Game Trails: Jay Neely

Andrew D. McClees (ADM): Can you introduce yourself and describe your photographic work?

Jay Neely (JN): My name is Jay Neely and I'm a photographer and art director based out of Leavenworth, Washington. I’ve been shooting photos and making books for about 10 years now. My work has largely been inspired by my environment and tends to evolve with my interests and curiosity. Because of this, my work has ranged from conceptual still lives to pseudo documentary and everything in between. That said, I’m primarily project, or concept driven... if I think an idea could make for a series, or a book, I usually pursue it even if it doesn’t fit in the realm of things I’ve done in the past.

ADM: In broad strokes, what is landscape photography to you?

JN: For me, I think landscape photography is primarily about environment and context. A good landscape is the stage for something else that’s happening. Photographs by nature are still representations of a place, or a moment and I think for me, great photographs (in general) imply movement, conversation, or interaction in a way. When I think about landscape photographs that have moved me... the compositional elements of course are there, but I’m really more interested in how the image employs my imagination to see something else that is taking place in that space. Todd Hido talks about this in regard to his houses at night. He talks about how his work really isn’t about a house on a street corner, it’s about what’s taking place behind the glowing windows... the things you can’t see. I think that same idea resonates with me about good landscapes.

ADM: What was the inspiration to put together Game Trails?

JN: A couple of years ago, I started hunting big game in an attempt to be more self sufficient and to build a closer relationship with my food. It has proven to be one of the most important, difficult and meaningful journey’s I’ve embarked on. That said, the way that I interact with the natural world has changed pretty dramatically since I started hunting. Everything is important... every footprint, broken twig, flower, bush etc... anything can be a clue and whether I’m hunting, or not, I find my self paying a lot more attention.

One of the most immediate signs that game is in the area is a series of game trails. These game trails connect these animals to their primary needs - bedding areas, food sources and water. They can switchback up a hillside with impressive efficiency and most often they’re frequented by a myriad of different animals. This series is really a topographic study of these systems. Aesthetically and by design, the similarities between game trails and our own transportation pathways are pretty uncanny. They tell similar stories and they serve a similar purpose and I think this sort of Human / Nature connection is really what I’m most interested in.

ADM: While the photos in Game Trails do document and focus on the titular Trails, the photos have a very textural quality -- was that intentional?

JN: Absolutely, I think the thing that was initially striking to me about game trails was their imprint on the landscape. They cut up the mountains in a super interesting way ... particularly as the mid-day sun hits the hillside - they almost glow in the sagebrush. I feel like when I’m working with subjects that fall into the mundane, it’s important to me to try to photographically point out the thing that caught my eye.

ADM: It's interesting that you bring up natural topography vs. humanity - that's not something I see dealt with very often - did you find that the game trails were often interfered with by humans?

JN: Yes and no... Most of the places that I was hunting were far enough off the beaten path that I wasn’t running into many boot prints. In areas with established man-made trail systems, you’ll definitely find an intersection between the two, which can be quite interesting. In a lot of ways, animal motivations are very similar to that of humans, so the trail systems can lead you to similar places. Game animals find security in elevation, and they require a clear path between food and water which often times mirror the points of interest on common hiking trails. In the wilderness, a person can certainly use game trails to their advantage. If you’re far from a trailhead and you need to get to the top of a mountain, or find a water source, a well trafficked game trail can be a good place to start.

ADM: The choice to shoot the project in black and white is an interesting one, which succeeds in the book. How did you settle on black and white for your images?

JN: When it comes to my personal projects, black and white is really the only way that I’ve ever worked. I was exclusively a black and white film photographer in art school and printing really taught me the depth of a black and white image. I keep telling myself that I’m going to do a color project, but I still have so much to learn in black and white that I feel like I’ll be on this path for a while longer. Aside from that, when I was putting this book together, I was thinking a lot about Robert Adam’s, Along Some Rivers. Adam’s book is an elegant and meditative series of black and white landscapes taken in the Pacific Northwest. The images really feel less about the things in the frame and more about the feeling of being in that place. I think that idea really struck me and a sentiment that I tried to capture in my images. So much of hunting is about being in places that people are not and I think that solace and immersion into the landscape brings about an attentive calmness that I felt was communicated best in black and white.

