Linda Bourassa
Professor of Art, Hiram College
Over my seventeen years at Hiram College, I’ve visited the field station’s forest to walk its trails and rejuvenate myself in its quiet energies. This forest has impressed me as an ever changing and mysterious world. Inside of it, I’ve always experienced a shift in my mood to one of appreciation and wonder. The space, textures, color, and form thrill the artist in me.
In these photographs, I explore the sense of another world. Using a pinhole camera on the ground, I was able to capture a point-of-view not common to the average visitor. The series of trees with fallen leaves was captured with a single lens reflex camera on a tripod but then altered digitally to create a more painterly effect
A parallel has occurred to me as I reflect on the process of
creating this show. One cannot visit a forest without also experiencing
a sense of loss. Our forest is surrounded and threatened by human
industry and encroaching development. In my life, straight photography,
which I have practiced for over 20 years, is also becoming a rarity.
The computer is changing the way we see and work. Early photographers
sought to make their photographs look like painting. Straight
photography celebrated what the medium was and came into its own as a
dominant form for over 70 years. We are now in a “post-photographic”
era. The digital photograph is again more like painting. This is
something I’ve resisted. As the demands of my discipline change, I am
changing with it, although a bit reluctantly. It feels as if I’m saying
goodbye to an old friend. It is predicted that within ten years there
will no longer be film as we know it. I can only hope that our
old-growth forests won’t meet this same fate. The energy of these
places is profound to experience and its loss would threaten far more
than the nostalgia of this artist.