Readers' Dozen: Horizonless

I doubt this is going to become a regular thing here, but I rather enjoyed seeing everybody's Texas pictures a while back. So, since we've been talking about Eliot Porter and Charlie Cramer, both of whom often shoot "horizonless" photos, I thought I'd ask to see if anybody has what they think is a cool picture with no horizon. (Mike Chisholm, you'd better send something!)

If you'd like to play, send me 1–3 JPEGs, 800 pixels wide, saved in the sRGB colorspace, and I'll pick a baker's dozen of them and post them below. Don't forget to tell me what you want your byline to be, or I'll just use the sender name on the email. The only condition is that it has to be horizonless.

[UPDATE: Could be I'm just being selfish. Wanted to look at some pictures today; got my wish. I've gotten about 200 pictures so far and I could post almost any of them. I should mention that this is not a contest and the ones I'll throw up for public delectation are just things that grabbed me for some reason or looked good together, or provided variety, and aren't necessarily the "best" ones, whatever that means. Thanks to everyone for sending!]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Potomac. Photo by Sandy Rothberg.

By Tim Parkin

Vosges Mountains, France. Photo by Arne Croell.

By Tyler Wescott

By Kazi Ushioda

By John Krumm

By Gus Ginge

By Rob Atkins

By Ken Rahaim

By Bronislaus Janulis

Václavské Place, Prague, 2006. Photo by Zoltán Istvánffy.

By Michael Trupiano

By Ed Cornachio

By Jon Shiu

By Michael Frye

By S. William Bishop

By Peter Pflasterer (Polaroid transfer)

By Brendan M. Devlin (Palladium contact print)

Tippecanoe Riverbank, Indiana, 2005. Photo by Karl Knize.
(Shot with a Graflex Series C with a 165mm ƒ/2.5 Cooke lens.
Karl says, "I look at this shot and it does/doesn't have a horizon
depending upon how much I've been drinking....")

 

[Are we up to a dozen yet? Well, there are still more to come....]

[Continued here]

Comments

[Ed]

Hmmm. Landscapes? Indoor shots? Clouds? A wee bit more precision required, methinks.

[Richard Tugwell]

Crikey! I hope I don't sound flippant, but for someone who's been getting a lot of advice to take it easy.....

[Gary]

Seems almost negligent to discuss "horizonless" photographs and not mention the late Joe Deal's early work.

[k4kafka]

Even those Apollo "moon landing" photos had a horizon, right ?

[Miserere]

What if the horizon is crooked? That's a particular speciality of mine :-)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Mike, would you care do define "horizonless" photo? A photo without sky, or with, but horizon line invisible due to, say, distant fog? Or bird's eye perspective?

[Mike Chisholm]

Hey, Mr. Johnson, some of us are just short, OK? There ain't no horizon down here...

Mike

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Hey, no fair asking what Mike meant!

(Meaning, I already picked my three and sent them in.)

[Elisabeth Spector]

I agree--Mike Chisholm had better submit something! When you posted Porter’s image of the redbuds (I almost fainted when I saw that gorgeous thing—thank you for showing it to us), I thought immediately of Mike’s work. Like no one else I know, Mike manages to take the overlooked and seemingly mundane little corners of his world and utterly transform them into subtle, sublime rectangles (or squares) of beauty with his attention to light, shadow, texture, shape and color. My favorite images of his (and those are way too numerous to count or reference) are ones that create a sort of abstraction with all of the supporting elements arranged beautifully and flattened into 2-D space. With just a shift of focus, one can switch from enjoying the abstractness to studying the actual objects/vegetation/buildings, etc., which are interesting in their own right. His horizonless landscapes are some of my favorites.

I have to admit that when I first looked at Mike’s website, I didn’t fully appreciate his images. It didn’t take long, though, for me to get those familiar goosebumps that come when I’ve managed to look at enough of someone’s work to suddenly “get” what they are about and to start enjoying each image more deeply in the context of all the others. Mike Chisholm’s stuff is the perfect antidote when I get thoroughly bored and annoyed by looking at images on sites like Photo.net (everyone trying *so* hard to produce the same slick images of the same subjects, or veering into over-the-top drama). His pictures have such a deliciously refreshing, unforced and "natural" feeling about them, yet I know how carefully he must work to create his images. (I don't think it's possible to develop such a repeatable and identifiable style without having a deliberate approach and guiding aesthetic.)

Oh, and his writing is just as entertaining as his photography (http://idiotic-hat.blogspot.com). Thanks, Mike, for introducing me to his blog via TOP back in 2008.

Oops, sorry to ramble on and I hope I didn't stray too far off topic. I hope Mike Chisholm does send in a few of his horizonless pictures in response to your post.

[Bill Bishop]

I interpreted horizonless to mean intimate landscape which is most of Eliot Porter's work.

[Patrick Dodds]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/athiestquaker/7938456292/in/photostream

Well, it is kind of horizonless.

[Tom Frost]

Don't forget Frederick Sommer, who created some amazing horizonless meditations. I saw an interview with him on the interwebs (lost the link, but should be findable) in which he said he started doing them because the Kodak film he had had flaws that could be hidden in printing if there were no skies.

[John Camp]

I once knew a fine American Indian artist, George Morrison, whose art was about almost nothing BUT the horizon. Interesting stuff, too.

[James Sinks]

Kazi Ushioda's image is amazing.

It's interesting how other people have interpreted the "no horizon" guideline. I took a hardline view with my own (rather poor) submissions, omitting even false horizons like waterlines and treelines, and really wish I hadn't now...

[Dave Wilson]

A (very pleasant) cat photo on TOP! Whatever next?

[Jim Simmons]

At first I looked through some shots that looked down (common for me) and some of enclosed spaces, but then I ran across a selection that looked up, and realised that a horizon is where up and down meet, so without that joint I was OK. So here's a "flat" space image for you. And one that defies all notions of sharpness too. ;-)

[mark]

Won't quibble over criteria, but I really liked the first batch, and I usually HATE cat pictures.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Ooh, that Tim Parkin reflection shot really grabbed me. Wonderful!

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Since you ask, I count 19 so far :-). But they're worth looking at, I don't feel "cheated" that I'm getting more than 13.

[Another Phil]

Thanks Mike,
You've picked a great selection of interpretations.
That one by Ed Cornachio does weird things to my head.
best wishes phil

[xfmj]

How come there's no "Like" buttons on this gol'fang'dan'd site?!?

[Peter Bowers]

All marvelous images--great idea!

[Paul Bien]

Should make these regular series and allow voting

[Marty McAuliff]

Wow. A lot of "I'm not worthy" inducing shots here. Nice work all around.