Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Kendal Mountain Book Festival 2009

BOARDMAN TASKER
"The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature commemorates the lives of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, who disappeared on the North East Ridge of Everest in 1982, and is given to the author, or co-authors of an original work which has made an outstanding contribution to mountain literature. "

This photograph, a detail from page 112, 0f Himalayan Portfolios, shows the ridge with the Everest summit to the right. The Pinnacles, where the climbers died, are the center point to the right of a jagged ridge section.

The award was announced on November 20 at the Kendal 2009 Mountain Book Festival. The Kendal Festival closely parallels the Banff Festival discussed last month. Kendal is a small market town that is a south-eastern gateway to the English Lake District and the last town before the M6 road to Scotland crosses Shap Fell.

Entering Himalayan Porfolios for a literary prize was something of a long shot. We would have to convice the judges that the book was an integral work of text and pictures and not pictures with some text attached. Mirrors, Messages and Manifestations by Minor White was conceived as such a unit with "sequences" matched to original text. The works of William Blake that combined poetry and engravings served as a model. The wonderful books by Paul Strand, Time in New England for example, would not qualify because he relied on others to provide a text. Hybrid works are a tricky catagory: Wagner's Ring cycle is a monster example in which a poetic text, music and staging were promoted as one. A phone call from my brother in England told me that my book had been noted as giving particular enjoyment in the award ceremony at Kendal.

The well structured and thoughtful addess by Phil Bartlett, the chair of the judges, has been posted on the web. A paragraph of 145 words was devoted to explaining why Himalayan Portfolios, though much enjoyed, did not qualify to be on the short list. The winner, Beyond the Mountain, an autobiography by Steve House, received 318 words. (He was also a winner at the Banff Festival, see my November 11 blog.) My book was judged to be "a sumptuous collection of black and white photography and serious supporting essays." (For some reason he did not metion the extended title: Journeys of the Imagination.) We did not convince, or manage to slip in without being caught, White House fashion, but we came close enough to be seriously considered. For the full text of the judge's remarks see Book Reviews on my web page or this link.

Kangchenjunga from Pangpema (HP page 126.) First ascent without oxygen by Boardman, Tasker and Doug Scott, 1978 (see also HP page 165).

Friday, November 13, 2009

Banff Mountain Book Festival-2

Finalist’s Report

This report is both sad and happy.

On the sad side the Mountain Image Award went to a super-massive book of color photographs of the Alps. They were taken from an ultra-light motor-glider flown by a Slovenian biologist and mountaineer Matevz Lenarcic (approximate transcription—the name copies as Matevc Lenar i ). The style of his photography is very unlike the austerity of Brad Washburn, the full page presentation of his photographs is totally different from our white-border formality, and his primary aim is environmental advocacy whereas my style might be called photographic introspection. In short, comparing his book and mine is almost impossible. The book is described as “a gesture on a grand scale”, “a mountain manifesto and a call to arms.”
Finalists.
Awards.

On the happy side I had a wonderful time listening to presentations and signing books. The presentations included Steve Winter’s account of photographing the snow leopard for National Geographic. A six month quest in several Himalayan regions, some familiar to me, yielded superb images. Steve House read from his new autobiography (Adventure Travel Award). Climber and artist Renan Oxturk described an epic ascent of the great wall of Mount Meru in the Indian Himalaya. The climbers, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Ozturk, planned for 10 days — the climb took 17days; they lost a lot of weight. When finally they made their superlight summit attempt on the fin-like ridge, the ascent was stopped by a non-negotiable gendarme: so near and yet so far. Amongst the book signers was David Roberts with his new biography of Brad Washburn (Mountaineering History Award.) The book signing allowed many opportunities to chat. The picture shows me with Steve Winter. Finally, I did win something — a spontaneous blessing: a very nice down jacket at a reception sponsored by a group working to preserve an area adjacent to the Banff National Park.



The Banff Center is a great place. I was there over 30 years ago to speak to a biochemistry conference. It was a lot smaller then. I could see a bit of a mountain from my room (as a finalist, complementary), but the dining room gives a three quarters panorama. My dedicated publishers, Gail and Charles Fields, were at the meeting to work on book promotion, but the fringe benefit was that they were up at 5 am each morning to go out and photograph. By the Sunday of our departure they had the back roads well worked out. On the Sunday we set out in pitch darkness and, despite very icy roads, we were at Lake Louise in time for the sunrise. This photo was taken on a back road. The flight from Calgary was at 2 pm. I was home by 1:30 am.


