Contemplating Hanzlova: How can a photographic connection to landscape and place

explore our sense of identity and belonging?

Katherine Lockett-Clark
May 2018

Introduction


This essay will discuss how making a photographic connection to the landscape and the nature
that surrounds us at a specific time can begin to explore and shape our sense of identity and
belonging.

The verb [Identity] has a transformative sense, though, where “to identify” is “to
feel oneself to be, or to become, closely associated with or part of an
other” (OED). This is the identification of which John Keats wrote in his letter to
Benjamin Bailey of 1817: “If a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its
existence and pick about the gravel.”

(Macfarlane, 2017)

Landscape and nature photography are extensive subjects, and the theoretical understandings of
identity and belonging are vast. Relatively, therefore within this short discourse, these concepts will
only be touched upon, in relation to a singular idea. This idea is an exploration of how a notable
type of landscape photography is intentionally or accidentally driven by a psychological resonance,
in order to find an understanding of self within a place, and therefore of identity and belonging.

This type of landscape and nature photography (which often sits aside deliberate portraiture and
what appear to be unassuming snapshots of community and surroundings) is often imbued with
quiet and contemplation, presumably as it allows both artist and audience the time and space to
reflect on the reverberating issues and feelings concerned with existence within a place. With this
in mind, this essay will have a particular focus on Jikta Hanzlová's works; principally Forest (2012).
Hanzlová's work is often sensitively concerned with a sense of place, and how we sit within it, or
indeed without it; with how the landscape holds our memories and emotions; and with the idea of
finding or returning home.


Hanzlová’s photography is in constant pursuit of the relationship between the
individual and the context in which he or she lives. It scrutinises the ways in
which home and surroundings indelibly shape identity.
(Lempesis, D, 2017)


Hanzlová's photographic practice makes an ideal case study for the question posed in this essay. 



Hanzlová; Home and Belonging (617) 



In her book, Rokytník (1997), Hanzlová returned to her hometown, and photographed both the
landscape and the residents in a simple, familiar, and slightly melancholic collection. It was with
this book that Hanzlová established the themes of homeland and identity, which have become
significant in all of her work.

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 Rokytník became a foundation from which to explore themes of identity and
place and the tensions between the individual and group, belonging and
alienation, as well as past and present.
(International Center of Photography, 2012)

Hanzlová's childhood connection with Rokytník, and her exile from her home is the distinct drive
behind the work; she is re-discovering the place, and in turn her childhood and her identity through
her photographic investigations.

... Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography (1977) that 'People robbed of their
past seem to make the most fervent picture-takers, at home and abroad.' ... Jitka
Hanzlová may bear out this theory. She began her career by bridging a
considerable gulf imposed between herself and her childhood: in 1990 she
returned after years of exile to her native village in eastern Bohemia, where she
shot a radiant series of highly controlled yet snapshot-like images entitled
'Rokytník'
(Jones, 2003)

Ten years later, again going back into her past, Hanzlová created Forest, as Richardson (2017)
writes, ''by going to a forest nearby her childhood village in the Carpathian mountains, transforming
the empty, wooded landscape into a symbol of memory and loss'. Hanzlová only photographed in
the forest when she was alone, in an attempt to explore her own roots and to find herself; leading
on to examine how one's homeland and landscape can shape identity and a sense of belonging -
or in opposition - of isolation. The photographs are quiet, but intense; made with both tension and
compassion for the subjects; showing a reverent connection between herself and the forest
landscape.

In the pictures we see Hanzlová's experience of the forest conveyed with a contemplative gaze;
doleful shadowy light, endless dark corridors of trees, and snow and fog bearing down on the
landscape, and no sign of the outside world.

No longer looking in, Hanzlová penetrates the Moravian woodland of her

childhood—oblique, dark and mysterious—documenting the dimly lit interiors of
the hushed forest floor....[T]he pace of the forest and its timeless pulsations offer
Hanzlová a primordial solace from time as appropriated with man...Hanzlová’s
work is fittingly displayed as a narrative of identity and place.
(Tree, B, 2013)

The Forest becomes an interior landscape - her psyche entwined with the woods; laced with the
bleak Czech culture of mid twentieth century. It seems a deeply profound investigation into her
history; searching for answers, memories and missing pieces of her culture; creating visualisations
and reflections of her exile from, and return to, home, and with that, a longing for belonging.

Liz Wells discusses this idea in Land Matters; implying that a sense of belonging is an idea that
can be created, and fed into, by a specific type of landscape, particularly one that we consider to
be home. 


