DECONSTRUCTING THE AMERICAN SOUTH-WEST
The project challenges two established norms, i.e., the invariance of color temperature and that of exposure across a picture. Turning constant parameters into variable ones to explore new dimensions is nothing new in art. In fact, there is a most appropriate musical parallel in atonality. Just as atonal music modulated (the rigidity of) tonality, we modulate (the rigidity of) color temperature and exposure.
Steve Reich once wrote of atonality, of which Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music was the forefather: "The postman will never whistle Schoenberg. .... his music (and the music like his) will always inhabit a sort of “dark little corner” off by itself in the history of all the world’s music."
Our technique will surely end up inhabiting that “dark little corner off by itself”: its strong chromatic signature clearly limits its applicability. It does share with atonality the rejection of entrenched norms that have no rational justification except for the — undoubtedly formidable — strength of tradition.
The technique produces two effects that have been exploited in this project. The former is to deconstruct the image field. We have used this to convey our feeling of disorientation and vertigo when trying to capture the great natural monuments of the American South-West on the sensor. The latter is the introduction of time into the image field, because the amount of light and color temperature change as the day progresses. This “time within the frame” tries to put the viewer in a state that we like to call of “tranquil unease.” A representation through classical landscape photography would not have come nowhere near what we were feeling: our technique instead made this happen. Far from being a freak experiment or a trivial Photoshop trick, it served the purpose of better communicating “what was really out there” to the viewer. Our plan is to use it with “extreme prejudice,” and in very specific situations.
