On Not Becoming Der Wanderer (after Caspar David Friedrich), Snæfellsnes, Iceland (2018)

• Main Author: Bevan, Paul
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Photography; Rocky Peak; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/2/DSC_1019.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/3/DSC_1020.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/4/DSC_1021.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/5/DSC_1022.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/6/DSC_1025.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/7/DSC_1027.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/8/DSC_1034.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/9/DSC_1038.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/10/DSC_1043.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/11/DSC_1046.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14270/1/IMG_6686.jpg

In the photo-series On Not Becoming Der Wanderer (after Caspar David Friedrich), Snæfellsnes, Iceland (2018), Bevan makes multiple attempts to reach a position that embodies Der Wanderer in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog). Friedrich’s painting shows a single man (Der Wanderer) standing with his back to the spectator on a rocky peak above the clouds. Having (supposedly) conquered the precipice, he stands transfixed in contemplation of an unknown future; here is a figure of both power and vulnerability. This is a seminal landscape painting that emerged around 1818 during the period of Romanticism, exploring new religious, spiritual and mythological desires or longings to be part of nature. Bevan’s photo-series intentionally evokes Friedrich’s painting, while never fully realising it. In its absence, the painting is present as a mythical image, and all attendant discourse surrounding the original work is brought to bear by association. In the act of failing to reach the position of Der Wanderer, Bevan presents alternative states that are limited by the capacity to play out an idealized (painted) image - a comment on the human condition, and a passing interplay between photography, painting and performance. Bevan is unable to trigger the photograph and get to the desired pose within the self-timed 10 seconds, intentionally compromised by the status of being at once behind and then in front of the camera. Furthermore, but not exhaustively, this series is also a champion of the ‘superposition’ as a preferred but messy status of existence. In a rejection to collapse into the singular, decisive and absolute moment of the original work, Bevan’s multiple states of indetermination, self-reflexively identify with the elemental concept of Der Wanderer himself, who is similarly encountering the indeterminate. In this way, at a number of levels the photo-series embodies the notion and principle of myth itself.