Sunday, October 25, 2009

Banff Mountain Book Festival-1

FINALIST
Message just received:
On behalf of the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival, I am pleased to inform you that Himalayan Portfolios: Journeys of the Imagination, by Kenneth Hanson, has been selected as a finalist -- one of four in the Mountain Image category.

Gail and Charles Fields and this blogger, expect to be present at this international festival from Thursday, November 5th to Saturday, November 7th. Book signings Friday and Saturday.

The other Mountain Image finalists:
Above All: Mount Whitney. David Stark Wilson. USA
The Alps – A Birds Eye View. Matevz Lenarcic. Slovenia
Wildlife of the Canadian Rockies. John Marriott. Canada

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Large Format Conspiracy Again

Fall Exhibit
New England Large Format Photographic Collective,
NELFPC, Until November 6
Gallery hours and directions: http://www.belmonthill.org/

Those in the Boston area may see a selection of work by collective members at the Landau Gallery in the Robsham Arts Center at Belmont Hill School, 350 Prospect St, Bellmont MA. Gene LaFord, once more, did a great job of hanging the show. A cheerful opening was held last Sunday despite rain and sleet. Great gobs of wet snow assaulted those of us driving from Connecticut just after we had entered the Mass Pike. This is my section of the exhibit:

The NELFPC was created a few years ago to bring together like minded practitioners and promote the art of the view camera. See Blog Jan 5, 2009.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Starred Review

Library Journal, 9/15/09
*Hanson, Kenneth. Himalayan Portfolios: Journeys of the Imagination. Fields, dist. by IPG. Sept. 2009. c.190p. illus. maps. ISBN 978-0-9790597-0-4. PHOTOG.
Excerpts:
In this beautifully illustrated, oversized publication, landscape photographer Hanson sets forth over 100 high-resolution black-and-white photographs he took between 1985 and 2005 of the Himalayan mountains and their inhabitants. He presents five geographic portfolios ….. more than a dozen trips to inaccessible Himalayan regions in Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Tibet. The second part of the book features two scholarly essays by Hanson, who is able to envision the mountains, glaciers, rivers, and peoples he photographed from diverse artistic, cultural, scientific, and spiritual perspectives…...
Verdict: With awesome images and insightful commentary, this significant book will engage both general and specialized audiences with various interests not limited to extreme experiences, mountaineering, and fine arts landscape photography. Strongly recommended.—Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia.

Book News Annotation, October 2009
Excerpts:
The splendor of this collection of black and white photos of the Himalayas is breathtaking. Hanson, a biochemist in a previous existence, began his photographic journeys in 1986..... The images alone are worth acquiring the book, but the commentary by Hanson that follows the portfolios enhances them greatly. The writing is beautiful; a combination of philosophy and factual information, demonstrating the personal quest that brought Hanson back to the Himalayas time and time again. Link
(For more see the Book Reviews section of my Web Page.)

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Virgil Revisited

Getting down from the mountain
My earlier blog (March 15, 2009) about geology and the invention of the photographic process by Fox Talbot included a quotation. Fox Talbot, who had received a an education in mathematics and the Greek and Latin classics, cited two lines from Virgil’s Georgics. Virgil describes making his own way on the heights of Mount Parnassus, the home of the muses, and descending to the Castalian spring of Delphi. As chance would have it, my wife, Betty, and I made a last minute decision to take an excursion to Greece. After traveling from island to island we came to Athens and then to Delphi and the astonishing Sanctuary to Apollo.


Apollo is said to have killed the Pytho, a female serpent that guarded a deep cavern and the spring of Cassotis. This legend was linked to an Apollo cult whose central feature was the Pythian oracle. On ritual occasions the oracle placed herself on a tripod above the vaporous chasm. In this unenviable toxic situation, partially poisoned by the cyanide released from chewing laurel leaves, she uttered strange cries that were interpreted by priests. At the time of Virgil the Sanctuary was still active and, more significantly, the cult was sponsored by the Roman Emperor Augustus, Virgil’s patron.

Steep limestone cliffs rise above the Sanctuary. The Castalian spring is at the bottom of a gully with steep walls — the above photograph was taken from near the spring. Here lies the problem. No obvious track slopes downwards to Castalia’s spring. Poetry should be prepared to meet a reality test. How did Virgil descend from the Parnassian heights without breaking his neck?

