Lens of the Beholder

Image Gallery BY EDWARD WESTON, © 1981 ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS, CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY

Edward Henry Weston, DUNES, OCEANO, 1936

To this generation of photographers, humans or signs of their presence became irrelevant, were even shunned. Instead, they sought to capture nature in its pure, unsullied forms.

David Maisel CYANIDE LEACHING FIELDS,1989

"A terrible beauty" characterizes the work of many contemporary photographers, some of whom—almost like daredevils—look straight into the toxicity enveloping us.

David T. Hanson,

EXCAVATION, DEFORESTATION, AND WASTE PONDS, 1984Here again, the contemporary eye ranges over devastation, seeking not only to document horror but, paradoxically, to portray an abstract, distancing aesthetic as well.

CITY OF VALLEJO, 1860s

There was an innocent pride back then, in the bustle of commerce and in signs of "progress."

During the 19th century, photographers such as William Henry Jackson and Carleton E. Watkins took aim at the landscape and man's place within it. The marks of human presence in the land—railways, bridges, and new towns—were uncritically portrayed as part of the natural order of things. Our advances into the wilderness were accepted as part of this.
Twentieth-century photographers such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams pictured the "natural" landscape dramatically isolated from the marks of human incursion. Nature was seen as completely separate from civilization and as something to be revered and conserved. Roads, buildings, and even people were excluded as violations of a sublime "otherness."

Both of these photographic traditions celebrated the land in their own way: one, as a garden to be cultivated and harvested; and the other, as a conservatory in dire need of preservation.