Lake Series: Landscape Time

 

The world is not a static, completed universe but rather something which flows and changes its appearance, transforming like a nebula with a movement in viewpoint.

 

Akihito Yasumi, cultural critic

 

In the fall of 2015 Lincoln Schatz began taking photographs of Lake Michigan for what would become the Lake Series. Returning each day for a month to photograph the lake and sky together. Studying the interaction between water, light and weather, Schatz restricted his subject and his camera’s frame to these elemental materials and in doing so began an artistic dialog with this remarkable landscape that continues today.

 

 

 

 

My intention at the beginning of the Lake Series was to simply observe how a subject changes over time. I sought to pay close attention and to scrutinize the landscape, with the hope that I would learn something new about both the lake and myself. I wanted to understand the lake in all the ways it would reveal itself to me.

 

The artistic practice found in the Lake Series, of iteration and repetition, is an extension of my working process since the early 1990’s when I first created artworks in sequence and in series. My mind has always worked in this way. Make, observe, change, and then make, observe and change again. Variations on an idea and structure. What began as a studio methodology for sculpture, drawing and generative video installations now extends out into the natural world.

 

Lincoln Schatz

 

 

 

 

What began as a month-long project became two months, then six months and before long a year had passed. And that year became two, and so on until almost a decade later Schatz continues this environmentally focused edition today. With the Lake Series, Lincoln Schatz creates a portrait of place over time that bears witness to and documents the endlessly complex and ever-beguiling landscapes of Lake Michigan.

 

 

 

 

Taking this time to be with the lake, something I will never take for granted, enables a deeper understanding of my subject and myself in an evolving way that has changed with the years. To really interact with nature means to open your mind with intention before opening yourself to the environment while allowing yourself to simply be with the landscape. It means being open to being changed and letting go of our bias’ and preconceptions in order to see the world around us more clearly.

 

March 30th, 2023

 

The photographs brought together for, Lake Series: Landscape Time Collection, were each carefully chosen from the last two years by Schatz. Carving out from the broader edition a selection of fine art photography that highlights the dynamic qualities and character of this lake landscape that have become a hallmark of the edition.

 

 

 

 

From days of stunning azure waters and cornflower blue skies to the dark and troubling landscapes that arrive with intense storms each season. Between these extremes are endless permutations of color, texture and pattern through the simple interaction of light, air and water that continues to fascinate Schatz to this day. The roots for this fascination began in childhood.

 

 

 

 

As a child I would go with my father most weekends to the former Lincoln Park Traps Club on Lake Michigan at Diversey. I would spend hours at the shoreline, while he would shoot. I recall being transfixed by the lake, even at that age. The symbiotic relationship between lake and weather fascinated me. The ways in which the lake absorbs the weather and reflects it back in an always changing relationship with each meteorological event.

 

As time passed and I grew older the lake would become a place I would go with friends and for solace, finding myself there when the city felt too much. But as I became an adult I also became less aware of my relationship to Lake Michigan. It lost an importance for me in the ensuing years. Perhaps an un-attentive familiarity causing what had been special to fade. However, in the last decade the lake has become one of the most important parts of my life again.

 

 

 

 

Nine years later the Lake Series has revealed itself to be an expansive portrait of place that continues to further elucidate new facets of itself with each passing year. Every day is uniquely its own in the Lake Series, with the qualities of light, water and atmosphere never once repeating themselves.

 

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the air and the light which vary continually.

 

Claude Monet

 

 

 

Schatz continues a long tradition of artists who have committed themselves to capturing a specific landscape repeatedly in pursuit of a greater understanding of that particular place. These artists returned to the same landscapes in order to focus their attention and in doing so reveal a deeper understanding of their subject that is not possible without the element of extended time. From Monet, Cezanne and the Hudson School to Ansel Adams and beyond, artists across media have for centuries engaged with landscapes again and again in order to imbue their work with the astounding qualities of the natural world that can only come with familiarity and time.

 

It was against this history that the Lake Series began. I found myself coming back to the lake in my fifties with a new desire to connect with the natural world and equipped with an artistic methodology to do so. As my relationship to the lake has changed, so have I. Going to the lake each day has become a ritual and a necessity. It has become an essential part of my life, no matter the weather. Lake Michigan centers me in place, in time and in life.

 

 

 

 

For Schatz the Lake Series creates an unfolding understanding of landscape through fine art photography.

 

 

 

Each day in the edition creates another detail to further elaborate our shared memory of the lake. Over the course of nine years the Lake Series has revealed broader shifts in our world as climate change impacts the Great Lakes region directly.
 

 

 

Nothing about Lake Michigan remains the same, a realization that came to me over time as I have worked on the Lake Series. Even the things that are familiar or immutable, the concrete and steel lake wall for example, transform in meaning with time. It’s this “always in flux” quality that keeps me returning to the lake each day. It is the reward of paying close and careful attention that brings me back again and again.

 

 

 

I take more time while photographing the lake these days. I look, listen and feel the landscape. Slowing down and paying attention before I take my photographs. I try to let go of everything in my mind and just be with the lake. I feel deeply appreciative that I get to spend my time in such a way and that the resulting work connects with so many people who now share their lives with a photograph from this edition.

 

 

 

 

The Lake Series stands as a witness to the changes of our world. Studying the effects of both nature and humans on the landscapes it features.
 

 

 

What makes this project special to me is the actual act of creating the Lake Series. A single photograph from the project is more than simply an image, it is part of a long term process of artistic inquiry into self and subject. The photograph connects to me, connects to the lake, connects to time, to history and to everyone who also shares a relationship to this place. All of these connecting threads come together to form the Lake Series.

 

 

 

LAKE SERIES is an ongoing collection of limited edition photographs of Lake Michigan. Information on purchasing and framing options for the Lake Series can be found here.