ADM: What was the shooting and editing process like for Game Trails? did you make your images as you hunted, or did you make dedicated trips to photograph the trails separate from your hunts?

JN: It was a little bit of both, but most of these images were taken while I was hunting. Particularly during the early season, there is a tremendous amount of down time during the middle of the day when the animals are bedded down. Usually you find yourself traveling from one ridge to another ridge, or perched patiently on the side of a hill waiting for the forest to come alive again. It’s a beautiful time to be in the woods and it proved to be a perfect time for me to make these images.

ADM: I agree that it's important to work in series, as well as to make photographs where the focus is about what's not seen - do you have any advice or insight into how to impart that sense of "hidden" narrative?

JN: I believe that narrative can come before, or after a photograph is taken and I think it’s really about defining process. I think my biggest piece of advice would be to first study the work that has been done before. Look at books, read interviews with photographers, artists, filmmakers... Really get an understanding of what you’re attracted to (aesthetically and conceptually) and why. Learn about a variety of processes and take the parts that work and build a way of working that keeps you working. From there, it’s about developing and following your photographic instincts.

For me, I’ve learned that my best work happens when my intentions are loose to begin with. Sometimes I find a thing that is conceptually and visually interesting and I can immediately find a narrative and the book basically unfolds in my head... this is ideal and rarely happens. That said, most of the time, I’ll photograph something, or a series of things that are aesthetically compelling and then from there, I’ll research the subject and let the narrative emerge... it’s sort of a process of discovery... and it’s where a lot of my best work has come from.

ADM: Where can people see your work, and purchase Game Trails, and other books of yours?

JN: You can find my work at www.jaythomasneely.com and on instagram @jaythomasneely

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Pure Nature, Accept no Less: Brendon Holt on Landscape Photography

Andrew D. McClees (ADM): Welcome back to Frozenwaste.land Brendon! We’re here talking about Landscape in 2020 this week:

As of right now, how do you define "landscape" and "landscape photography?"

What do they mean to you, and what is your baseline approach and philosophy behind your photography practice?

Brendon Holt (BH): Well, lemme work my way to an answer by telling you what I think landscape photography isn't.

I don't think that cityscapes are landscape photographs, they're just that, cityscapes. Let's just get that out of the way. I have always found that angle to be a gross perversion of the term. I also do not really consider a lot of new-topographics stuff to be landscape photography. While some of it does deal either implicitly or explicitly with the land á la Robert Adams, I don't consider it to constitute landscape work in the stricter sense, as important as that work is.

I suppose this makes me something of a purist or a stubborn nineteenth century romanticist holdout or something but it leaves me with an understanding of the true subject of landscape photography to be the land itself. Not the landscape as modified or influenced by human activity, and most certainly not urban/cityscape work.

So, landscapes and landscape photography, to me, deals with "the inhuman," a term I will borrow from the American poet Robinson Jeffers which refers simply to the vast realm of non-human nature. It is non-human nature itself considered as the subject of photography.

Furthermore as a medium I understand landscape photography as a channel for me to try and express, in the photographic form, the spiritual or existential depths of these kinds of transcendent experiences of the world beyond our modern humanistic self obsession. This component really constitutes the raison d'être of my work, to be honest. Photography in general is just a means to an end for me, and that end is turning our eyes from the dark abyss of human subjectivity to the vast glory outside ourselves. I could care less about photography as some abstract end in itself. That entire approach strikes me as absolutely vapid. Photography for what? The sake of photography? Images for the sake of images. That's an absolutely vacuous approach. My philosophical and spiritual proselytizing is intimately wedded to my photographic work. Photography, and landscape photography specifically, is just the visual megaphone I use most.