The ‘green, green grass of home’  may be sung about wistfully, or with pride;
landscapes – actual, remembered or idealised – feed our sense of belonging to
whatever place, region or nation that we view as homeland. To belong – be/long
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 – has existential implications; ‘knowing where we stand’ contributes to our sense
of security.
(Wells, 2011, p.100)


To know where we have come from, or perhaps more importantly, where we feel we belong, has
irrefutable impact on our sense of self and identity and to explore this photographically allows for
an emotive, tangible, and prolonged gaze to decipher the complexities of this understanding.

Landscape Photography and Identity

To have – or not have – a clear sense of place or territory crucially informs

identity. For many contemporary artists, questioning roots and lineages
contributes centrally to unlocking the histories through which we position
ourselves now.
(Wells, 2011, p.104)

The importance of connecting with a place, homeland or otherwise, as a means of disentangling

and contemplating our sense of identity is clear. However, how we form this connection and how
we develop an understanding of the exploration into identity is complex. There is much
epistemological writing (particularly within Phenomenology), and ethnographic research, that
examine the constructs of identity in relation to place. For example, Robert Mugerauer writes,

...[P]lace and identity occur simultaneously in three dimensions: first, in regard to

our specifically human mode of embodiment; second, in respect to the  unique
individuality of each person; and third, in the domain of political– ethical life.
(Mugerauer in Donohoe, 2017, p.59)

For me, this proposes that place and identity are inextricably wound together by our generalised
human experience, by our individual existence, and in relation to our position within culture and
society. Going further, Gallagher writes that 'Phenomenologically, or experientially, the environment
is an indefinite extension of the lived body” (Gallagher, 1986/2004, p. 287), and in turn, Merleau-
Ponty writes, '[T]he environment is that living connection comparable, or rather identical, with the
existing parts of my body itself” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2002, p.205). Both statements elude to the
idea that, in fact we are already part of the environment that we are in, and therefore we could
posit that our identity in any one moment is at one with the landscape with which we are presently
in.


While valid and intriguing, the theories surrounding these ideas can feel abstract and vast,
therefore to understand the pursuit of the photographic investigation into identity in relation to
place, we need to simplify our enquiry and look specifically at what both the acts of making a
photograph of a place, and reading the image, gives us. Wells discusses this idea,

Photographs slice space into place; land is framed as landscape. Representation

envelops reality; it becomes an act of colonisation... The photographic image, in
its precision and detail, operates topographically and metaphorically. The image
itself evokes mood, a sense of what it might be to actually experience this place.
The viewer of the image responds in terms of a nexus of aesthetic judgement,
emotional recognition, identification, empirical appreciation. Unlike the relatively

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 unbounded experience of looking, the photograph defines and frames,
suggesting particular ways of seeing.
(Wells, 2011, p.104/105)

Defining a place through images allows us the control to both create and respond with subjective
perception of how we experience a place. We consciously decide on aesthetic qualities, subjects,
symbolism, and sequential structure, which come together to embody and express a certain
atmosphere or feeling that we believe exists for us in the place. During the process of making
pictures we become more in tune with the place we are photographing, thus deepening the
connection to the place, and finding more of ourself within it. We become aware of the place's
identity, in relation to our own. In What's The Landscape of Modern Landscape? (2012) Claire
O'Neil says, 'We have become so closely entangled with the land that we almost can't remove
ourselves from the frame, at least not honestly.'. When we take the Phenomenologist's standpoint,
this is true, as in life and in photography we are a part of the landscape and it is part of us.



Connecting with Nature | Connecting with Camera

...Photography significantly contributes to our sense of knowledge, perception

and experience, and to  (trans)forming our feelings about our relation to history
and geography and, by extension, to our sense of ourselves. 
(Wells, 2011, p.105)

From these ideas I suggest that once we are in a landscape we both find within, and impose upon
it, our memories, emotions, histories and sense of self. Then, when we add the camera as our
way of seeing, interpreting, and disseminating, new levels of imposition and connection are
sought out and often reached. With the lens as our compositional and intuitive eyes we create still
frames of time passing, however slowly, and seek to visualise moments that are felt inherently
within us. Furthermore, the prolonged, intentional gaze that the camera gives us penetrates the
environment around us; leading to us instinctively become more aware, more in tune, and more
sensitive to our relationship with the place we are in.

