Unnatural nature

It's been a given for a long time now that photographed "reality" can easily be enhanced or downright invented. Technology can make things disappear, or different snippets can be mashed together to create an entirely new reality.

This last method is favored by one of the three photographers featured in the "Double Fantasy" exhibition at Galerie Rudolfinum, which presents three diverse approaches to landscape photography in the digital age.

German photographer Beate Gütschow uses computer technology to the fullest extent to create idealized views of the landscape while drawing heavily on centuries-old European traditions of landscape composition. She uses up to 100 different digitized photographs to create one finished print, picking and choosing precisely the elements she wants to create a virtual paradise of humans spending tranquil moments observing nature.

Gütschow's whole endeavor is drenched in irony - for what, exactly, is it that the figures are observing? The true reality is the artist sitting in front of a computer screen for countless hours as she deftly manipulates bits and pieces of captured scenes, not to mention the time she spends scanning the raw material for her finished images, which in a curious twist she initially shoots with an analog camera.

The resulting images aim for something iconic: the idyllic European landscape, the perfect picnic, gauzily preserved in memory. The photographer leaves out all extraneous information, so that only the essential elements of a classic countryside view remain: trees, placid water, grasses, wildflowers, cottony clouds. She uses time-tested compositional rules to produce serene, generally horizontal landscapes that don't aim to rouse emotions, as the Romantics later did with their awesome Alpine views. Gütschow's pictures are the distant digital heirs of Nicholas Poussain and Claude Lorraine.

Individual pictures in her "LS" (Landscape) series of C-prints evoke bits and pieces of classic landscape paintings in such an iconic way that the modern elements don't immediately jump out as being of the 21st century. In LS#13, the left side of the print contains a figure crouched under a leaning tree, who at first appears to be a shepherd with his staff gazing over his flock; the right side of the picture shows a group of teenagers in typical contemporary dress taking a rest from a nature hike. The eye is then drawn back to the first figure, who turns out not to be a shepherd, but just another one of the teenage flock in modern clothing. In another, LS#11, the sheet of black plastic covering a haystack almost fails to register at first as being of modern manufacture.

A slightly different approach with a vastly different effect is seen in the large-scale photographs of the young Czech artist Michal Šeba. He is a solitary wanderer through a wilder terrain, strolling down deserted lanes at dusk and through moonlit meadows, treading through forests shrouded in morning mist or standing before the dark and mysterious sea. Šeba, too, merges multiple shots to create a new image. The mood of still drama he creates vaguely evokes elements of J.M.W. Turner, as well as Asian landscape traditions.

Mainly, however, his work harks back to the archetypal pilgrim in the wilderness. The dark and glossy c-prints on the gallery walls require a viewer's concerted gaze. The eye has to adjust to the low contrast to see major features such as tree trunks, a road, even the horizon, and then concentrate further to notice smaller details. In some prints, bright elements such as stars, seagulls or calla lilies are like lights popping out of the darkness. Some strike a slightly surreal tone, such as The Hose, in which a hose snakes through a forest in the soft dawn light, or Columns, in which a series of beheaded stone columns march toward the horizon toward their commanding officer, a cell phone transmission tower.

The straightest photography in the show is by Jan Jedlička, a Czech photographer living in Switzerland. His extensive series of black-and-white photos titled "Circle" takes viewers on an amble through the modern countryside. The series achieves a remarkable unity through Jedlička's device of dividing nearly all of the square-format images neatly into top and bottom halves. He has a poetic eye, and the details in his photographs often present a suggestive narrative about the human encroachment on the landscape.

The landscape in painting and later photography has always been about much more than mere mountains, trees, lakes and clouds. It has been employed to express love for one's homeland, as a metaphor for the passage of time, as a reflection of aesthetic and philosophical ideals. It reflects changing ideas about beauty and what stirs the soul, expressed differently in different cultures at different times. This show focuses on the European tradition, and makes its points very well.

At the end of the exhibition is a landscape "reality show" - a film by Galerie Rudolfinum director Petr Nedoma, who curated this exhibition. Using a static camera, he filmed a particular Italian countryside vista over four hours, letting the landscape speak for itself. Like Warhol's film Sleep, basically nothing happens. Mist rises, the wind rustles some leaves, blades of grass shudder. You walk away, you come back, and still nothing is happening. It isn't sexy, but that's reality.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at
Features@praguepost.com