BERKELEY — Twenty-two years after Marion Brenner’s 4- by 5-inch camera captured the burned beauty of the apocalyptic Oakland hills fire, the Berkeley photographer has turned her lens to a new subject, with tight, cerebral images in the ORO Editions release “Living Land: The Gardens of Blasen Landscape Architecture.”
The 187-page book features images with Brenner’s signature command over natural light and living spaces. Applied to the wildly organic vegetation artfully coaxed into 11 sophisticated California topographical designs by Eric and Silvina Blasen of Blasen Landscape Design, the intimate, insider’s glimpse into private spaces is accompanied by writer Hazel White’s detailed, poetic narrative. Chapters begin with captivating descriptions of each project and include the Blasens’ philosophies and motivations.
Told in convincing, conversational tone, reading the text is like actually strolling through a location’s native grass-filled field or pausing with the husband-and-wife team to contemplate the texture of a boulder left untouched by their less-is-more approach.
With the addition of an extensive plant list, a landscape design lexicon, and garden design drawings by the Marin County husband-and-wife team, “Living Land” lifts itself well above coffee table eye-candy status to become a resource for architects, scholars, landscape artists, and botanical gardeners.
Meeting in an Elmwood cafe before a recent book signing, Brenner
talks about her work and the intersection of land, animals (including humans) and architecture.
“After the fire,” she says, recalling the devastation that came within two houses of destroying her home,”I became obsessed with taking pictures. Initially, I only did my street because I didn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. But people wanted me to take pictures. I realized afterwards that (taking) photos of the fire was a way of making order out of a chaotic experience. It helped me deal with the vagaries of life.”
Brenner grew up around photography; her father owned a camera shop.
More interested in painting and fine art, she chose art history as her major, but never thought she’d be an artist. After living abroad for several years, she returned to Boston and began taking pictures.
Eventually, she relocated to California and continued; working with architects, visiting gardens after hours, aiming her Hasselblad into the sun, racing to catch the “magic 10 minutes of good, natural light” at sunrise and sunset, graduating to a 60 megapixel camera that shoots 300 dpi at 22 by 30 inches.
“I was interested in space, all along,” she says, expressing dissatisfaction with the “garden/landscape photographer” terminology used to define her genre. “I’m interested in how people create space. It’s fascinating and political: gardens are cultural statements.”
She describes an 18th century English style garden she is photographing in France, where protest against the king’s authority is expressed in the landscape’s meandering, emotional design. And she talks about projects here in California, where land and water use are as much a consideration as Douglas firs, Pacific willows or gardenias.
Unsurprisingly, the Blasen book project encompasses eight years of work.
“We’d get to the space four hours before sunset,” she says, “and there can’t be fog, because it does funny things with color. We walk the land, keep our eye on the light, mark a shot while the light is bad. The landscape designer knows the space intimately, so they have to be there with me, but it’s my job to make sense of the space and reveal it in two dimensions.”
Ironically, the Blasens’ landscape design is as much about hiding their work as it is about amplifying the terrains’ beauty.
In one location, “Light Touch on the Land,” a home and garden are segmented and sculpted to avoid disrupting a ridgeline. Enormous boulders are integrated into walls and pathways to avoid excavation. Given the designers’ propensity for economical, subtle creations, Brenner’s photos could have resulted in an aloof, push-away portrayal.
“I’m a natural light photographer,” Brenner says, explaining the resulting magic and perhaps, inadvertently, finding an acceptable label for her profession.
New book
“Living Land: The Gardens of Blasen Landscape Architecture” is available on Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, at ORO Editions (http://www.oroeditions.com//book/living-land), and at your local neighborhood bookstore.
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