Culture in Nature
Tom Patton’s photographs are deceptively and wonderfully complex. These understated works deftly utilize the presumed simplicity of the “snapshot” to engage some of the most profound themes of modern art and culture: nature, individual consciousness, and the complexities of representation. It is to Patton’s credit that these daunting themes are handled with visual grace and frequent humor.
On their most immediate level Patton’s photographs center on the human figure. His people, seen from a respectful distance from behind, stand “center state” in an ever-changing worldly theater. Patton typically records his subjects in a curious state of dynamic repose – or animated passivity – that suggests the artful choreography of modern dance. In this tension between stillness and flux, subtle details of bodily presence such as gesture, glance, and weight assume a heightened prominence. We are reminded of our own physical nature and of the frequent gracefulness of everyday existence.
Patton’s oddly compelling figures are often seen within broad natural vista. These conjunctions of spectator and spectacle suggest a rich cultural tradition of pilgrimage and tourism, and the exhilarating power of the sublime view. Since at least the Romantic Movement questing souls have journeyed to places that provide a dramatic focusing of aesthetic experience. In its various guises (adventure, knowledge, mere curiosity, etc.) these pilgrims seek some quality of renewal or transcendence. Americans – an inherently restless people – have demonstrated a particular reverence for the spiritual, and seemingly timeless, power of nature.
Patton’s spectators are characteristically engulfed by the view they have come to see. As solitary figures within a scene of awesome beauty, or size, these viewers suggest a larger existential confrontation with the enormities of time, space, and human frailty. Posed at junctures between safety and danger, the familiar and the unknown, Patton’s tourists are – for at least the moment – of two worlds, oblivious to all but the overpowering view. Such periods of heightened contemplation might encourage thoughts of an ideal harmony between man and nature, or conversely, of the natural work’s inhuman patience and frequent austerity.
The turned backs of Patton’s spectators permit us – as viewers of the photographs – to engage these scenes in a powerfully evocative way. With their faces often unseen, these tourists are both anonymous and deeply familiar. While their specific identities remain unclear, their motives and feelings are easily understood. We identify with their experience and imagine ourselves in their place.
While many art-historical precedents exist for the depiction of figures within the landscape, this theme carries particular meaning today. What do these viewers – and we – draw from such encounters with the world’s spectacle? Are we transformed and reminded of the larger truths – perhaps Emerson’s belief that respectful observation is akin to prayer – or is modern tourism an empty ritual of movement and amusement? In our collective enthusiasm for certain landscapes, do we trample them into worrn banality? Are we enriched by these vistas or do we merely consume them?
Patton’s photographs engage such ideas within the frame of reference posting a relationship between the spectacle, the primary (or “innocent”) viewer, and the secondary (or “critical”) viewer. While the spectators within Patton’s photographs experience nature “directly” as unmediated wonder, we – outside the frame – perceive vista and visitor together as reciprocal parts of a perceptual and cultural whole.
By viewing viewers, photographing photographers, and contemplating the act of contemplation itself, Patton engages a set of extraordinarily complex ideas. His pictures remind us of the power of sigh and the mimetic magic of the image. He suggests our collective need – by tourists and artists alike - for idealized “views” drawn from ( and in contrast to ) the flux and unpredictability of life. We are also reminded of the “uncertainty principle” of physicist Werner Heisenberg – the idea that every viewer becomes part of the thing viewed – with all its implications on the chimerical nature of “objectivity”.
These ideas – and others – are all suggested in these gently comic, precisely seen, and thoughtful images. Ultimately, Patton’s affection for the world (nature and culture) encourages us to consider our own experiences and perceptions in richer ways.
Keith F. Davis
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