Positive: In Response to Place

translated from the chapter in “Above Flames” ：「正片：對場所的回應」

I tour the high mountains, low valleys, and pine forests with my eyes, just like waves undulating over rice paddies. The sunlight, like ripples, spreads across the valleys, passing over one ridge after another, stirring a glistening mass of leaves wherever the winds sweep through. This reflected wave of light often suddenly shatters, then bends forward, forming concentric circles, as if chasing one another, finally vanishing somewhere on a slope, much like waves crashing on a slanted shore… Soon, thin strands of clouds start blowing directly from the north to the south over the mountaintops. The clouds stretch into long threads, like wool being combed out, swirling and twirling, spun and dispersed by the wind, coiling up like strands of hair, then gracefully spiraling and dancing in the air, like a flood surging to claim more life…

Soon, thin strands of clouds began blowing directly from the north to the south over the mountain peaks. The clouds stretched into long webs, like combed wool, swirling like magic threads spun and scattered, twisted by the wind like strands of hair, then gracefully spiraling and dancing in the air, just like the foam around Yosemite Falls during a flood: then flying off the cliffs into the sparse blue sky, gathering again into rings of bubbles floating above the river. This happens because the wind hits the slopes and blows upward, and as the air expands and cools, the cloud strands rise and thin out. These clouds accumulate around the northern ice pillars, eventually forming an opaque, irregularly shaped thick layer, which then turns into snowflakes falling, mixed with hail. The sky quickly darkened. I had just completed my final observations, packed up my tools, and prepared to descend the mountain as the blizzard gradually intensified. At first, hail began to fall along the cliffs. From what I could see, each piece was remarkably uniform in shape — a hexagonal crystal with a round base. They looked light and exquisite, as if they had been carefully carved and then casually tossed onto the desolate cliffs, after which they rolled and slid in all directions.

I imagine that as you read the above two paragraphs, scenes likely appeared in your mind, even if you’ve never actually visited Yosemite National Park in the United States. The American nature writer John Muir, with his “word photography,” entices our imagination. His notes resemble a series of photographs — sometimes capturing landscapes, sometimes mental sceneries.

The Sierra Nevada range, where Muir trekked, was truly “wild” at the time. With an adventurer’s spirit, Muir would sometimes climb tall pines to listen to storms, sometimes tumble down the mountainsides along with avalanches, sometimes venture into caves filled with strange ice columns, sometimes leap off cliffs, and sometimes chase the aurora borealis… For the Yosemite landscape, his words came before any camera. In his eyes, “you can’t find a normal person in San Francisco,” because they have abandoned the wilderness, and thus have abandoned life.

Of course, if reading fails to conjure images before your eyes, you can always look at the photographs of the American landscape master, Ansel Adams.

When I was reading Ansel Adams’ memoir, I came across this story. In 1941, Adams traveled to the southwest to shoot an advertisement for the “American Potash Company” in Carlsbad, New Mexico. As he was driving along, he saw the moon rise in the east, hanging above cloud-covered, snow-capped peaks, while on the other side, the evening sun was setting, half-visible amidst the clouds flowing southward. The faint sunlight from the setting sun happened to shine on the crosses in the church cemetery. He sensed that this would be an important photograph in his career, so he quickly jumped out of the car. However, he couldn’t immediately find his usual Weston light meter, but then he suddenly remembered that the moon’s brightness is 250 foot-candles per square foot, so he used this data to estimate the exposure time and aperture.

With fingers trembling in excitement, Adams took one shot, flipped the film holder to take another, but by then, the sunlight had already left the crosses. That mystical moment was gone, never to return. At that time, he didn’t know that “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” would become the most famous photograph of his career.

Since Adams often forgot to note the dates on his negatives, the exact time this masterpiece was taken had always been uncertain. When it was exhibited, the date was marked anywhere from 1941 to 1944. Later, an astronomer, Dr. David Elmore, decided to solve this mystery using astronomy. He used geological survey maps to determine the elevation and position of the location, then input the composition of “Moonrise” into a computer. By examining the potential years, minute by minute, he searched for the altitude and position of the moon that matched the photograph. Finally, he calculated that the moment the shutter was pressed was between 4:00 and 4:05 p.m. on October 31, 1941. Dr. Elmore said that when the computer matched the photograph to the simulated moonrise angle, “I just felt my brain pounding, like it was about to burst.”

This story is a perfect example of what Henri Cartier-Bresson referred to as the “decisive moment” — an intuitive pre-vision combined with the scientific nature of photography. The moon, like a metaphor, floating above the landscape in the photograph, is captured in Adams’ eye, in his memory, in the viewer’s heart, on the retina, and in the computer’s astronomical calculations tracking the moon’s trajectory — a unique moment in the universe’s movement, where human aesthetic and rational ability converged in one click of the shutter.