Further Research
After visiting the Sanctuary our group stayed in a small hotel in the village adjacent to the Delphi sanctuary. The roads of the village are carved into the mountainside. As the day began to cool, around 5 pm, I set out to explore by ascending the steep sequences of steps that linked one road level to another. Above the final road were open fields with scattered olive trees. A sign indicated a Forestry Commission trail to Mount Parnassus. The highest point of the mountain is about 2,450 meters (8,056 feet); I was probably at 900 meters. I followed the trail upwards past limestone boulders. Soon no village was visible — looking back the panorama extended to the Gulf of Itea, some 5 miles away, and beyond that to the Gulf of Corinth. As the trail approached the steeper rocks it swung to the left but I pushed my way to a ridge on the right where a wire fence blocked further exploration. Beyond the ridge was a precipitous decent to the Stadium of the Sanctuary. The fence could be followed upwards through a barrier of thorns and thistles towards the steeper rocks. If I had been wearing boots instead of sandals I could probably have scrambled beyond the fence, but from my highest point I could see, carved into the limestone, a series of steps. Could this have been the decending path taken by Virgil?

I can only speculate about the upper reaches of the mountain. If it is like the Turkish Mount Olympus (2,366 m/7,762 ft), whose limestone heights I ascended in 2004, it is a rolling barren stone desert. In Turkey there was no certain track and plenty of choice as to route — for a while I was slightly lost in the mist. If it is like Mount Pachnes (2,453m/8,045 ft) in the White Mountains of Crete that I ascended in 2005, the bare rocks may have deep potholes and caves. Mount Parnassus should thus have afforded Virgil plenty of choice for exhilarating wandering. But was Virgil wearing sandals?

The Heroic Quest
The relevance of all this to Himalayan Portfolios lies less in the view camera and geology linkage than in the iconic figure of Virgil -- a molder of the Western concept of the epic form and the heroic quest. The Aeneid, once a staple of a classics-grounded education, decribes how the virtuous Aeneus escaped from the destruction of Troy with his wife (daugher of the slain Priam, king of Troy), his son and his aged father Anchises. The escape was helped by Venus his mother (daughter of Jupiter). He set out to recreate the glory that was Troy in a new city and country, but from the beginning he was opposed by Juno, wife of Jupiter. (The conflict between Venus and Juno started the Trojan War.) In Virgil's poem Aeneus' heroic struggle was accomplished, but with much grief and slaughter. The Aeneid begins with a cry of bafflement: Can there be so much anger in the hearts of the heavenly gods? Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? It is a question that might well be asked when deeply committed and experienced climbers get wiped out by a storm or avalanche.

Virgil’s Virgil and Dante’s Virgil
In Himalayan Portfolios, under the heading “The Eternal Quest” (p 167), I cited Tennyson’s poem Ulysses that influenced generations of explorers and mountaineers. The poem is based on a famous passage in Canto XXVI of Dante’s Inferno. Dante’s guide Virgil, by his authority as an epic poet, commands the flame-encased spirit of Ulysses (Gk. Odysseus) to describe his final journey. It is a story unknown from any source other than Dante. Ulysses, growing old and bored by life in Ithaca, sails southwards beyond the Pillars of Hercules and beyond Africa in search of “knowledge and excellence.” After glimpsing the island of the mythical Mount Purgatory that Dante places at the South Pole, the ship is destroyed in a storm and the flawed hero, Ulysses, ends up in the circle of those who gave council to promote deceit (he promoted the Trojan horse.) The sprit, having related his fate, is dismissed by the poet and Ulysses rejoins the endless cavalcade of wandering flames. Tennyson, by omitting this context, avoids the implication of deceit and clothes Ulysses in the virtue of the struggle.

How did Virgil get the job as Dante’s guide? In Book VI of the Aeneid Virgil describes how the Sybil of Apollo at Cumae in Italy tells Aeneus that if he performs certain tasks, most famously finding and plucking the golden bough, she will lead him to the shade of his father in the underworld. This journey, in which various other shades are encountered, forms the outline for Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio. (The shades encountered include Dido whom Aeneus had abandoned in Carthage --Dido had committed suicide -- not surpisingly, she refuses to speak.) In Dante’s Divine Comedy Virgil takes the place of the Sybil. He qualifies for this task because, like Aeneus, he is wise and virtuous (Inf. I, 85), and because for Dante he is the guru-like teacher and master of the poetic craft. As a soul guide (Gk, psychopomp) he is unlike the Shaman soul guide who escorts the dead (see HP, p84), he is a guide of the living.

