IN PURSUIT OF THE SUN

FROM OUR ARCHIVES: APRIL 1968 IN PURSUIT OF THE SUN

THE SCENE WAS a serene, pas-toral landscape; a brush-choked gully zigzagging through the dappledshadows of overhanging oaks and the stiffly rising, stony hillside thathemmed the edge of a small valley. Everything whispered of tranquility,everything but the anvil-sized stone that arched up from the tremblingunderbrush to tumble heavily through the air and fall with an echoingthump in the gully bottom. A second, a third and a fourth rock followedthe same trajectory up from the rustling bushes until the fifth shatteredan outstretched limb of dry, dead oak into chips. Then other stonesthudded and cracked into one another, twigs clattered and rattled excit-edly, and dirt and pebbles cascaded busily into the wash. A forest animal in a trap? No. A few moments later a big blond headthrust up above the tops of the bushes and called eagerly to me: "Comeover and have a look at this!" As a diaphanous pall of dust settled to theground, David Muench was about to take a photograph.His camera, atop a precariously balanced tripod, was aimedthrough the window he had whittled through to the landscape.It was a fine picture: a golden meadow stippled with cattle,framed by dark green oak limbs and dominated by the warm,rich light of late afternoon. Also in that picture, almost tangibly in it, are nearlytwenty-five years of study, experimentation, trial and error.David was six years old when his distinguished photogra-pher-father, Josef Muench, gave him the camera with whichhe snapped his first photograph. For more than a decadeafterward David accompanied his father on the field tripswhich resulted in many beautiful pictures in this and othermagazines. Young David was constantly watching, study-ing and asking questions as his father worked. Not only didhe receive an exceptional education in nature photography,he learned from his father an enduring love and an abiding

respect for the land and for nature. After comprehensive training at NewYork's Rochester Institute and at theLos Angeles Art Center, David put theurbane, imploded styles he learned atadvertising and fashion photographybehind him in order to specialize inwestern scenic landscapes. Whereuponthe army drafted him and sent him toFlorida as a company clerk. Once out of service, David began test-ing the theories he'd digested aboutlandscape photography and devisingsome of his own. "Everybody says," hetold me once, "that a photograph has nomemory, that it's a slice out of time, a fro-zen moment. But the more I work at it themore it seems to me that a good landscapeincludes the sense of on-moving time.Of course, to get that feeling you have tosnatch at the one moment in which all theelements of form, composition, light andshadow come together to make preciselythe right statement about the subject." Beyond technical proficiency with thecamera, David relies on three factors toproduce his exceptional photographs. Thefirst of these is an encyclopedic knowl-edge of the terrain. As we traveled Ari-zona I gained the distinct impression thatthere was no road, no track, no footpathin the state that David hadn't explored insearch of a picture. "About four miles upthere," he'd say as we hurtled down thehighway, "there's an outcrop of white andred rock with saguaros grouped aroundit like gentlemen out on a stroll ..." Andhis voice would trail off as he studied the morning sky. "The sun ought to be rising just where I need iton the 24th or 25th of December." On he drove, making a mental note to spend a Christmas there at the first opportunity. Which introduces his second "good picture factor": time.David would no sooner set out to take pictures without enoughtime than he'd start without enough film. "You've got to bewilling to wait until everything is just right, until the lightsplashes with just enough warmth, from just the right direc-tion, at just the right time of day - or year. And if there'ssomething wrong, too many clouds or too much wind, forinstance, you've got to take the time to wait it out or to go on tosomething else and come back later." Deciding when more time is required is a function of thethird factor - the mind's eye of the photographer himself.David takes every picture in his mind before he uses the cam-era. And then he waits to click the shutter until the landscapeduplicates this mental image. Many times he has to go back and back again before the camera will capture exactly what the inner eye has seen.David realized early that most often the difference between a memorable landscape and an unexceptional one is the quality of the light. "Light unfolds the quality of the subject and reveals its character," he says, "and much of my time in the early years was spent in learning how to recognize what is appropriate to the subject and what is not. Sometimes the sunlight is so powerful that it bounces and ricochets violently over the landscape and calls up an equally powerful reaction from the shadows, the absence of light.

As he learned to discriminate in his choice of light on the landscape, he began to photograph the light itself; the romantic moods of sunset, the sparkling promise of sunrise. "Later on, as I became more familiar with light's potent qualities, I began to see the excitement implicit in less romantic times of day - blazing noons, storms, hushed mornings."

And then, inevitably, he began to consider the source of light itself as a subject. "I remember when the idea struck me, and it struck with the force of a blow. I was shooting a sunrise, waiting for the early light to descend the eastern slope of the San Francisco Peaks, tensed, looking over my shoulder at the rising sun and straight ahead at its light settling down the mountainside, when one look caught the sun just as it was poised to leap directly from a mountaintop into the sky. For the first time I became aware of the sun itself as distinct from the light it throws." David got his mountainntain sunrise photograph, but it was almost sheer reflex, for his mind was already occupied with the complexities of photographing the sun.

Capturing the sun's many likenesses on film is no small challenge. If there is a key to David's success in meeting this challenge, it is that he considers the sun just as he would any other object.

No single photograph can say everything there is to say about the sun, and David began by choosing those aspects of the sun which interested and excited him. There were many: the sun as serene herald of the day at dawning. The sun as implacable dictator at midday. The benign sun that nourishes all life with its light and warmth. The sun whose light competes with the shadows for the land. There is no limit to the ways we can see the sun.

But we do not see it abstracted. If its rising excites us, its relation to the horizon is important. If we thrill to the sun as life-giver, we are aware of the evidence of that gift: a field of cotton, a single desert blossom. In imagining the different faces of the sun, David selects settings appropriate to them.

Not just any horizon for a sunrise, but one that underscores the sun's buoyancy and the fragile quality of its light. And so on through every aspect of the sun. He began taking the photographs he saw with his inner eye, waiting for months, if necessary, until he was satisfied with conditions.

And then he studied the photographs he'd taken, searching his recollection to determine if they might have been improved by waiting just a moment longer or just a moment less. If his critical eye saw a better picture possible, he went back again.

The results are reproduced [in our 1968 layout]. They are startling in their intensity - or in the questions they pose. Is, for example, the close view of a cholla, its needles like a furry halo in the late light of afternoon, is this a photograph of a cactus or of sunlight? And if it is both what is their relationship?

David worked for a year and a half, exactingly, exhaustingly, to produce these photographs. Then he stopped. Not satisfied, exactly, but emptied of the subject.

I caught a speculative glint in his expression toward the end of this search for the sun, and I suspect that another challenge has engaged his attention now. This time I'll bet he's going to shoot the moon! AH