A Read

I just read a very interesting article, "Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men: An Inquiry Into the Cultural Meanings of Landscape Photography" by Deborah Bright.
I really liked the article even though it was published 1985, I really think it touches on a lot of things I'm questioning about this entire assignment. The article first looks at the increased popularity of landscape photography as "coffee-table" books. It looks at the history of landscape photography and the importance of asking questions. "Whatever the Photographer's claims, landscapes as subject matter in photography can be analyzed as docuemnts exteding beyond the formally aeshetic or personally expressive.
Questions we might ask:
What ideologies landscape photographs perpetuate
In whose interest they were conceived
Why we still desire to make and consume them <---- Me in particular i would say
Why the art of landscape photography remains so singularly identified with a masculine eye <--- well I am no man, so this is interesting because I'm asking the questions and I'm female... hhhmmm.... (words for thought)

I really enjoyed the article, it looked at photography being the means of representation for the west and the parks out west and documentation for what can be seen if one might travel. It discussed Minor White and Ansel Adams having intuition and expression be central issues. But in contrast photographers Robert Adams photographing resisting interpretation and self influence. Furthermore it discussed women photographing landscapes and the irony that women are "of the land" being natural and yet a woman's eye of landscape photography is not dominate or at times available to see. Last we see into different interpretations. Urban studies by scholars such as Kevin Lynch, Grady Clay, and geographer David Lowenthal show a seperate view of landscapes as organized spaces, like an architectural structure, rather than as timeless and primordial.

Overall I'm not sure I can come to a conclusion of Landscapes. There are many different views, interpretations, conclusions and questions to be asked. Maybe it is a question of who is the photographer, and why this interpretation? Is it even about the landscape? Or is it about society and why landscapes can't just be the subject matter. I will leave with a line from the final paragraph of the article. I'm more engrossed in thought and questioning than ever before...

"Landscape is not the ideologically neutral subject many imagine it to be. Rather, it is an historical artifact that can be viewed as a record of the material facts of our social reality and what we have chosen to make of them."