ADM: I guess in that sense, you view Urban Landscape, etc, as really more about anthropology and architecture at the end of the day - rather than nature, or nature in true fashion?

Following that up, I've found, in my own landscape practice -- or at least within the confines of the modern/postmodern art/instagram landscape that landscape has slowly come to mean, colloquially, a very specific aesthetic - this sort of superficially epic, highly saturated, glossy, and frequently strangely tinted view of nature.

While I’m aware there’s definitely other takes on landscape - this is for sure the most popular take right now, outside of the “fine art” bubble. I think this is a huge impediment to landscape as a topic of discussion, and furthering and deepening the dialogue around it.

I’d be curious to get your perspective on that aesthetic, what it’s origins are, why it continues to be so prevalent, and what it means for your own practice, and other artists working in landscape right now?

BH: Yeah, I can get mostly on board with that characterization of cityscapes, new topographics, et al. Per the landscape aesthetic, I definitely agree with your characterizations. I think the term we could use to encapsulate the aesthetic and all the features that you've pointed out is "hyperrealism." It all feels a bit like taking the world and cranking it up to 11 so that we're left with this "strangely tinted" presentation of nature, as you said (If anyone is unfamiliar with what we're talking about just take a trip over to 500px or something and search for the most popular work in the landscape category, it abounds there).

And as you also said, its entrenchment as the standard for landscape photography is deeply problematic for anyone trying to engage with the subject/genre in ways beyond that very limited aesthetic. Work trying to deal with the subject/genre of the landscape in ways outside that aesthetic is quite commonly ghettoized for not toeing the line of that codified understanding of "good landscape photography." Maybe the saving grace of the fine art bubble is that it can still serve as a refuge for work that's been ostracized from the popular canons, even if it harbors a bunch of bullshit too.

My personal relationship with the whole aesthetic and the genre of contemporary landscape work in general is, well, contentious. I find the aesthetic formulaic to the point of sterility and ubiquitous to the point of exhausting. The same light, the same subjects, the same compositional choices, the same basic formulaic images repeated over, and over, and over. It has been repeated ad nauseam in landscape circles since it was popularized by the dissemination of photographs from the likes of Galen Rowell, which is where I personally see its origins. To be fair there was color landscape work before Rowell, such as Eliot Porter and Philip Hyde's work (which I think is all beautiful), but Rowell's work begins to take landscape photography in an entirely different direction that tends toward the kind of hyperrealism that is so prevalent today (and digital photographic technologies have only made that move toward hyperrealism easier).

I'm not sure why the whole aesthetic has become so firmly rooted in the collective consciousness of landscape photography, personally. Obviously it's just a truism that aesthetic trends happen but trying to work out the processes and mechanisms by which any aesthetic trend happens is a gigantic can of worms that could probably encompass its own essay. Regardless of how or why this aesthetic has become so entrenched, it's an issue that anyone working in the genre today has to confront. As a general rule my advice to anyone working within any genre of photography is to forego the easier path of ready-made aesthetics and focus all their efforts on their own vision. Speaking personally, when I first started making images I turned to that culturally established norm of landscape images as a guide for how I made images. I knew I loved the landscape but as a new photographer I didn't really know how to go about translating my experiences into a photograph so the popular aesthetic became my guide as I learned photography. Ultimately, however, if you have any modicum of individual vision that approach can't but begin to feel hollow and empty and you have to set off on the harder but more meaningful path of catering to your own vision. I had to take that step, and reflect on what it was I myself wanted to say and show with my images and choose to follow that path rather than the path set for me by the dominant approach to the genre. I think this is the path that anyone working in landscape photography today has to take unless color-by-number photography is all they're looking to do.

AM: That’s a really great insight into working practice or an insight into where to go when starting landscape. Your work and your philosophy, both as you’ve stated and as it reads in your images is deeply rooted spiritualism of nature and the land; but what other topics would you like to see discussed in the genre, or adjacent to the genre as you’ve defined it? I’d be curious to know if there are any aesthetics, non-mainstream (or non-mainstream within the fine-art bubble) that you think are under utilised or that could be better explored?

