camera For this project I used a Nikon D80 with a 50mm prime lens. The prime lens means that you can’t stand in the same spot and simply zoom in and out to frame your subject, you must physically move to compose the photograph. In doing so the camera is very present as an instrument between you and the scene. The lens links theory and experience. As I moved through the gardens positioning the camera, the resulting photographs were indisputably tied to my experience of the paths that I followed. With a zoom lens I could have shot one side of the garden while standing on the other, without actually ever going to the other side. It is the peculiarities of place that inform how a photograph is framed and exposed. example The tea ceremony, like the garden and structures that house it, is designed as a contrast to everyday life, ‘freeing the mind for greater thoughts’. 4 It teaches important cultural values and is a means for passing on Japanese traditions to future generations. Contrast is essential to the experience of the tea house and its surrounding garden, and I had this in mind while framing the photographs. Contrast is both ceremonially and perceptually important. Changes in the garden path, from straight to meandering, parallel parts of the ceremony when silence descends to fully absorb the preparation of the tea, then when it is ready, a small noise terminates the act. A change of clothing – freshness; the garden – purity; the tea – cleansing; the burning of incense – informality; the tea bowl – tactility. 4 Each of these symbolic relationships is communicated sensually. The photographs show the context of the ceremonially-designed qualities of place , which have turned a cultural ritual into a physical frame. It is the understanding of the haptic / visual relationship that informs the way that these photograph were taken. A sensory approach to photography leads to a thoughtful rediscovery of the beauty in the everyday and might convince us to not rely so much on manipulated images that distort experience. With these examples of photographs taken in the gardens of tea houses, the focus isn’t so much the tea garden, but the textures, contrasts and cues that foreground all the senses and sensory systems involved in our understanding of a photograph. The garden and tea ceremony, like the importance of memories, provides context for this activation of our embodied understanding of both detail and place. c
Togu-do at the Ginkakuji Temple in Kyoto: how a traditional building meets its surrounding garden – the roof extends to cover a verandah and the foundation enters the landscape in a series of steps. There is a strong contrast between the dark interior and the day-lit garden; rough and varying textures of the garden are in direct contrast to the smooth, uniform wood, rice straw and paper inside.
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Michael Blois
4 Dorinne Kondo. ‘The Way of Tea: a symbolic analysis’ in David Howes, editor. Empire of the Senses: The sensual cultural reader. New York: Berg, 2005. pp 192-211
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