Colour, Presence, and the Photographic Frame: Vernon Chalmers as a colour existential photographer articulate conceptual contours for that interweaves technical mastery, chromatic sensitivity, and philosophical openness.
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| African Oystercatcher in Flight : Table Bay Nature Reserve Woodbridge Island |
Abstract
"This paper proposes a conceptual framework for reading the photographic work of Vernon Chalmers as a practice of “colour existential photography.” Drawing on scholarship in contemporary photographic theory, existential aesthetics, and phenomenology, I argue that Chalmers’s images—especially in his series of birds and floral subjects—are structured to enact a slow, ethical attention to presence, fragility, and relational being. His use of colour is not ancillary but central as a vehicle of mood, temporality, and ontological disclosure. Further, his pedagogical orientation and rootedness in South African ecologies situate him as a node in a localized, ecologically engaged practice of existential seeing. The paper proceeds by establishing the theoretical terms, situating Chalmers in conversation with documentary and fine-art practices, analyzing core strategies in his work, and concluding by reflecting on the potentials and limits of this photographic approach.
Vernon Chalmers is a South African photographic practitioner whose recent work pivots on close-up studies of birds, flowers, and natural habitats, always mediated through a rigorous chromatic sensibility. While his public profile is strongest among regional photography and birding communities, his body of imagery invites sustained philosophical reading. In this paper, I contend that Chalmers can be situated as a “colour existential” photographer—one who treats colour, light, and compositional restraint not merely as aesthetic choices but as existential devices, such that the photograph becomes a site for revealing the fragile presence of nonhuman others and the conditions of seeing itself.
To develop this argument, I first map the theoretical terrain of existential aesthetics and photographic theory (Section I). Then I situate Chalmers in relation to documentary and fine-art strains in nature photography (Section II). Next I analyze key formal and thematic strategies in his work (Section III). Finally, I assess both the potentials and constraints of reading Chalmers as an existential photographer (Section IV) and conclude with reflections on how this perspective might inform future work and reception.
I. Theoretical Framework- Existential Aesthetics and the Photographic Gesture
Existential aesthetics is an emergent philosophical subfield that asks how aesthetic practices or experiences might carry existential weight—that is, how they contribute to the way human beings (or nonhumans, in extension) confront condition, finitude, and meaning (Maes, 2022). Art, under this view, is not simply ornament or escape, but may act as a mode of disclosure: an opening toward how beings show up in the world. (ResearchGate)
The existential thinkers of the 20th century—Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Gabriel Marcel, Simone de Beauvoir—often treated art as one of the prime sites in which human freedom, contingency, and meaning interplay (Deranty, 2009). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) For example, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology emphasizes that perception is never neutral: it is embodied, contingent, and always amidst the world. Colour, in this view, is not a secondary attribute but part of how things appear as felt, situated phenomena.
When translated to the photographic medium, such an existential posture demands that the photograph do more than illustrate or classify. It must preserve a residue of presence, hesitation, and relational openness—a tension rather than closure. Some scholars have argued that photographs may carry a “punctum” (in Barthes’ sense) or a wounding detail that breaks the cool distance of image (Barthes, 1981). (Wikipedia) In existential aesthetics, the goal is somewhat different: not shock or sting, but a calibrated opening—an invitation to dwell in the frame and to sense the finitude of that dwelling.
- Contemporary Photography Theory: Representation, Attention, and Ethics
Photography theory in the late 20th and 21st centuries has largely focused on questions of representation, indexicality, media ecology, and the politics of looking. In Contemporary Photography and Theory: Concepts and Debates, Sally Miller surveys debates around identity, landscape and place, the politics of representation, psychoanalysis, and photographic events, arguing that photographers must negotiate tensions between representation and presence, mediation and immediacy. (Google Play)
Another fruitful strand is the intersection of social theory and photographic aesthetics: how images mediate power, gaze, subjectivity, and responsibility (Ray, 2020). (SAGE Journals) Photographs are never neutral—they are implicated in systems of seeing, exclusion, and invisibility. Hence any existential photographic practice must remain attentive to the ethical dimension of what is shown, how it is shown, and what is omitted.
Combining the existential and photographic registers suggests a program in which the photograph is understood not merely as representation or communication, but as a site of witnessing and relational exposure. In such a framework, colour, light, and compositional restraint become tools for cultivating attention, humility, and openness to otherness.
