Is Kenneth Josephson getting serious?
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But since the mid-1980s Josephson has been making periodic trips to England. “I’m really taken with the visualness of the landscape there,” he says. “I’m drawn to photograph it. It’s very compact–things change quite rapidly in the landscape. I especially like the moors.” His latest trip, in 1990, took him to southwest England, to the diverse landscapes of Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset. He brought along a four-by-five view camera and exposed images of trees, moors, and exuberant vegetation. The results of his trip–21 lustrous black-and-white prints, along with one from Wisconsin–are currently on view at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
The “interesting things” Josephson found were often gnarled old trees and vistas of foliage that look more tropical than temperate in their lushness. In one photograph a maple seedling occupies part of the foreground, but it’s hard to spot in the solid wall of vegetation that fills the frame–first weedy plants, then shrubs, then trees in the background. Light bounces in different ways off the various leaves. The shrubs glisten, the evergreens behind them are darker, less glossy. The proliferation of foliage–the abundance of detail–makes the entire image flat. The viewer can appreciate the play of light and shadow, but there’s no way to enter the photograph because the frame is filled to bursting. If this landscape (and “landscape” seems the wrong word for a scene that so lacks openness) is not exactly threatening, it’s certainly not inviting.