During and after World War II, documentary photography was in vogue, and critics often accused Adams of failing to capture “the spirit of the times” or of being indifferent to the state of the world. They frequently remarked that “in a world falling apart, he was still photographing rocks.” Adams countered by saying that he did care about the world and the future, but he didn’t want to repeat what others were already doing. He remained focused on the flowing patterns of nature and the awe-inspiring face of the wilderness. He continued to travel, seeking landscapes worthy of pressing the shutter.

Adams believed that human contact with the earth completed a place’s “character.” Activities like climbing mountains, building villages, setting up camps, and farming created what he called a “fugal” relationship with the mountains and sky. On the other hand, the act of driving stakes into national parks and constructing roads that cut through the heart of the landscape stemmed from the government’s muddled vision that failed to see the raw power of the wilderness. In his famous work My Camera in the National Parks, Adams wrote this passage:

“The breeze at dawn in the Great Western Mountains is not just a cool wind passing through the pine forests; it should also stir a ripple in the collective consciousness of humanity, a ripple of the most delicate and magical beliefs in the world. The towering Teton Mountains are not merely a mechanical upheaval and fracture of the Earth’s crust; they stand as the primal gestures of the land beneath a vast sky. The ancient waves that beat against the granite headlands of Acadia’s Atlantic coast are not merely signs of slow erosion and decay by the ocean. They embody a force with the same primordial origins as eternity, the same force that will exist at the end of time, when the world ceases to be.”

I imagine that if Adams, who learned piano as a child, hadn’t become a photographer, he would have been a musician. I can hear music in this passage, and I can see, in Adams’ photographic paper, the vibrant world returning to black, white, and gray. The layered poetic hues of the earth in his work, in the labyrinth of my consciousness, transform into a resonance and a stirring with the same eternal force that has existed since the beginning of time and will continue until the end of the world.

2.

Perhaps my statement isn’t entirely accurate; you don’t have to look at photos only because you can’t read the text. These are two forms of art paying homage to the wilderness. You can see images within the text, just as you can read an essay or a poem within a picture. I often think that photography itself is a technique inherently linked to action, especially for nature photographers. A photographer is a dreamer, a traveler, someone who possesses a visual worldview.

In the history of photography, the person often credited with being the first to photograph an entire ethnic group and the space they inhabited as a landscape is the geographer John Thomson. In 1866, he photographed a series of works focused on Cambodia, which were soon published. Shortly after, the western half of China and the new world, areas not yet fully claimed by civilization, became places Western photographers sought to capture. Thomson was an active explorer, but his images seemed to emphasize humanistic landscapes. This can be seen in his work Illustrations of China and Its People, where he was skilled at placing people into the landscape, conveying a certain spirit.

However, the first natural landscape photographer to gain recognition may have been Thomson’s successor, Peter Henry Emerson. He was a pioneer in the field of natural literature and was related to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Peter Henry Emerson’s father was American, and his mother was British, but he was born in Cuba. His family raised him to be a doctor, but he eventually became a traveler, sailor, and photographer. As an early landscape photographer, Emerson’s works were highly pictorial, with some directly influenced by the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage. His long-term photographic subject, the Norfolk Broads, was considered the last stronghold of traditional British rural life. He photographed landscapes that most would consider ordinary and transformed them into beauty.

Emerson was so passionate about gazing at nature with his own eyes and through the lens that he eventually uncovered the secret of “the landscape the eyes see.” Because human eyes focus intensely on the object being viewed, the edges of the entire visual frame are actually blurry. Emerson wanted photos to recreate this effect of human vision. Therefore, he believed that a compelling landscape photograph didn’t necessarily need to be in sharp focus (which contrasts sharply with later landscape photography that emphasized sharp images). Leaving a blurred visual effect would, in fact, make the landscape clearer in the viewer’s mind.

In 1886, Emerson published an essay titled Photography: A Pictorial Art, in which he mentioned the term “Pictorialism” for the first time. This term not only startled art theorists but also became a guiding principle for Alfred Stieglitz’s “Photo-Secession.” It even influenced Eastern photographers such as Japan’s Shinzō Fukuhara and Taiwan’s Lang Jingshan. Pictorialist photographers employed various methods to make natural landscapes in their photos appear “painterly.” They sometimes used darkroom effects, collaged negatives, or manipulated the work with scratching or painting techniques, all to create an “artistic blurring.”

However, all innovations eventually attract inferior imitators. Soon, some photographers prided themselves on shooting “soft-focus,” “defocused,” or “out-of-focus” images. In 1891, Emerson published a short book titled The Death of Naturalistic Photography, in which he announced that he was abandoning the term and style he had created. Compared to natural evolution, this was a very young act of self-denial and self-destruction, perhaps also symbolizing the ever-changing and vibrant nature of art. Emerson’s enthusiasm for photography seemed to extinguish at this point. He believed that art begins with nature and ends with nature, and only the art that is closest to and most resembles nature is the highest form of art. In his view, no art could reflect nature as accurately, delicately, and faithfully as photography. Yet, he later came to believe that photography was a “very limited and low-level art” that could no longer express true nature. He then turned to writing.