Virgil takes on the task because he is asked. In the poem the exiled Dante is lost and frightened and in need of rescue. In this he resembles Wordsworth who experienced a “treacherous desertion” of the soul when the French Revolution turned into the Terror. Wordsworth was rescued through the support of his sister Dorothy and the intervention of Nature (see HP, p142.) For Dante the rescue comes through the intervention of Beatrice. In the poem she is the agent of divine grace. In his commentary “The Figure of Beatrice” Charles Williams points out that Beatrice cannot command Virgil. She may astonish him by her beauty—“Her eyes outshone the firmament.” (Inf II, 55)— but his assistance in rescuing Dante is ultimately a matter of courtesy. (Williams quote Tyndal’s translation of St Paul: “Love suffereth long and is courteous.”) Virgil accepts her request, but it is only when his ghostly form is addressed by Dante, who appeals for help, that he takes on a corporeal form and the dialog can begin (Inf. I,65). In the journey through Hell and Purgatory the bond between Dante and Virgil increases until in the sacred wood of the earthly paradise Virgil departs and Dante is “orphaned”. This takes place when Beatrice appears in a magnificent pageant and Dante turns to Virgil, quoting a passage from the Aenaed relating to Dido and her love for Aeneus, only to find Virgil has departed, his task being completed (Perg. XXX, 46).

It is easy to miss the utter strangeness of Virgil’s commission. Beatrice and Virgil belong to different theological universes separated by a great gulf. Her system centers on a single all loving and all powerful god. Virgil had cried: Can there be so much anger in the hearts of the heavenly gods? He could equally well have been a Himalayan Buddhist believing in many terrifiying earth spirits and mountain gods. How can she be sure he has changed to her system of belief? But Beatrice does not quibble about his theology. They are united in courtesy: he understands her compassion, she accepts his autonomy as a poet. It is as a poet that he can speak to Dante.

Addendum: The classical sublime


The Golden Bough; J.M.W. Turner, exhibited 1834, Tate Gallery. The Sibyl holds a sickle and the freshly cut bough in front of Lake Avernus, the legendary gateway to the Underworld. There are earlier more literal versions. A 1798 version is in the Tate Gallery. "Lake Avernus: Aeneas and the Cumaean Sybyl," 1814-15, is in the Yale Center for British Art. The 1834 version relates to Claud's Aeneus paintings and to Turner's Claud-inspired Carthage paintings. In these late Turner's the gold has taken over the painting. Sir James Frazer in Chapter 1 of the Golden Bough wrote: "Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough?"

Monday, July 27, 2009

A School in Afghanistan

In the New York Times July 18, Op-Ed columnist Thomas Friedman has written about his presence at the opening by Greg Mortenson of a new school in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. The title is "Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No." Here is the link. The school will educate both girls and boys.

The need for women’s education in Afghanistan is demonstrated by infant and maternal death rates. In the New York Times July 28 it is reported: “Afghanistan has the world’s second-highest death rate in women during pregnancy and childbirth (only Sierra Leone’s is worse). For every 100,000 births, 1,600 mothers die; in wealthy countries the rates range from 1 to 12. In one remote northeastern province, Badakhshan, 6,507 mothers die for every 100,000 births, according to a 2005 report in the medical journal Lancet. In all, 26,000 Afghan women a year die while pregnant or giving birth."
The article continues: “The deeper problems are cultural, rooted in the low status of women and the misperception that deaths in childbirth are inevitable — part of the natural order, women’s lot in life.” Girls education is an essential component for change.

Pashtoon Azfar, advocate for change and president of the Afghan Midwives Association.







For recent mortality and education satistics, and maps of ethnic and cultural divisions see this BBC link.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Reviews plus Catching Up with Greg Mortenson

This month brought two encouraging reviews of Himalayan Portfolios, Journeys of the Imagination. One was in the latest issue of Appalachia (2009, Vol LX No. 2, p153; Summer/Fall issue). The review by Malcolm Meldahl in the “Books of Note” section outlines the five portfolios. He then adds “No less a part of the book is the ambitious essay on the history of Western engagement with the Himalaya.” He comments on the composition of the photographs and notes that the strength of the large format approach is that it makes each photograph a deliberate act. The Karakoram portfolio is chosen for further comment: “The most otherworldly image among many is the distant view of K2 over a snow saddle at dawn on page 29.” The review concludes:
“Each portfolio is a marvel. This is a book to pore over and to engage intellectually. This is indeed a pilgrimage that Kenneth Hanson has put into our hands.”
(for more see the Book Reviews section of my Web Page.)

