Frank Grisdale’s Photo Blog

An Essay by Arts Writer Heather Hamel

“All photographs are memento mori.”

Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977.

It had been years since last I looked out over the lake that was an elemental presence in my youth. Watching its mutable surface last summer, I had an epiphany. On certain days when the wind is light but active, the thin surface of the lake—that shallow skin like chrome or aqua—flips and doubles back in fractions of a second as it follows the wind’s flight. To stay with the play, I suspend all projections into the past or the future and I do not take the photograph. As soon as the camera frames one moment of this living panorama and a photograph is presented to the perceiver; the photograph has substituted the water’s infinite capacity to register time and materiality with nostalgia and memory. I had to stifle the desire to capture (and interpret) this experience—to push away the mental image of a camera mounted on a tripod adjusted to the height of my gaze. Simultaneously, I understood certain works I had known of for some time—large format photographs of the rippling surfaces of water by Frank Grisdale. These images have no horizon and little or no atmospheric perspective; they are intense studies of surface and inscribe or retrace the substrate of the paper on which they are printed. They are abstract, but they are also signs or signifiers of something real: water, nature, the land—our struggle to live in a state of grace with the natural world. And now, when I look at them I am nostalgic for my experience of the marking of time on the face of a lake.

A photograph has aesthetic qualities intrinsic to the medium itself: an outward-looking or existential determination; a framing of the subject that separates it from its usual spatial and temporal reality; and, as a consequence, a silence or stillness of image. Another, older notion of aesthetics is the expression of beauty through forms that evoke the sublime or transcendent. From the 17th century onwards, the landscape, when finally released from its supporting role in the paintings of the Renaissance, has been inscribed with aesthetic principles that heighten the presence of the sublime.  Many of these motifs are present in the photographs of Western Canada by Frank Grisdale: the minimalist compositions are comprised mainly of horizons that, from photograph to photograph, shift between the upper and lower registers of the picture plane emphasizing sometimes sky; other times the grasslands or the faces of mountains. The romantic desire for spiritual purity is so marked in his work that almost all traces of human activity are kept beyond the frame of the lens. If my words seem equivocal, it is not my intention to deny the artist’s capacity to move the viewer: I am only wary of the meaning implied by their beauty and the beauty of any of the idealized views from the great tradition of landscape painting and photography in North America to depict anything other than desire.  

The soft-focus technique that mutes the forms of the land and allows colour to carry the photograph is a clear citation of the early 19th century British painter, J. M. W. Turner – who is frequently the point of departure for the history of Modernism. When I look at Turner’s paintings, yes, I see exhilaration in the light of the sun but in these smoldering atmospheres, I also see the storm clouds of the onset of the industrial age – and there is not an image extant today that can erase the anxiety of the possibility of ecological collapse because it is beautiful.  These places do not exist except as promises of the transcendence. Only by passing through the lens and then the membrane of memory will you approach the nearer side of this place. Much of what I like – and much of what I dislike about the photographs of Frank Grisdale, I understood only after I relented and passed beyond the threshold of yes, but…

That Frank Grisdale is an Alberta son could not be clearer than to survey his photographic oeuvre. The modernist foundations of art practice that has been and remains the framework for strong art production in this region are present in the landscape photography of Frank Grisdale. His use of analytic perspective with its tendencies to flatten space, to generate ambiguous overlaps—as opposed to the synthetic, highly constructed perspective of the Renaissance—suggest the same visual pressure of vast space on the psyche as with many artists from the prairies. The photographs are modernist in their thrust and ultimately seek to describe the substrate – the surface. The spare compositions and rich colour of his photographs are inscribed with this aesthetic and are come by honestly after years of experience and a clear intent. Views of the land; the faces of people; enigmatic photographs of only water, only sky – all contain, within the frame, the promise of the threshold: the very real possibility that one can crossover into a heightened reality. Frank Grisdale’s work is beautiful, beautifully made and presents a point-of-view that is an antithesis to the irony of our age.

“…the habit of photographic seeing—of looking at reality as an array of potential photographs—creates estrangement from, rather than union with, nature.”

    Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977.

Memory and Nostalgia: The Landscape Photography of Frank Grisdale

Essay by Heather Hamel

Visual Arts Writer

Art Rental and Sales Gallery Manager

Art Gallery of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

04/2009

Tags: Essay, Heather Hamel, Susan Sontag

In fine art photography there are two well known approaches to editioning original images.

Keep in mind that photography, unlike painting, has no original. Display prints are based on negatives or positives (slides) captured within film cameras, or digital files made by digital cameras. Therefore the decision a photographer must make is what quantity of original prints he will personally endorse with his actual signature as being original.

1) Original Limited Editions - This is where the artist guarantees that there will only be a limited number of personally signed and numbered prints made of any particular image. This is the method that I follow. Originally my prints were limited to 40 plus 4 artist proofs. In the past year at the request of my dealers I have reduced the edition size of new images created after 2007 to 15 plus 2 artist proofs. Within this fixed and finite number the sizes available can vary, and as the edition sells, the price will increase. As well the smaller sizes will be priced lower than the larger sizes. However the total number of all signed prints of any particular image, regardless of size, will not exceed the stated edition limit.

The above approach is the most restrictive in terms of quantity. The total number to be printed and signed by the artist is known in advance by the buyer, and the artist has committed to not launch any further editions. Once the edition is sold out, the buyer can only obtain an original signed print of that image by going on to the secondary market and trying to buy a print from another collector.