I read a passage in Ian Jeffrey’s Photography: A Concise History that stirred a sense of melancholy: “Emerson’s final illustrated book was titled Marsh Leaves, featuring sixteen of the quietest images in the history of photography. These were small etched photographs of a distant, gray world, filled with thorn bushes and desolate reeds.”

3.

Walter Benjamin once mentioned a view by sociologist Georg Simmel. He said that after the advent of public transportation, people became more conscious of their appearance because social encounters had become visual exchanges. “Before the development of buses, trains, and trams in the 19th century, people had never gone minutes, let alone hours, without speaking, simply maintaining a posture while looking at others.”

This made me think that before public transportation, the object people most often gazed at must have been the natural scenery around them. Perhaps it was mountains, seas, rivers, lakes, plains, or deserts, depending on where one lived. But after we got used to seeing the weary faces of others on public transport, we suddenly realized that it had been a long time since we, like farmers, woodcutters, or fishermen, had maintained a single posture for an extended period while facing a landscape.

For the past ten years, I have almost taken a weekly train ride between Taipei and Hualien, watching the scenery fly by outside the window. I often think to myself: I must visit this place someday; or, next time, I should bring my camera to capture this view from the train. Yet, day after day, those promises are rarely fulfilled.

In the mid-19th century, photographers’ equipment often weighed more than 50 kilograms. They had to overcome their physical limitations before reaching a landscape, or simply hire a porter. British sculptor Frederick Scott Archer’s wet collodion process sped up the exposure time compared to the daguerreotype, but the equipment was still heavy. This new method brought new troubles: photographers had to carry a large amount of chemicals, instruments, bulky cameras, and tripods. Since the negatives had to be developed on-site after exposure, they also needed to bring tents to serve as darkrooms. It was like moving an entire studio into the wilderness, and sometimes porters or even horse-drawn carts were hired to reach the desired landscape. Landscape photography became a kind of trek, a pursuit, a uniquely human migration toward the beauty of vision. Due to the wet collodion process’s need for water, many photographers chose water scenes, which is why landscapes in photography history were often shrouded in mist.

I recall the book <Seeing the Tamsui River>, edited by photographer Chang Chao-Tang in the 1990s, which brought together images of the river over a century. Through the lenses of Deng Nan-guang and Chang Tsai, readers can see how people once lived along the ancient Tamsui River. At that time, ferries on the river still had sails, and the air was filled with mist. But now, both banks are lined with high-rise buildings, and a certain ambiance of riverside living has vanished, never to return.

Landscape photography, much like the long-debated concept of “wilderness,” can perhaps be divided into two categories: those with people inhabiting the photograph and those where no one is visible in the scene. John Muir always chose to avoid people; he loved pure wilderness. Under this view of nature, the photos often depict “deadpan” landscapes.

The term “deadpan” originally referred to someone with a blank or expressionless face. It was also used to describe the initial development of photography when anthropologists and explorers liked to point their cameras at indigenous people, especially those unfamiliar with the technology. Their reaction to the camera — or lack of one — was much like their response to the sudden intrusion of civilization: they didn’t know how to react. When I look at such photographs, though I know it’s not true, I often feel as if the people inside are gazing back at me with suspicion, hostility, fear, or indifference. “Deadpan” can sometimes also signify an aesthetic, where a seemingly bland, expressionless tone hides a deeper story beyond the surface. Especially in landscape photography, what may seem emotionless can, in fact, conceal a thousand birds hidden along the quiet lakeside or somewhere deep in the forest.

On another level, “wilderness” is clearly a term defined from a human perspective, not only because there are fewer and fewer places on Earth completely devoid of human-made objects, but also because the moment a photo is taken, at least one person or a group of people has already entered what the English language defines as a place inhabited only by wild life. For example, in February 1874, a ship’s photographer aboard the *Challenger* captured the first photograph of an Antarctic iceberg in the ice-filled Southern Ocean. This photo, along with the biological specimens brought back from Antarctica, was seen as precious. To most people, that photo represented a desolate landscape, but to the creatures living in Antarctica, it was a bustling home.

Walter Benjamin said, “Nature as it speaks to the camera is different from nature as it speaks to the eye.” Though this sentence appears simple, it invites endless interpretation. But the most critical point is that nature, as it speaks to the camera, is constructed through the eyes of the one holding the camera.