Appalachia is published by the Appalachian Mountain Club: “America’s longest running Journal of Mountaineering and Conservation”. In addition to these topics, Appalachia contains articles on AMC history, poetry, ecosystem preservation, Accidents and Books of Note. The present issue includes the regular Alpina section describing mountaineering in the Himalayas and elsewhere by Jeffery Parrette. His articles are always rewarding. I found his essay 100 Years of Life and Death in High Places, that appeared in the 2000 (LIII#1) issue, and another on 50 Years of Climbing Everest (2004, LV#1) extremely valuable when I was writing my book. The current issue also contains a fascinating interview with Rick Wilcox, Himalayan climber and mountain guide (he is based in Conway, New Hampshire). The year of his Everest climb, 1991, was a year after I had taken a course with Mark Chauvin his associate in the International Mountain Climbing School. We made a midwinter ascent of the headwall of Tuckerman's Ravine and camped beneath a full moon near Lake of the Clouds. It was remarkable cold and incredibly still. Other articles in the issue bring back memories, such as the crossing of the Punta Union Pass in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru.

The other review is in BiblioBuffet, an on-line literary journal: Writing worth reading. Reading worth writing about. The editor, Lauren Roberts, received Himalayan Portfolios as a judge for the Benjamin Franklin Awards (see June 2 blog below) and decided to write about it in her column. She refers to its glorious black –and-white photography, explains the portfolio divisions and illustrates the conjunction of people and mountains by discussing the photograph of Namche Bazaar. This Sherpa center, elevation about 11,300ft, and shown on page 103 of the book is perched in a hanging bowl on the mountain side above the Bhote Kosi.

"More than a fine art photography book, Himalayan Portfolios aims to educate the Himalayan admirer about the mountains, the culture and religion, the people, the impact of the world coming to its doors, the importance of photography in discovering the Himalayan story, and much more. …It is also a tribute to something ultimately unexplainable, something beyond the ken of human attributes."
(for more see the on line article or the Book Reviews section of my Web Page.)


Finally: Catching up with Greg:



Kenneth Hanson and Greg Mortenson at BookExpo America, New York, May 2009 (Greg wrote the Foreword to Himalayan Portfolios and is the co-author of the international best seller Three Cups of Tea.)

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Ben Franklin (Act 2)



Benjamin Franklin meets “Britain’s Got Talent”

See April 24 Blog. On arriving at the Roosevelt Hotel Ballroom on Thursday last we encountered the book display for the Benjamin Franklin Awards and realized that we were in a serious horse race. The significant contender was Wildlands Philanthropy: The Great American Tradition — color photos of different parks and seashores, historical essays and linkages to various conservation groups. Delux slip cover. It was no great surprise when, cheered by a slap up buffet and fortified by wine, we heard the golden award in the ‘Coffee Table Book’ category go to Wildlands.

Instead Himalayan Portfolios achived silver status. A little sad, but then came Saturday — Susan Boyle lost out to an agile dance troupe on “Britain’s Got Talent.” Like her, we sing "I Dreamed a Dream" at full force and enjoy the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing that everywhere there is sympathy, and gee, an award is an award.

Finalists 2009 Benjamin Franklin Awards, Roosevelt Hotel, New York, May 28.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Question Time


The photograph documents the question time after my talk on The Making of Himalayan Portfolios at the Large Format meeting in Springfield MA on March 29 (see blog, March 9; photo by Marie Curtis). An account of this event, together with the above picture, is contained in the March/April issue of VIEW CAMERA (p 57). In the talk I recounted the evolution of my book from a gallery exhibit through the design process and essay writing to the epic struggle to achieve the best possible duotone printing.

The slide seen as a wall projection to the left in the photograph was added as a grace note. The original photograph, seen by me last year, is in the Darjeeling Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (founded by By Tenzing Norgay). It shows Oliver Wheeler, age 31, together with his two Tibetan assistants, on the 1921 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition. He was seconded to the expedition as a photographer and surveyor by the Survey of India because of his experience with photo-surveying. The caption says that he is posed with a plate camera. That would be consistent with the idea that the camera was for survey use. In the course of his map making Wheeler discovered the East Rongbuck Glacier. Mallory’s climbing group had hiked right past the junction. Later Wheeler became Surveyor General of India.