BH: Well, my engagement with landscape work is admittedly pretty single-minded, maybe to the point of parochialism, haha. So outside of rekindling the spiritual dimensions of our experience of nature I haven't really given the other thematic avenues of the genre too much thought.

Off the cuff issues of ecology, conservation, the philosophy of nature (ontological reflections about the "being" of nature), etc. come to mind. I'm not naively parochial, I do think there is a wealth of other themes that could be dealt with in the context of landscape photography, even in the narrower sense that I've defined it. I just haven't really spent too much time following those avenues because so much of my focus is honed in to the spiritual/religious/existential angles of our engagement with the land.

As to the question of aesthetics, I must also admit that my aforementioned parochialism means I'm not super familiar with aesthetic trends, especially not the obscure ones of the fine art world. But as to what I'd like to see explored I think I could offer a vague gesture toward those aesthetics that eschew those codified formulas of the popular landscape aesthetic in order to break open new avenues for rethinking our artistic engagement with the land.

One example of that comes to mind is landscape work that trades the "Iconic Landscape" approach of Ansel Adams and Co for a more down-to-earth, intimate approach. Less the iconized nature of Yosemite National Park and more intimate reflections on the smaller, quaint landscapes around us. We might also think of the work of someone like Eliot Porter as an example of work that sidesteps a lot of the dominant aesthetic cues. In Eliot Porter we find less of the clean and formalized nature of the dominant aesthetic and more of an honest encounter with the real chaos and complexity of nature that exists beyond the formalizing attempts that exist only within the fabricated frame of the photographer's vision.

I know this answer is kind of vague, but I hope the examples at least help to clarify what I have in mind when I say something like "aesthetics that eschew those codified formulas of the popular landscape aesthetic in order to break open new avenues for rethinking our artistic engagement with the land."

ADM: You're usually fairly prolific in one environment at a time (formerly PNW, now Montana) and have expressed a preference to shoot or look at only one area at a time - is there a particular reason or meaning behind that?

BH: Yeah, I definitely prefer to dedicate my time to revisiting a limited number of places over and over rather than constantly seeking out new environments. I find the practice of constantly photographing the next hitherto unvisited location kind of empty. It's the photographic equivalent of a never ending string of one night stands with various landscapes that never really gives you the chance to get to know and connect with any specific place. And given that so much of my work is about trying to rebuild those connections and that rootedness to place that we've lost in the wasteland of modernity, the whole idea of that kind of cosmopolitanism in landscape work has never suited me. Maybe it makes for a dazzling portfolio but if it's all empty what's the point?

And I guess that deeper spiritual urge behind my work is how I came to practice that single minded focus as well. My photographic practice has never really been separate from my own philosophico-spiritual practice and because that reflection on the spiritual importance of the landscape is such an integral part of my own spiritual practice, my photo work has always reflected that.

ADM: (A little redundant -- we’ve gotten into it a bit here) but for someone looking to refine their practice and focus it tightly as you have, what advice can you give, or how did you get there?

BH: My advice for people looking to do the same isn't so much going to be photographic advice but advice for the soul, I guess. It's about making that experience and connection to a place primary and the photographic work a kind of secondary outgrowth of those deeply meaningful connections and experiences with a place. And how you find and connect with a place is going to be different for every individual but that the connection comes first is the best I can say. Find some place that speaks to your soul, however that happens for you. Then give your heart to it and let the work come from there.

ADM: Where can we see more of your work, and do you have any projects on the horizon?

BH: You can find my work on Instagram, @bmholt_ and at my website, www.brendonholt.com. I am currently working on assembling two books, Pathways and Cascadia: A Retrospective, both of which can be read about in the "Projects" section of my website. Thank you for the chance to air some of my thoughts with you!