I chose a photograph by Ruth Bernhard. This photograph was taken in 1945 and is titled
“In the Wave”. Ruth Bernhard takes the feminine
figure and creates beautiful landscapes of form. I had a difficult time choosing among her
many photographs but this one spoke to me most directly.
This photograph of moving water and the feminine nude uses a
combination of blurred motion and stopped motion to create both movement and
focus. A black and white image of the
feminine nude, very risqué for the time, gives an offering of a landscape which
is both of the human body and the natural world. The composition of the photograph is asymmetrical,
drawing the eye from the bottom left corner up to the apex of the photograph
and then down and off to the right following the figure and course of the
water. Bernhard uses the figure to interrupt
the flow of the water in a way which feels, to the viewer, completely natural,
as if the living being was a boulder in a fast moving current.
Moving water has always created a peaceful feeling within me.
I have always looked at water as having
a feminine quality and this picture took my existing feelings and encapsulated
them into a photograph. My response to
the piece is one of feeling soothed. I
find it beautiful and peaceful is a way that is as much about the stillness of
the figure as it is about the motion of the water. What Ms. Bernhard has done effectively is
capture a moment which elicits real feeling in the viewer through her use of
the formal elements of art and photography.