One question remains: how did the picture captions in VIEW CAMERA get switched!

Friday, April 24, 2009

NOMINATION

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AWARD NOMINATION

Once a year the Independent Book Publishers Association holds a festive jamboree in New York just ahead of the opening of Book Expo America. On that occasion they wrap themselves in the mantle of Benjamin Franklin, who is well know to have enjoyed gala occasions in England, France and America. He was an independent printer and publisher and, undoubtedly, would have qualified as a member had he applied. Therefore, in his name they hand out AWARDS to publishers for the “BEST BOOKS,” as judged by top designers and editors. Lo and behold, Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination (Fields Publishing), to which this blog is devoted, is one of three nominees in the category: Coffee Table Books / Large Format.

Ben Franklin was no stranger to awards. In 1753 he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society for his work on electricity – including the invention of the lightening conductor. In 2006 Fields Publishing received a Benjamin Franklin Award for their Ann Packard book. Gail and Charles Fields, designer and editor, and pre-press expert Glen Bassett, are anxiously awaiting May 28, the date of the gala. Will lightening strike twice?


Stay tuned for more information.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Darwin, Fox Talbot, The View Camera

JUVAT IRE JUGIS QUA NULLA PRIORUM CASTALIAM MOLLI DEVERTITUR ORBITA CLIVO

There are times when some piece of historical information fits exactly in place and locks in an argument already made. This occurred last week when I visited for a second time the exhibit Endless Forms: Charles Darwin and the Visual Arts at the Yale Center for British Art (the show runs until May 3.)

The pictures that caught my attention on the first trip were the watercolors by Joseph Dalton Hooker from his botanical and geological trip to Sikkim and Nepal in 1848-9. You will find a photograph of a rock formation that Hooker described in his Himalayan Journals on page 122 of my book Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination. I called it “Hooker’s Obelisk.”




But on my second trip to Endless Forms I noticed a rather small photograph labeled The Geologist by William Henry Fox Talbot (dated ca.1843, salt print from a paper 'calotype' negative.) In the inset I have cropped off a woman with a bonnet to the left (his mother?) The shadow of the walking stick implies that the exposure was relatively short. This picture was made at the point when Talbot’s ten years of research had created photography as we know it. The astronomer Sir John Frederick William Herschel had just recently suggested to Talbot that hypo would be a better fixing agent for dissolving unchanged silver chloride in nergatives and prints than alkaline potassium nitrate. The reducing agent Gallic acid had been introduced in order to convert silver chloride to silver (i.e. develop the latent image) in exposed paper negatives or prints. The camera obscura had become the view camera. All this progress was drawn together in the first photographic book The Pencil of Nature published in sections in 1844-46. Direct contact prints of leaves and other objects on silver nitrate imprgnated paper were probably made some decades earler by the circle that included the Wedgewoods and Sir Humphry Davy, but examples are lacking (see recent dispute.)


Those of you have read the essay in my book will realize that I have been intrigued by the linkage between Himalayan photographers and geology. In the essay I discussed the influence of John Ruskin (you will find a painting by Ruskin of a rock formation in the Endless Forms exhibit.) Ruskin’s Modern Painters appeared between 1843 and 1864, so Fox Talbot was not following Ruskin. Almost certainly he was responding to the publication of Charles Lyall’s Principles of Geology (1830-32) that appeared just in time for Darwin to take with him in the Beagle a copy of the first volume. It is also the point at which Fox Talbot began to explore the photographic idea. Lyall’s bombshell was that he made the case in popular form for James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth (1785). Hutton argued that the landscape we see had been formed by great forces of erosion, eruption and movement over vast periods of time. Fox Talbot’s photograph not only points to the existence of “deep time” but it has a second connection with “deep space”. Sir William Herschel had been interested on hypo because he wanted to use a telescope to obtain silver images of stars that could be assayed to measure relative star magnitudes. Ruskin's painting is about experience -- the quidity of rocks. Talbot's phtograph is about the process of interpreting the rocks.

