I’ve been meaning for a long time to write a few words about one of the driving forces behind my photography: Living things are constantly competing for resources like light and water in an effort to maximize their potential for survival and thriving. At the same time they are also shaped by forces of nature, like fire, wind, water and ice. Within woodlands and forests, these forces quite often create seemingly unordered patterns that commonly draw the interest of nature photographers.
Prominent landscape photographers, such as Eliot Porter and more recently Jan Tove have explored extensively the deeper order inherent in nature, and have published books centered on this theme (Porter’s “Nature’s Chaos” and Tove’s “Beyond Order“). Porter, a seminal figure in color landscape photography was probably the first photographer exploring the ideas of chaos in nature, revealing the inherent beauty found in seemingly chaotic structures. His image “Redbud Trees in Bottom Land, Red River Gorge, Kentucky” is a prime example of this notion, although, most of Porter’s images could easily fall in this category. The exploration of nature’s chaos seem also to be a driving force behind several contemporary UK landscape photographers, including Joe Cornish.
So, there you go! I’m including two images of mine to illustrate the point. The first image was made in late October 2012 in the area surrounding lake Plastira, Thessaly. The next image is from Peloponnese, made a couple years ago.