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| Female Red Bishop : Diep River, Woodbridge Island |
II. Positioning Vernon Chalmers: Nature Photography, Documentary, and Fine Art
- The Dual Heritage of Natural-History and Poetic Photography
Chalmers works in the domain of what is sometimes called natural-history photography (birding, botanical studies), but his output also aspires toward poetic and contemplative traditions. In natural-history or wildlife photography, precision, documentation, and clarity are often primary. The photographer must render species accurately, capture behaviour, and produce images that may carry scientific or conservation value. Yet in the fine-art tradition, nature is often a field for aesthetic reflection, formal play, or existential rumination.
Chalmers treads a line between these inheritances. He does not avoid taxonomic specificity—his bird images are often legible to field observers. But he also resists the spectacle-driven tropes of wildlife photography (e.g., dramatic flight freezes, predatory attacks). Instead, he cultivates an image-world of quiet presence and chromatic depth, thus participating in a tradition of “quiet nature” photography: images that favor mood, light, and subtle gesture over action.
This lineage evokes affinities with photographers such as Hiroshi Sugimoto in his seascapes (where minimalism and temporality merge) or Wolf Kahn (in his painterly landscapes), but more directly with colour photographers who place mood and presence at the centre. While there is no exact predecessor for Chalmers’s bird-and-flower focus, his sensibility resonates with photographers who use nature as a mirror for contemplation—images that “listen” as much as they “see.”
- Local Ecologies and the South African Context
One virtue of situating Chalmers locally is that his work is rooted in the ecologies and light of Cape Town, coastal wetlands, fynbos fringes, riverine systems, and migratory bird routes. This geographic rootedness counters the cosmopolitan flattening that sometimes afflicts nature photography, wherein generic wildernesses are reproduced. Instead, Chalmers’s frames feel tied to place — the particular light, tonal temperature, atmospheric haze, and bird species of the Cape region.
Because of this, his work may help contribute to a photographic ecology in South Africa that resists exoticization. It anchors existential attention not in generic remote wilderness but in familiar habitats—allowing local viewers to re-see what may otherwise be taken for granted. In doing so, Chalmers’s project participates in decolonial photographic possibilities: it is not the romantic outsider gazing upon exotic nature, but a sensitive inhabitant attending to worlds already near.
In this section I analyze key compositional and thematic strategies in Chalmers’s oeuvre, focusing on: (1) the role of colour and tone, (2) compositional restraint and negative space, (3) temporality, atmosphere, and movement, and (4) the ethics of absence and omission.
- Colour and Tone as Existential Medium
A central claim is that Chalmers treats colour not as decorative but as existential medium: hue, saturation, and tonal modulation are enlisted to articulate presence, mood, and subtle narrative. In his writings, Chalmers sometimes explicitly frames colour as “the paradigm of being” (see his public statements). (Facebook)
In his bird work, the subtle iridescences of plumage, the quivering greens of wetland foliage, and the dusky blues or greys of light often form harmonic zones in which the bird emerges rather than intrudes. The bird is not pasted onto a background, but dissolves and re-coheres through colour relationships. For example, the emerald tones of reed stems may echo or contrast the downy tones of wing feathers; a cooler light may mute edges, allowing the subject to seem softly emergent.
In floral studies, Chalmers often frames a single bloom or group of petals against a softly graduated tonal field. Because the photographic plane is shallow in depth, the transitions of colour act as atmospheric layers. The viewer is drawn into a chromatic space that feels immersive yet precise. The use of near-monochrome passages or limited palettes (e.g., subtle greys, soft pink-beiges) allows accent colours to carry weight without becoming visually outré.
This approach to colour aligns with a phenomenological view: colour appears not as mere attribute but as part of how the world shows itself. Merleau-Ponty’s insight that perception is always embodied, ambient, and relational means that colour is inseparable from the conditions of seeing (Deranty, 2009). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- Compositional Restraint, Negative Space, and the Poetics of Silence
Another hallmark of Chalmers’s work is compositional restraint. His frames often spare the visual field of clutter, giving the subject breathing space. Negative space is not emptiness but a zone of encounter: a quiet tension within which the subject asserts itself.
Subjects (birds, petals, stems) are often offset rather than centered, creating asymmetries that evoke movement or expectation. Lines—branches, stalks, reed stalks—act as visual scaffolding, guiding the eye gently without dominating subjecthood. Shadows and subtle gradations of background tone frame the subject rather than competing with it.
This restraint is not minimalism for its own sake but an ethical decision: by leaving “space,” the photographer allows the subject room to “be,” rather than subsuming it entirely. In that sense, the negative zones function as a visual ethic of humility, resisting overdetermination.
- Temporality, Atmosphere, and Movement
Though many of Chalmers’s images read as quiet stills, temporality and movement are always implied. A heron poised mid-step or a kingfisher about to launch evoke the interval before action; petals unfolding or drooping gestate change. Even in the most static images, there is a latent tension between duration and pause.