What about the above Latin quotation? it appears on the title page of The Pencil of Nature. A little poking around on the Internet established that it is from Book III of Virgil’s Georgics. Fox Talbot studied Classics and Mathematics at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge (alongside exercising his scientific curiosity). He published in both areas. Virgil was part of the basic training in the classics, so the quote implies a context that a reader would be expected to fill in. The poem is concerned about Nature, including horses, oxen and goats, hence it fits well with the title of the book. But the specific reference is to Mount Parnassus, a mountain of barren limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi. Parnassus is dedicated to Apollo and is the home of the muses. The expanded quotation and a poetic translation are as follows:

sed me Parnasi deserta per ardua dulcis
raptat amor; iuvat ire iugis, qua nulla priorum
Castaliam molli devertitur orbita clivo.

But I am caught by ardent sweet ravishing desire
Above the bleak Parnassian steep; I love
To walk the heights, from whence no earlier track
Slopes gently downward to Castalia's spring.

Fox Talbot was the first to walk the heights.
He made his own track.

Monday, March 9, 2009

COLLECTIVE ACTIVITIES


Valley Photo Center
Second floor of Tower Square
1500 Main St Springfield, MA 01115

Meeting sponsored by the
New England Large Format Photography Collective (NELFPC)
Sunday March 29th
1:00 pm:
Kenneth Hanson (this blogger) will be giving a talk on the making of his book Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination. He will discuss both the development of the project and the mechanics of the process (as outlined in his January 5 blog).

3:00 pm:
Paul Turnbull, Executive Director of the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography in Turners Falls, MA will present a talk on how to successfully prepare and present work to galleries and museums.

Downtown Springfield, MA, is very quiet on a Sunday afternoon and there should be no problem parking in the street near the Tower Square building.

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Avenue - New Haven, CT 203-389-9555

Meeting of the Photo Arts Collective of New Haven
Thursday April 2
7:00 pm:
This blogger will jump right back up again and, having learned by experience, will give an improved version of the Springfield talk listed above. Those who attended the first talk will have had time to think up really difficult questions. They will be able to expose the confusion in his thinking. It should be an interesting evening. All welcome. No camera necessary, just curiosity.

There is a parking lot behind the gallery. Entry just beyond the gallery.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

ORDERING: GOING GLOBAL

Book marketing involves a complicated relay process. At one end is the author who engages in friendly exchanges with the publisher. At the other end is the reader. The friendly reader could, perhaps, buy the book from the friendly author or friendly publisher, but no, there are market forces that demand otherwise. Big Big book stores, or on-line chains such as Amazon, are set up to buy books from a distributor who fronts for the publisher (who, in turn, holds friendly exchanges with the author.) Small book sellers do not like to deal with small publishers as they have to spend money setting up separate accounts.

Up to now the distributor has been missing in this relay, but no more! Fields Publishing has now linked up with IPG, the Independent Publishers Group, one of the largest book distributors nationally and world wide. They will sell directly, or through booksellers. The book should be available through chains such as Barns and Noble, later this year . IPG issues its catalog in May and the catalog will contain a full page promotion. At present the simplest method to obtain the book is to order from IPG by phone.

Order by Telephone: IPG Orders: 800-888-4741.

IPG Himalayan Portfolios Click

Web IPG general: http://www.ipgbook.com/

Enter Kenneth Hanson for information.

E-mail IPG Enquiries: frontdesk@ipgbook.com.

Monday, January 5, 2009

The Large Format Conspiracy

In these digital days of point-and-shoot and cell-phone cameras it may come as a surprise that Large Format photographers are alive and active. They exist as custodians of a wonderful past. More importantly, they exist because the discipline of using the large format camera offers a distinct way of seeing. The process is necessarily deliberate: the image is composed on the ground glass screen inverted and reversed — an arrangement that helps to brings out the graphic composition.Darkroom printing creates a performance memory that bonds the photographer to the image. The New England Large Format Photographic Collective, NELFPC, was created a few years ago to bring together like minded practitioners and promote the art of the view camera.



Toyo 4x5 View Camera and Goat near the Masherbrum base camp, Karakoram 2001. Photograph by Rob White.

Thanks to the determination of its founder Steve Sherman, NELFPC has arranged a special

Large Format Weekend, March 27-29.

Friday March 27: Trip to the AIPAD exhibit in New York City. Gene LaFord will hang work by NELFPC members in the Valley Photo Center in Springfield MA.


Saturday March 28: Workshop-demonstration by Bob Carnie, master printer and photographer (Elevator Photographic, Toronto, Canada). The workshop will be conducted in Steve Sherman’s large darkroom in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.


Sunday March 29: Lectures and discussion at the Valley Photo Center, Springfield, MA.

I (Kenneth Hanson) will speak about the creation of Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination.

