ku # 438 and a book review (of sorts)

So I'm watching a program segment on the tube last night. It was a mini feature about a photographer acquaintance - Mark Bowie - who is fast becoming the new "dean" of Adirondack photography. This is primarily due to the fact that his work is featured regularly in Adirondack Life Magazine.

The segment revolved mainly around his new book, Adirondack Waters - Spirit of the Mountains. Now understand that I use some of Mark's photography in various Adirondack tourism pieces I produce so I do respect the man's ability with a camera...

BUT...

The thought that entered my head about half way throught the segment was how utterly differently he and I "see" the Adirondacks. So much so, that even though I recognized most of the places in his book, it was as if I didn't recognize them at all. He had, through the magic of assiduously applied sentimental photographic technique, reduced the place to a series of ubiqutous picture postcards (an aside - if memory serves correctly, Mark's grandfather was one of the Adirondack's first and very prolific producers of Adirondack postcards).

I can't completely express the foreign-ness, the disassociation, the very estrangement I felt viewing his photographs. I think in large part this feeling came from the fact that, in addition to the aforementioned sentimentality quotient, most of the photographs were not created on a "human" scale - the scale that you can reach out and touch, smell and embrace. They seemed to command too much of the standoffish reverential - nature on a pedestal - that is so prevalent in mainstream nature/landscape photography.

He illustrated, with the fastidious craftmanship, the look of the place, but, IMconsideredO, and contrary to the book's subtitle, he illuminated none of the spirit of the place. Or, at best, he captured only the narrow-ist slice of that spirit - that found in sweeping golden light iconistic landscapes (FYI, the photography that I use to draw the tourists in). Pleasant enough as far as it goes - it just doesn't go nearly far enough.

As I mentioned, I know Mark. He's a serious-minded, well-educated kind of guy. His love of and enthusiasm for the Adirondacks is readily apparent to anyone who spends more than a few minutes around him. His technical command of the photographic medium is of the highest order, but I am left wondering why he seems to continue to, as Brooks Jensen states, create "what he has been told is a good photograph" and why he doesn't "photograph what he sees."

Perhaps Mark is too caught up in the lure of what sells and garners the most attention, although I am certain that he photographs the Adirondacks in a manner that genuinely comes from his heart.

At least that's how I see it.