Atmospheric conditions—mist, haze, diffuse early-morning or late-afternoon light—play a vital role. Chalmers often photographs in times when light is soft rather than harsh, making transitions between subject and background subtle. Such conditions allow the subject to be integrated in an ambient field of tone, dissolving the rigid subject/object divide.
His technical mastery (fast lenses, shallow depth of field, careful exposure) is not simply virtuoso display but instrumental: it allows the subject to emerge gently from ambient space rather than be pasted against it.
- The Ethics of Absence and Omission
Finally, a critical dimension of Chalmers’s work is what he does not show. He rarely includes overt human presence, signage, cages, or intrusive structures. The human is mostly absent, except implicitly in the camera’s gaze. This absence is a double-edged choice: on one hand, it focuses attention on nonhuman presence. On the other, it may risk erasing the human ecological context (e.g., habitat destruction, climate change pressures).
However, I argue that this absence is not naive; rather, it is strategic: by withholding explicit human presence, Chalmers allows the photographed nonhumans to appear on their own terms. The viewer is invited into a relation, not a spectacle. But this strategy also places responsibility on the viewer to recall the human entanglements underlying the scenes.
- Potentials: Attention, Empathy, and Ecological Imaginaries
Reading Chalmers as an existential photographer opens up several possibilities. First, it foregrounds the training of attention: his images act as pedagogical devices, encouraging slow looking and care. In a photographic world dominated by speed and spectacle, this is a modest but meaningful resistance.
Second, such imagery cultivates empathetic openness. By resisting spectacle and foregrounding fragility and presence, Chalmers’s work enables viewers to feel the finitude of nonhuman beings rather than consign them to mere “subjects.”
Third, anchored in local ecologies, his practice contributes to more grounded ecological imaginaries: nature is not alien wilderness but habitat, neighbor, and site of relational intimacy. This orientation counters extractive visual paradigms that treat nature as exotic resource.
- Challenges and Tensions
However, the approach also faces challenges. One critique is that aesthetic restraint may neutralize urgency. In contexts of biodiversity decline and climate crisis, poetic images risk being aesthetic safe zones that do not provoke action. The question is: can existential seeing drive engagement or does it lull the viewer into reverent passivity?
Another tension lies in anthropocentrism. Even as Chalmers seeks a relational posture, the camera remains human-instrument. The act of selecting, framing, and excluding is interpretive. The risk is that the subject is subtly folded into human aesthetic norms. The existential posture must remain self-critical, attuned to its own mediation.
There is also the challenge of reach and accessibility. Existential photographic practice tends toward quiet, refined registers that may be marginalized in popular or commercial spheres. For Chalmers’s work to have broader impact—curatorial, educational, institutional—he and allies must navigate how to present image sequences, interpretive texts, and exhibition contexts in ways that retain the integrity of slow seeing without collapsing into spectacle.
- Future Directions and Research Possibilities
A promising direction is close-reading of particular image sequences or diptychs in Chalmers’s portfolio, linking them to migratory cycles, habitat change, or phenological shifts. Another is a comparative project situating Chalmers alongside other existential or contemplative nature photographers (e.g., from Japan, Scandinavia, or South America).
Empirical audience research could test how viewers respond to Chalmers’s images: does sustained exposure lead to deeper attention, changed habits, or environmental sensitivity? Further, curatorial experiments—immersive installations, timed releases, meditative viewing rooms—could adapt the existential posture to exhibition form.
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| Grey Heron in Flight Table Bay Nature Reserve Woodbridge Island Copyright |
His rootedness in South African ecologies positions him as more than a global aesthetic voice: he contributes to place-based photographic imaginaries that resist exoticization. Yet his approach must remain vigilant to the tensions of anthropocentrism, ethical responsibility, and ecological urgency.
As photography continues to evolve in the age of social media, AI, and accelerated image circulation, practices like Chalmers’s remind us that some of the most radical acts are not in spectacle but in silence, not in speed but in slow seeing. If we can learn to dwell in a frame, to listen through colour and light, then the photograph becomes not just a trace but a small site of openness—to others, to fragility, and to the ongoing work of being in the world." (Source: ChatGPT 2025)
Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (R. Howard, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Wikipedia)
Deranty, J.-P. (2009). Existentialist Aesthetics (in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Maes, H. (2022). Existential aesthetics. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 80(3), 265–275. (ResearchGate)
Miller, S. (2020). Contemporary Photography and Theory: Concepts and Debates. Routledge. (Google Play)
Ray, L. (2020). Social theory, photography and the visual aesthetic. Journal of Visual Culture. (SAGE Journals)