Paul Turnbull, Director of the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography in Turner Falls MA, will describe his work as a curator (his most recent exhibit was of work by Paul Caponigro). He will also talk about the process of creating a book of his own photographs.

My Talk:

The Process and the Dream: Himalayan Portfolios

The book was created in a period when enormous technical advances were being made in scanning and digital printing. I will discuss my stumbling technical progress and the expert involvement of Charles Fields, Gail Fields and Glen Bassett. . The timeline was as follows: The initial conversation with Charles Fields took place in 1999. A tentative structure emerged after I mounted a large solo exhibit at UConn in early 2002. Two further Himalayan trips were made and the text was written and rewritten. In 2006 came the editorial choice of images and the contract commitment. The book was almost press ready, barring final corrections and the duotone separations, in late 2007. The press run was completed March 1, 2008 and the shipment arrived from Korea on Cape Cod May 19.

A book is more that a grab bag of well rendered photographs. My fundamental task has been to explore photographically the concept of the Himalayan journey, both as reality and as symbol, by documenting actual journeys.

Precise documentation is an essential part of the view camera aesthetic. In Part 1 I have emphasized the specificity of the process by including maps, by noting the trek day on which each photograph was taken, by reporting the elevation of camera and peaks, and by outlining the geology, but I have omitted the usual travel anecdotes about lost duffle bags, altitude, apple bandy and what not. In many cases the landscape images include Buddhist emblems of the Absolute: prayer stones, isolated monasteries, prayer flags, cairns. A few portraits have been included.

The images were selected on the basis of on my own subjective judgments, but viewers will bring to the book their own prior experience and will make from the photographs their own imaginative journeys. The Himalayas are emblems of the ultimate challenge and the final passage between life and death. As such they demand our serious attention.

The second part of the book is a record of my own iconic explorations; the essay is an Enquiry in the eighteenth century sense rather than a statement of beliefs. I am concerned about the childhood sense of curiosity and astonishment without which the journey would not take place. I am concerned about Western and Buddhist narrative frames and modes of perception: there are Western traditions of exploration and mountaineering, and there is the understanding of the mountains by the people of the mountains. I am concerned about the poetic concepts of the quest and of the Mountain Sublime — call it joy, beauty, terror. I am concerned about the journey that abandons security and moves beyond the certainty of accepted boundaries.

In presenting my photographs I am faced with a dilemma. Given the constraints of time and attention, it makes sense to reverse this presentation — to begin with some theme examined in the essay, such as the elements of the heroic journey or the concept of the Sublime, and then use the photographs to illustrate the theme. But the book allows the viewer to follow the photographer who first had to learn to trust the landscape. I had to feel the space encountered in order that the two-dimensional print could be an entrance to an imagined space. The discovered emblems, the whole notion of a Himalayan journey arose from that experience. Much the same could be said about the art of listening: trust the music, trust the poem. From such trust much else can follow.

These reflections were, in part, prompted by an Amazon review written by a friend, Kate Latimer. In order to appreciate the power of the book, she found she needed to view and read its "chapters” over several days. “Each chapter invites you to feel as well as see the stark reality of being in the midst of such dangerous and overwhelming landscapes.” (You can find her words via my Web site under Reviews.)

Another factor was the viewing af extraordinary 1973 Spanish movie The Spirit of the Beehive directed by Victor Erice and photographed by Luís Cuadrado (Criterion, 2006). The setting is 1940 soon after the end of the Spanish Civil War. The superb images of the bleak Castilian landscape and sparsely furnished house interiors are haunting, as is the acting of the small six year old girl Ana. In some ways the making of a movie is like making a photographic book: images have to be chosen and ordered in a meaningful sequence. With the movie came a documentary “Footprint of the Spirit” in which the director, writer and producer discussed the generation of the film. It has sections entitled: Primordial Images, Traces of Light, Journey of a Child’s Gaze, Interior Exiles, Return to the Source. They were organizing the film in terms of echoing symbols and yet the subject was the, ultimately mysterious, unbounded imaginative world of the little girl as she encounters gentleness and danger and the death of a fugitive. As they proceeded they found they could throw away the framing material about the devastation left by the Civil War and leave the biographies of the adult parents undefined. Symbols dissolved into events. The movie forces the viewer to identify with Ana and thus to construct the unexplained mysteries and dangers as seen through her eyes. I am still trying to find words for this experience: astonishment is linked to fear and trust. Is this what my book is about?