S H Bean ~ Photographer

Overview of current projects.

About the Cork Civil Landscape:

This is completed project that documents Civil Actions in Cork. (see further references).

About the ‘ Restricted Light’ project:

The Restricted Light project asks this question: What do things look like when we don’t look at them?

If as Ruskin noted: “the perception of solid form is entirely a matter of experience” the same may be attributed to the light and color on (or around) an object. As an artist I am interested in this proposition and in the infinite ambiguity of visual information in a scene.

There is a difference between seeing (profane vision) and perception. It is perception that provides for the “gradual discovery of appearances or traces” not profane vision and it takes the experience of perception and not profane vision to know that in the early morning or late afternoon the “sunlighted grass is…yellow” or the shadow blue.

We know that the Impressionists had great difficulty at deciding what things looked liked…..so perhaps as Berkeley said: “the world as we see it is a construct, slowly built up by everyone of us, based on knowledge and experience”

(Quotes from : Art and Illusion, E H Gombrich. Phaidon 1996)

There are currently two parts to the ‘Restricted Light Project’. Restricted: Color Abstracts and Early Light; The Invisible Landscape, both are works in progress.

1) Early Light: The Invisible Landscapes:

I have long been interested in planar voids in Photography and the Invisible Landscape series is an exploration, a search if you will, for these. All the Early Light Landscapes were made during daylight hours. The ambiguity of Shadows presents interesting problems for Photographers in general, but more specifically for Landscape artists like my self. ‘How dark is the shadow’ is a typical discussion point with Artists and Philosophers alike.

2) Restricted Light : Color Abstracts:

My color abstract work evolved from the observation and perception of light during the summer months between 3 am and dawn. The early light at this time competes with artificial light to create complex abstract patterns and color shifts. Finding these early light patterns and formations requires intimate knowledge of the relationship between human habitation and the natural world and should be viewed in contrast to often sensationalized pictorial representations. The images which feature here were taken in low, color varying natural and artificial light, with extended camera exposures. The Photographic process allows me to show the color of light sources and to even juxtapose them in a Photograph.

In Photography, one of the most critical visual phenomena the Artist’s eye has to deal with is Color and Brightness accommodation, something that happens when the eyes automatically adjust to certain color and or brightness stimuli. Different types of light sources such as the sun, a cloud, the moon, a lamp, a white wall, all have varying amounts of color in them. If individually they were to shine on a sheet of white paper, the white paper should appear colored to the eye. It does not.  The eye perceives the sheet of paper as white. This ability of the eye/brain to do this is known as color/brightness adaptation or accommodation.  Because of Visual Accommodation much remains invisible. It is the invisible that I am interested in and explore though my work. This is the basis of my approach.

For review of more Restricted Light: Color Abstracts please CLICK HERE

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