In 1975, the German couple Bernd and Hilla Becher published *New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape*. They explained that “land” and “landscape” are two different terms: “land” simply refers to the natural environment, while “landscape” implies a cultural construction by humans. In a landscape, every “environmental element” (including what we call trees) carries cultural symbolism. Photographers of the New Topographics movement explored how people viewed the places they lived in by sketching industrial buildings or sites. They focused on the most unique habitats on Earth — modern environments built by human civilization that provide us with safety but also make us feel alienated.

Richard Misrach and Japanese photographer Yoshiko Seino might illustrate this point. Misrach photographed the crumbling landscapes of the American West, with images that quietly condemned the exploitation of natural resources. Yoshiko Seino often photographed “desolate landscapes,” where the absence of people in these post-modern landscapes left viewers with an overwhelming sense of emptiness. Her photos, which on the surface appear beautiful but on reflection are not necessarily so, may reflect the photographer’s own inner world. Seino eventually ended her life by suicide, and as these poignant photos were shown to the world, nature still responded with a deadpan face.

These photographers did not intentionally emphasize the purity or beauty of the wilderness. Instead, they cleverly used a kind of contradictory contrast. High-tech industries often come with massive pollution, yet the industrial sites appear impeccably clean. However, this pristine landscape is simultaneously taking away others’ homes, clean air, soil, and water. Traditional rural areas, which may seem dirty and chaotic, actually embody humanity’s long-held wisdom of coexisting with the land, where everything is part of a cycle: the land both gives and absorbs all.

In the 2013 Wildscreen Festival, there was a film that documented how the wetlands of southern Iraq, the cradle of human civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin, disappeared. Some scholars believe this landscape may be the setting of the Garden of Eden described in the Bible. Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein drained the wetlands and waged war to drive out the Arabs living there. The film features Azzam Alwash, who dedicated his life to restoring the wetlands after Saddam’s regime fell. Alwash recalls his childhood, when he and his father would take a small wooden boat into the wetlands. He remembers the winding waterways through the reed beds, which seemed to reach the sky. He leaned over the boat to watch fish swim in the clear water, and a sudden cool breeze struck when they emerged from the marsh. He described it as “a sense of tranquility, warmth, and love, a precious experience shared with my father.” We learn from this that certain emotions can only survive in specific places.

Sometimes I wonder, if we had a photographer who used a stationary camera for an extended period to capture the mountains near Qingjing Farm or Taiwan’s mother river, the Zhuoshui River, what would we see? We would witness how the wildness of the landscape has been consumed and commodified. In deadpan landscape photography, it seems as if the photographer’s will is eliminated, but the will of the landscape emerges instead, striking the viewer. Through the camera, humanity knows full well what foolish and offensive acts we have committed.

4.

Ansel Adams’ connection to Yosemite came from his childhood memories. In 1916, after catching a cold, his aunt lent him a book titled In the Heart of the Sierras, and Adams became captivated by the tales of cowboys and Native American adventures. He begged his parents to take him to Yosemite, and on that trip, he received a Kodak Brownie box camera. The young boy ventured into the wilderness with his camera. As he stood on an old tree stump ready to take a photo, the stump collapsed. He tumbled down onto the decaying forest floor and accidentally pressed the shutter. Adams later said that this upside-down landscape photo was the best one he took in his first year of photography.

After the national park was established, Adams took photos for the Yosemite Park and Curry Company (YPCC), which managed the park, but he never aligned with their corporate philosophy. Adams remarked that he found it difficult to adopt their way of thinking because a company like YPCC had only one goal: to bring people to Yosemite, rather than bringing Yosemite into people’s hearts.

Adams said that when photographing mountains, he always wondered if he could convey the “expressive-emotional quality” of these vast landscapes. His 1927 masterpiece Monolith may offer an answer: the massive rock seems so alive, as if it were speaking, and indeed, it tells a story. We are moved by a piece of stone. In the 1930s, as the shadow of war approached, Adams and Edward Weston were both criticized for their work, which was considered purely aesthetic and lacking concern for the realities of the world. But they continued pressing their shutters, undeterred. Adams revisited Death Valley, capturing the vast changes that had occurred since the passage of the 1872 Mining Act. Owens Valley, once an agricultural area, gradually lost its character as the city of Los Angeles expanded rapidly. The city monopolized the water rights of several small rivers feeding Mono Lake, diverting the water into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Owens Valley even became a concentration camp for Japanese Americans during the war. These are processes, they are time; landscapes one day cease to be the landscapes they once were, something Adams closely observed.

I often look at the images of lost places that these nature photographers have given us and imagine that one day I will visit those landscapes. In fact, we are already standing in the even greater landscape that surrounds those photographic scenes. Every photograph of the wilderness is our response to a place, and also the place’s response to us.

There, the land makes me leap, spring excites me, falling leaves lead me into the forest, streams purify me, the wind carries away warmth, and winter takes my breath away.