Peter Solness: Illuminated Landscapes

Posted: 16 Mar 2011  |  By: Jane Somerville

After thirty-five years of taking photographs during the day, Peter Solness began documenting the Australian bush at night. Last year, Solness's Mangrove Forest #2, Hawkesbury River, 2010, won the NSW Parliamentary Plein Air Photographic Prize. Lit with moonlight and a hand torch, the work was praised for the way it transformed a muddy swamp into a place of ethereal beauty.

Australia's striking and varied landscape is a central part of marketing advertisements for the 'land down under'but Solness' photographs capture a different aspect of the Australian landscape. In place of a harsh bright sun there is a surreal glowing richness. It is as if we see more details - each line in the gnarled bark of a tree or each curve in a rock formation. It is this drama and beauty within the natural world that Solness seeks to highlight in his ongoing series of photographs titled Illuminated Landscape, which began in December 2008.

These nocturnal landscape photographs feature trees, native fauna, waterfalls, rocks and the ocean. There is no evidence of human existence - just natural forms that evoke a prehistoric time. What is surprising about all these images is that they were photographed within a sixty-kilometre radius of Sydney's central business district. While sites such as North Head in Sydney Harbour or the Royal National Park in Bundeena in Sydney's South are familiar to many Sydneysiders, by photographing them at night Solness attempts to provide a different perspective. He aims to present Sydney as a modern twenty-first-century landscape with Gondwanian associations.

Photographing at night brings Solness a real sense of freedom because he works with "a black canvas". He uses the same tools - a camera, tripod and light. The difference is that during the daytime, photographers are struggling to articulate themselves with an abundance of light, while at night Solness highlights only what he wishes to using a simple hand torch and the available moonlight.

His process of capturing this meditative view of untouched nature is laborious. After hiking into the location with his gear, Solness sets up his camera on a tripod then sets a long exposure. There is also a performative element to each picture. What we don't see is Solness himself, inhabiting each image by moving through the frame, lighting the different aspects of the shot. In order to maintain a consistent stream of light, his movements must be smooth, as if he is dancing. We don't see him because the camera doesn't pick up his constant movement. This is an important part of the work because Solness, in effect, sculpts and paints the area with light. The images he makes are by his description "organic". They are made on location with a digital camera so he can instantly see the composition and adjust his movements accordingly. Often one shot might take four hours to perfect. In doing so he becomes the choreographer of the image both behind and in front of the camera.

The landscape has a special significance for Solness. His first photographs were of surfing and they were published when he was sixteen years old. During his twenties he did a solo road trip across Australia on a motorbike documenting his experiences in photographs and this turned into a career working in commercial photography and photojournalism. For thirty-five years, Solness worked for distinguished magazines and newspapers in Australia and overseas and undertook numerous large-scale photojournalism projects such as documenting the impact of industrial-scale logging on the Melanesian culture of Papua New Guinea for Greenpeace that formed a solo exhibition in 1995. He photographed trees in 1999 for Tree Stories, a project that encompassed an exhibition at Stills Gallery and a book but these "didn't have the nuance" of the current works.

In 2005, while travelling through Arnhem Land for a film and book shoot, he witnessed grass fires burning at night - a common occurrence in the desert during the dry season. Solness describes this as a "primeval experience" and he wanted to bring this sense of drama in nature to Sydney. He experimented ten years ago with night photography but found it frustrating due to the limitations of the technology.

In 2006, Solness traced the outline of ancient Aboriginal rock carvings with light. These works are entrancing - the ancient shapes of fish and whales carved into the rocks are retraced with light with Solness inside the picture frame using a small penlight to trace the outline of the carving. People have mistakenly thought that he used a neon installation but that would be against his philosophy, which is not to impact or interfere with nature, merely show what is there.

Since 2009, works from the Illuminated Landscape series have been shown in several spaces around Sydney. Earlier last year, they were seen in the exhibition space at the Superintendents Residence in Centennial Park.

Peter Solness is represented by Meyer Gallery, Sydney.

Images from top:

Peter Solness, Mangrove Forest #2, Hawkesbury River, 2010, pigment inkjet print on cotton rag paper. ©Peter Solness.

Peter Solness, Waratah, East Heathcote, NSW, 2010, pigment inkjet prints on cotton rag paper. ©Peter Solness.

Peter Solness, Duck Pond at Night, Centennial Park NSW, 2010, pigment inkjet print on cotton rag paper. ©Peter Solness.