Preview evening : Friday 5 November 2010 6.30 - 9pm
'Landscape' is an exhibition of contemporary landscape photography, and follows 'Portrait' as the second in a series of group exhibitions at The Photo Gallery which will examine different aspects of contemporary photographic practice.
Landscape photography is one of those 'branches' of photography which is so appealing to the picture buying public that it has become associated with the sort of bland scenes that you might find on the walls of a hotel; pseudo-dramas with dense clouds and misty water. It has become a victim of the rule of thirds and a pictorial orthodoxy for epic large scale scenery featuring superfluous foreground objects in sharp focus shot for little else than as a gratuitous display of its author's technical prowess.
Put all this together with an exotic location, and you have the recipe for what would be and is often mistaken as being representative of landscape photography. Wall fodder.
But landscape photography is about much more than far away or unseen places and an expensive camera. Landscape photography, like all other photography, like all art in fact, must convey a message or communicate an idea if it is to avoid becoming Ikea stock and take on a role in the fickle, jargon riddled world of contemporary fine art.
That isn't to say that pictures can't simply be enjoyed, quite the contrary, but it is up to us to distinguish between simple decoration and art.
At The Photo Gallery, 31 Baldwin St, Bristol BS1 1RG
Open Mon - Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 11am - 5pm
www.thephotogallery.org.uk
Image below: Cone Squish by Christina Z. Anderson
