Lydia Millet describes landscape photographs as seen
in calendars and posters as pornography because “they offer comfort
to the viewer” and “serve as surrogates for real engagement with
wilderness” (HCN, 4/12/04: Die, baby harp seal!).
Many of
the individuals I know who have experience traveling in wilderness
realize that landscape photographs can be both simulations of
profoundly beautiful natural places as well as works of art in
their own right. Beautiful photographs can, and often do, serve as
excellent reminders of what we love and what is worth fighting for.
There is an extensive history of the role of landscape photography
in land protection, from Porter, Hyde and Adams to current work by
Banerjee and Ketchum. If you want eco-pornography, try a commercial
showing a model posed next to a jeep superimposed on some
inaccessible mesa top in Utah’s canyon country, or any of the
off-road vehicle ads that Outside magazine now features. Here is
the connection to violence.
Millet says that
“environmentalism … needs … the guts to assault us with the
ugly impacts of our own appetites.” Yes, of course — the book
Clearcut comes to mind. Unfortunately, it
doesn’t take very much of this “assault” to turn people off
and drive them away from any kind of activism. Our innate response
to the beauty of the natural world should be nurtured, not starved
to death.
Tom Andrews
Lyons,
Colorado
The author is a landscape photographer.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline There’s room for beauty, too.
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