The Color of Alpine
Panorama: The Color of Alpine
Above treeline, the monochrome of granite, snow and cloud often renders the alpine landscape a steely pallet of gray hues. But that is only at a distance. To stand in these high places in July, a riot of color unfolds at one’s feet: Alpine Avens, that prolific tundra flower, spangles the upland with constellations of tiny yellow blossoms.
By late August, the flowers have gone to seed, and as autumn creeps into the high mountains, the green stalks of the Avens turn crimson, the tundra shifting to rust as the September days accumulate. Yellow to red, summer to fall, giving way to the monochrome of winter.
In recent years, I have looked for ways to bring the landscape itself into the images I make of these fragile and extraordinary places. For this project, I began wild-gathering small amounts of crimson Alpine Aven stems in October, being careful to disperse my selection across many days and locations, and always outside of National Park and Wilderness areas.
Back in the studio, I cooked down the red leaves slowly, extracting a beautiful burgundy dye. This dye I then painted into my panoramic images, focusing only on the shadow areas, so as to create a warm tint in the lower tonal range of the photograph.
I discovered that with papers that had additives for bright whites, the dye reacted by shifting to a brilliant yellow (the color of the summer blossoms!). While interesting, it was not what I wanted visually for this work. When I learned that the Awagami Paper Company in Tokushima, Japan, had produced a coated inkjet surface on traditional Washi paper, it seemed like the perfect fit. The visible strands of mulberry fiber could be in conversation with the Aven dye, and the unbleached, natural paper would be a more stable vehicle for the applied color.
When working with natural fibers and dyes in the context of photography, there are going to be unknown outcomes and variables. Even with a more suitable paper, it is hard to say with any certainty how the dye will react with light and air over time. In many ways, I find this fascinating: the color shifting on the image just as the color of the flower and its stem shifts with every passing season.
This installation invites these transient cycles in an embodied way, while exploring the vastness of high alpine eyries with the hyper-inclusive, bending view of the panorama.
-Andrew Beckham
*Because of the variable color-shift possible from the Aven dye, I am offering this project in two parallel editions. The first with the Aven dye, the second without. This allows collectors a choice, depending on their interests and aesthetic preferences over the long-term.