Looking back at Hanzlová's Forest, we can see how she connected to the forest in a very
particular and profound way: through looking with her camera, and then through the act of making
pictures. In her dialogue with Berger, Hanzlová describes the immersion and sudden shift of
emotion she felt whilst focusing on making pictures in the forest.

And then when I was concentrating on a picture, I stopped hearing the silence
around me. It was as if I was somewhere else, like in a film. The forest started
to move and, as I looked through the camera, I experienced fear. Maybe it was
just the framing and the stillness of the evening. As if the birds and the crickets
had stopped their singing, as if the  wind had come to a stop in the valley.
Nothing but nothing to hear. No birds,  no wind, no people, no crickets. The
darkness of the light and this other silence made my hair stand on end … I
could not exactly place the fear, but it was coming from the inside.
(Hanzolva in Berger, 2013, p.124)

We can only speculate on where this fear had come from. Was she revisiting a fear from her
childhood, the fear her family felt before they were forced into exile? A fear of revisiting that time in

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her life? A fear of not being able to move forward? The answer here is not important. What is
important is the distinct recognition that Hanzlová's photographic exploration succeeded. Her time
spent in the forest; carefully and sensitively investigating the cultural, aesthetic, and metaphorical
aspects of this landscape; as a way to search for answers about her identity in relation to her
homeland; produced a series of pictures that transcends much landscape and nature photography.

Many nature photographs are like fashion photos... Mountaintops,

waterfalls,  meadows, lakes, beech trees in autumn, are asked to stand there,
wearing themselves and giving the camera a moody look. And why not? They are
reminders of the pleasure of at last arriving... Nature as  hostess... In Jitka’s
pictures there is no welcome. They have been taken from the inside. The deep
inside of a forest, perceived like the inside of a glove by a hand within it.
(Berger, 2013, p.123/124)

The way in which Hanzlová has connected so profoundly with the place she is photographing
means that place is imbued with her evolving identity and sense of belonging to that place; she
puts upon the forest, and the pictures of it, a sensitivity that draws out its atmospheric qualities and
it's resonating identity. Well's refers to John Pfhal's text from Permutations of the Picturesque,

[Pfhal] comments on the effects of photography of place. 

 
Some people think that the camera steals their soul.
Places, I am convinced, are affected in the opposite way.
The more they are photographed (or drawn and painted)
the more soul they seem to accumulate. 
(Pfahl, 1997: n.p.) 
 
That certain places are photographed repeatedly would seem to testify to
this; the more often they are imaged the more their aura is enhanced.
(Wells, 2011, p.108)

The connection through the camera to the place gives us an intimate two way conversation with
the landscape, and with the nature that exists there. We can understand the way the place
responds to us and how we respond to it and all its pieces; the trees that build corridors and
shadows, the mist that falls to obscure our view but enhance our uncertainty, the light that creeps
along the forest floor, showing hidden inhabitants and marking pathways into the deep... We build
a knowledge and visual language of how it feels to experience time within the place. We can begin
to establish ourselves within the place, discovering, and creating a way to belong there.

Conclusion

Through this research and reflection it is clear than Hanzlová's Forest is a complex and deeply
personal body of work that, while it clearly sits within landscape and nature photography, breaches
far into the depths of psychological exploration and existential understanding. When we examine
Hanzlová's process and outcome, we see that that it is a multifarious journey of intuition and
contemplative revelation.

…[Our] relation to the environment in which  we find ourselves, and of which

we form a part, is multiply constituted: the  real, perceptions of the real, the

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 imaginary, the symbolic, memory and experience, form a complex tapestry at
the heart of our response to our environment, and, by extension, to landscape
imagery.
(Wells, 2011, p.2)

Hanzlová chose to photographically engage with the landscape of her childhood home, in an
intimate, even therapeutic way of self discovery; examining herself in relation to the forest through
memory and metaphor, as a way of moving forward, and of the work she said, "The way I go is the
way back to see the future" (Hanzlova, in Berger, 2013, p.121).

The connection we have the potential to make with landscape and nature, through visual
discourse, is infinite and unquestionable; giving us the power to move on, to heal and to find that
we do, indeed, belong here.

In the end, you are trying to make clear...that everything found at the edge of
one’s senses—the  high note of the winter wren, the thick perfume of propolis
that drifts down-  wind from spring willows.... that all this fits together. The
indestructibility of these associations  conveys a sense of permanence that
nurtures the heart, that cripples one of the most insidious of human anxieties,
the one that says, you do not belong here, you are unnecessary.
(Lopez, 1988, p.129)

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