Other photographers have chosen to limit their prints by size. For example, he or she might start off by offering 50 signed and numbered prints in the 8×10 size, and then later issue an edition of 25 at 16×24, and then another 10 at 20×30, etc. These are still termed limited editions, but they are limited by size of the print for each edition. This is a looser interpretation of limited edition but is a wide spread and valid practice.

At the other end of the scale, a photographer might decide to only ever issue one signed print. This is as close as it comes to being an original one of one. I have done this with commissioned work.

2) Original Open Editions - Here the artist does not limit the number of prints he or she will make and sign. Each print is signed and usually the prints will be numbered sequentially. Some of the world’s most famous image makers have handled their work in this way, including Ansel Adams. Since his death, his estate has continued to make prints which are marketed as originals. In this case, there will always be another signed ‘original’ available, and there may well be thousands of originals of one print out on the market.

Both approaches are wide spread. The buyer should be clear before purchase what edition approach the artist follows.

Finally, there is the unsigned print. Essentially this is just a glorified poster. There is no publicly available data tracking the quantity printed, and the price and quality is all over the map. The artist or his estate is paid a licensing fee by the printing company but never sees the output product, nor endorses the quality. These are not originals and do not have any more value than any other poster.

Tags: , carving ice

Here’s a kitchen area door with a cropped detail from one of my summer water images. This was planned from the beginning of this California couple’s renovation. The water image is lit by track lights in the room behind.

Hopefully it acts as a night light. I’m imagining one of these light doors in my kitchen, and enjoying it at the peak of viewing conditions, which would be at 2 a.m. when all the other lights are out!

Recently I signed on with GalleryStock - Licensing Images From The World’s Premier Photographers -  a photographers media licensing agency, based out of New York and London. The company represents some amazing artists, so I concluded instantly that maybe it would help my career to be associated with the cream of the crop, however indirectly. For example, here are some names you may recognize: Stephen Shore, Sally Gall, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Brian Finke, George Kavanagh, to name just a few.

I was approached by Stewart Mungeam, General Manager for Europe. After sending him my files, I thought afterwards that perhaps I should be asking some tough questions! Here’s a short but tough Q and A:

FG: Gallery Stock is how old now? What is the background of the founder(s)?

SM: Gallery Stock has been around for 5 years, it was originally created by Bill Charles, to house the Bill Charles photographers archives. It changed into the entity you see now over the last 3 years. Bill had the foresight to see there was a real potential for Gallery Stock to house the best artists in the world. He was joined by Howard Berstein some 3 years ago as a 50/50 partner in Gallery Stock.

FG: How do you choose photographers? Your offering of talent appears to be very high end – were these shooters missing out on media licensing because of their focus on other areas?

SM: We approach the photographers on an ad hoc basis. Anyone that’s been involved in recent photography exhibits, auctions, new books published etc. I can’t speak for my photographers, but stock does open up another revenue stream. Gallery Stock is also a tool to help promote photographers on another level.

FG: Will you limit the amount of photographers you represent, or will the collection grow endlessly?

SM: There are only so many great photographers out there so at some point we will stop. We won’t be taking on any amateur photographers. Gallery Stock really is a collection of the most elite photographers you can find and their very best images.

FG: How do you market the site/work?

SM: The site is marketed globally through press, online one sites such as PDN, Creative Review etc. There is also a brochure of work produced once a year that show cases the amazing talent.

Tags: Bill Charles, Brian Finke, Debbie Fleming Caffery, GalleryStock, George Kavanagh, Howard Berstein, Sally Gall, Stephen Shore

I love watching this. Trying to imagine doing it is another thing.

This is set in Norway - first in the winter, later in the summer. Wind Suits!

(After Sweet Fields, a photo series)

SWEET FIELDS, ALBERTA

By Patricia Robertson

Light shimmers inside light, an equation of dazzle,
a far explosion of hope. Shimmers into wheat, into heat-
hazed land, its downy skin. Overhead the blue onrush of sky.
An eye peeled back. Lidless. Black box in the hand,
turning the land upside down,
pinning light to paper where, faster than sound,
it moves still, blurs into being, spindles the world
out of itself. A slow solidifying. Light into thread.                                                                                                                                                                                                                               And thread into light. Each wheatstalk
blurred, out of focus. We look past the edges
to where they dissolve, to where they collide
into being, releasing them back into wholeness,
into wheatness, into pulsing bands of gold: sweet field,
shimmering carpet. Threadsun. Light.

Patricia Robertson is a fiction writer, poet, editor and creative writing instructor based in Whitehorse, Yukon. She has twot collections of short fiction. City of Orphans, was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.  probertson@northwestel.net

Tags: Patricia Robertson, Sweet Fields

In the spring, summer and fall I am always thinking trees, but rarely in the color-less winter.    For some reason I am now seeing the color that’s always been there.

During the holidays you see more neighbors. Or more neighbors see me. Normally I am shooting without interaction from the people on the street, who are usually still asleep. This week I was shooting snow on rooftops. I had earlier nodded to one person while they were standing behind their picture window and I was slowly walking by. On the way back that same person came out on their porch and shouted out “What are you doing?”, while I was focusing on the house across the street from her.

I thought it was obvious - but she really didn’t know. “I’m shooting landscapes - or roofscapes.” This silenced her.

Click.

Tags: Tree Photography