  I'd started  reading  Matsuo Bashō, the great haiku  poet  (1644–1694), whose self-image  of a recluse/wayfarer  and eccentric was the basis for  the  poetic possibilities in his Oku no hosomichi (The narrow road to the deep north, 1689). I was  reading him in preperation for going on a Basho walking tour  in 2023.     

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Throughout the winter of 2023 I would often spend an hour or so wandering  through  the local Waitpinga bushland with Kayla on an early morning   poodlewalk.  I'd be walking in the bushland  just after sunrise,  and whilst walking  I started  a bark series with  the Leica M4-P. It would be one camera, one lens, one film and it would centre on the ontology of the object in the present moment.  The bark is so mundane, that if we encounter it in everyday life, we would barely register it.

There are some earlier photos  that preceded  this series as a conscious walking art  project,  and they can be interpreted as  pointing to what was to become. These early  photos  can be viewed   here and here  and here. Oh, and here.   They emerged from drifting --from becoming lost in the bushland, being  responsive to chance and to circumstance, and privileging  the reactivity of the walk itself.

It is a low key walking art series,  which  explores  the ephemera of the mundane  bark  peeling off the trunks and branches of the pink gums; or the piles of bark lying  on the ground. The transience of the  bark,   its decay and disintegration (ie., perishability) is one of the more recognisable aspects of  the  flux,  or  the constant change in  the  bushland apart from the occasional fallen tree. It was slow walking whilst keeping an eye out for foxes, kangaroos, and rabbits so I could prevent Kayla from chasing them.

The series as a walking art project is premised on a meditative walking and seeing (of being in the ephemeral present) and  on the photography  being simple.   It  is underpinned by Japanese aesthetics,  with its minimalist approach and  complex and sophisticated categories with multiple interpretations (eg., wabi-wabi).  It  is  a modest,  walking art project that is contrary, or offside to,  the currently fashionable photographic approach to make  hero mages that celebrates the photographer's vision.  

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I have found that an appealing aspect of using the renovated Leica M4-P film camera after a year of being without it   is its operational simplicity,  especially when compared to the complex menus of the current  mirrorless,  full frame digital cameras.  The film rangefinder's mechanics are so   basic that the camera  forces you to photograph differently.   

The M4-P rangefinder was made  before Leica   included a light meter  in its film rangefinders  and the limits of film are quickly reached in low light situations. So it is not an all round camera like the latest full frame mirrorless digital cameras -- such as the sophisticated Sony A7 RV,  the  Nikon  Z8  or the Canon EOS  R5.  

Within these limits the usability of the rangefinder centres on image making that is slow placed and premised on the characteristics of the  film and the limitations of the rangefinder  camera.   

Due to the cost of 35m colour negative film (Kodak Portra 400 ASA) these days the 'in camera' image making has to be  slow and considered by necessity.  You are forced to slow down, evaluate what you are seeing,   and  then think about constructing the  image as a poetics.  

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Leica Australia have just informed me that the camera body of the  salt water damaged  M4-P rangefinder (circa 1980s) has been repaired and that it is on the way from Wetzlar in Germany to Sydney, Australia.   Sadly, the Leica 50mm Summicron f.2  lens is unrepairable as was the basic Sekonic light meter (a Sekonic L-308 S) that  I'd been using.   I need to buy another 50mm Summicron and,  unfortunately  for me, these  lenses aren't cheap,  even the second hand ones. So it won't be going with me to Japan in October.  

I have missed not using the M4-P (one camera one lens) the last 10 months that it  has been in Germany.  I found the simplicity of the camera (one body, one prime lens) so appealing. The simplicity of the rangefinder is that it reduces the gap between meditative  seeing and the camera's sight. It is a shift towards becoming one with the camera.

I made the above photo  in  the winter of  2022.  It is from one of the 5 rolls of 400 ASA Portra that I'd exposed  prior to  the M4-P becoming  badly damaged. It was the late afternoon  winter light that caught my eye  as I was walking  along one of the various paths in the bushland that were  made by the kangaroos  with Kayla.   

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In this earlier post I mentioned that in December 2022 my  Leica M4-P and the Summicron 50mm  lens were  damaged from a rogue wave surging over me whilst I was photographing on the rocks along the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. 

Leica advised that the lens was unrepairable but that  they could repair  the camera body. The rangefinder body is now with the Leica workshop in Wetzlar,  Germany and I've been advised that there is a 6 months wait for analogue camera repairs.  So I will  need to acquire  another 50mm lens. 

The film (Kodak Portra 400 ASA ) that was in the camera at the time of the salt-water accident was developed and I have recently scanned it. This is one frame: