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Richard Raymond
2-Feb-2009, 12:53
How did it happen that the current American landscape ethic is to not have people or show "human influence" in photographs? Is this an Ansel Adams effect? Is this a reflection of an environmental movement that does not consider people as part of nature or is the environmental movement an outgrowth of people looking at too many photos without people?
The question came to mind after looking at some Chinese landscape paintings that included people as part of the overall view of nature.
Thanks
Ric

Jim Cole
2-Feb-2009, 13:13
Ric,

I don't know about everyone else, but I tend to have my best outdoor experiences when I feel like I'm the only person for miles around. I like my landscape photographs to portray that feeling to the viewer.

Jim

venchka
2-Feb-2009, 13:22
Ric,

I don't know about everyone else, but I tend to have my best outdoor experiences when I feel like I'm the only person for miles around. I like my landscape photographs to portray that feeling to the viewer.

Jim

There is that feeling.

I am sometimes the only person around and nobody wants me in the photo. ;)

On the other hand, who wants a photo of the crowd at Delicate Arch?

Perhaps there is a time and place for including people. I shall be aware of that in the future. Thanks!

Greg Miller
2-Feb-2009, 13:23
I can only speak for myself. I don't mind putting human influence in my photos, and I have often wondered why camera clubs insist on separating landscapes into "Nature" and "hand of man" categories. they are both landscapes and the introduction of human influence doesn't change that.

But I do try to avoid putting humans into my landscapes. The reason for that is once a person is in the frame then it becomes more about the person than the landscape (we are humans and it is human nature to focus our attention on other humans). So it really becomes a portrait when that happens.

But then again, the Hudson River School painters commonly included humans and human influence in their paintings.

QT Luong
2-Feb-2009, 13:26
There is no monolithic "American Landscape Ethic". Like everywhere, there are landscape photographers that portray nature, and those that portrait man-altered landscapes (eg. Misrach, Meyrowitz, Baltz, Robert Adams, Goelke, Gossage, Sternfeld, Burtynsky, Tice, etc.. all North American landscape photographers). The proportion of those that portrait nature might be larger than elsewhere in America, because there is more unspoiled nature than elsewhere.

Mark Sampson
2-Feb-2009, 13:28
I'd question your basic assumption here. Maybe you're not loking in the right places. See the work of Robert Adams or Mark Klett, two of the best American landscape photographers currently working. Lots of signs of people there...

Michael Graves
2-Feb-2009, 13:30
Perhaps the confusion lies in the definition. What is your idea of "landscape"? David Plowden had some remarkable images of small towns shot from high vantage points. If the ($##$$# town wasn't in the way, it would be a beautiful landscape? On the other hand, what is with putting a distracting lovely background into this cityscape?

Wright Morris rarely had a landscape that didn't include man's effect. But we call is work "Documentary."

Toyon
2-Feb-2009, 13:31
Perhaps its a reaction to the overuse of nudes in "environmental portraiture" in the 70's and 80's, that to my sensibility, subsequently tainted any human presence in naturalistic photographic landscapes. In current landscapes that I have seen humans are usually lanscaped in an ironical or satirical way.

What in your mind comprises successful integration of people in natural landscape photography?

Richard Wasserman
2-Feb-2009, 13:35
I enjoy having people in my landscapes and go out of my way to work them in when I can. They tend to be small in the image, but are important in showing how the landscape is used and has often been shaped by the hand of man. I personally feel that the pristine landscape a la Adams, et al has been done enough and better than I can probably do, and that other ways of looking at and thinking about these kinds of photos is useful.

aphexafx
2-Feb-2009, 13:56
I specifically shoot human artifacts in urban and non-urban environments, and some of these would qualify as landscapes. Not humans, but their side-effects, as you mention. THis is not an environmental statement by any means, rather I am endlessly fascinated by the things humans build and the things human leave lying around, from industrial complexes to abandoned switching stations. This is a huge part of my work. A field with a mountian is boring to me, but include a disused scaffold in the foreground and I can't look away!

Gordon Moat
2-Feb-2009, 14:36
I try to distinguish between landscape and wilderness. Quite often wilderness images appeal to adventurers, travelers, and escapists, or hark back to nostalgic paintings of the American West. I think what is often lost, especially in images of tall trees, or even taller rock formations, is that without some human sense of scale it becomes difficult for the viewer to appreciate the grandiose nature of the wilderness.

Landscape is what I would consider any images mostly showing land. Oddly enough, when I view my website statistics, and see the click-throughs from LF Forum, most of the viewers first wander to Landscape on my website. Undoubtedly some might be disappointed to see cities, buildings, beaches, and people. The landscape I grew up in was a seaside port, and it is that landscape I enjoy, and that which I am most familiar.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

h2oman
2-Feb-2009, 14:38
I just received the book "Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World." The Photography is by a fellow named Tad Nichols. The first thing that struck me was how many of the photos have a human in them. They are usually strategically placed as a sillhouette against a light background, or light against dark. I'm not sure whether I like it or not. It seems fine for a few shots, but then starts to feel a bit cliche.

Oh yeah, I just thought of what may be my favorite landscape with humans in it, by Bradford Washburn. It is number 9 in this gallery:

http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200509/brad-washburn-photos.html

Select "View Bradford Washburn's Gallery" and go to photo #9.

John Kasaian
2-Feb-2009, 14:44
FWIW,I think humans sometimes provide a needed sense of scale within landscapes. Other than that, IMHO, the photo becomes less about landscape and more about people. Not bad---but not landscape.
I've got attempted landscapes which over the years have morphed from being landscapes to historical oddities such as "hippies smoking dope at Big Sur" and "RVers watching tv in Yosemite Valley."

This is, IMHO and unfavorable contrast to more painterly inspired pictures of the past, where people were a part of the landscape and not regarded as ecological trespassers.

I wouldn't hesitate to take a photo of a meadow being turned by a plow boy working a team of draft horses, or young girls picking wild flowers.

Of course plow boys and teams of draft horses aren't very common these days, and picking wildflowers will get you a citation!

nathanm
2-Feb-2009, 14:50
Landscape photography allows the photographer and viewer to have a brief respite from people for a little while, and to imagine the world as you want it to be, not as it is. We deal with fellow humans all the time and it's nice to stare into a little window devoid of all the issues humans bring along with them.

Frank Petronio
2-Feb-2009, 15:00
Because when the settlers were traveling West, they killed everyone in front of them, and that ethos carries over to today.

kev curry
2-Feb-2009, 15:12
...

Toyon
2-Feb-2009, 15:31
Because when the settlers were traveling West, they killed everyone in front of them, and that ethos carries over to today.

There was plenty of murder before the settlers arrived. But the settlers did add racist and religious rationalization.

Frank Petronio
2-Feb-2009, 15:34
Right. Before that Indians killed their neighbors with similar beliefs and DNA.

Bill_1856
2-Feb-2009, 15:39
The question came to mind after looking at some Chinese landscape paintings that included people as part of the overall view of nature.
Thanks
Ric

There is a great deal of difference in a viewer's interpretation between pictures portraiting people as distinct elements of the composition, and those where the people are merely generic figures in the composition.
And don't you be dissin' St. Ansel neither, bro.

Nathan Potter
2-Feb-2009, 16:07
I don't think I know of any current ethic that disallows people or their objects in landscape pictures. The decision is wholly up to the photographer. What you are seeing in current landscape photography is mostly landscapes. Those images devoid of people are planned that way either for a lack of someone to stand in the picture or perhaps the photographer believes the inclusion of a human will weaken the composition.

I suspect that those among us who do landscapes are recording and celebrating the natural beauty of the scene and inclusion of human form or related artifacts don't contribute to the image.

OTOH the inclusion of the human form may be appropriate for some photographic statements when the presence of the human form is intimately connected to the landscape in some fashion.

It is indeed curious how much Chinese and Japanese artwork contains both figures and landscape. But then I recall that such artwork often tells an extended story of some sort and the connection of the classic landscape to people is a kind of sacred heritage maybe where the landscape emulates the people. That kind of connection has yet to evolve in western culture.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Drew Wiley
2-Feb-2009, 16:30
Among earlier "landscape" photographers, human figures given for scale were almost
routine. One of my favorite images was made by Vittoria Sella on the upper Baltoro
glacier in Pakistan with an 18X22 plate camera, when his party was being pursued by
Gurkha soldiers. Back in Italy, he dubbed in a series of roped climbers crossing the glacier, using a negative from the Alps! It was so seamlessly done that no one realized
the subterfuge until recently. Who says you need to photoshop to add (or remove)
people?

Bruce Watson
2-Feb-2009, 16:33
How did it happen that the current American landscape ethic is to not have people or show "human influence" in photographs?

I reject your premise. Why should there be people in landscape photographs?

I can understand why there should be people in most portraits. But landscape photography is about... landscape.

drew.saunders
2-Feb-2009, 17:31
Because when the settlers were traveling West, they killed everyone in front of them, and that ethos carries over to today.

Their diseases did the job for them, the settlers just cleaned up those who remained. I don't want to get too off photography, but the book "1491" by Charles C. Mann does an excellent job of trying to figure out the true pre-columbian population, and the many disagreements over the numbers (mostly political), as well as the different thoughts of the extent of the cultures of pre-columbian north, central and south America.

Back to the topic: It's nearly impossible to find any true "wilderness" untouched by man outside of Antarctica; however, I find that images that contain clearly discernible faces are really about the people, not about their surroundings. If that's not "Landscape" to some people, I can understand that point of view. I'm mostly concerned with whether or not I like the image.

Drew

Walter Calahan
2-Feb-2009, 18:06
I have no problem with people in my landscapes, but when shooting LF the people tend not to stick around long enough. That said I always look for the human element.

http://www.walterpcalahan.com/Cheers/Projects/Pages/Carroll_County.html

http://www.walterpcalahan.com/Cheers/Portfolios/Pages/Washington_DC.html

walter23
2-Feb-2009, 18:23
How did it happen that the current American landscape ethic is to not have people or show "human influence" in photographs?

Cuz we're all sick of being surrounded by others ;)

walter23
2-Feb-2009, 18:26
Incidentally (not LF, sorry):

http://www.ashphotography.ca/zenphoto/albums/landscapes/soylentgreenispeopleIMG_8586.jpg

http://www.ashphotography.ca/zenphoto/albums/landscapes/yellowjacketIMG_2635resized.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b377/walter2323/IMG_2904.jpg

And also: LF but kinda crappy (http://www.ashphotography.ca/zenphoto/albums/landscapes/camping.jpg)

Mark Sawyer
2-Feb-2009, 22:34
Maybe since all the "serious" photographers started shooting at f/64, the exposures got so long that nobody holds still long enough to show up...

Duane Polcou
3-Feb-2009, 01:19
Why are there no people in Wildlife photos? I think that calendar shot of the "searing eyes of a leopard" should also have in the frame the beer gutted animal wrangler with an electrified cattle prod.

Nathan Potter
3-Feb-2009, 08:32
Drew Wiley, your comments about using people in a landscape for scale reminds me of the Canadian photographer Byron Harmon working out of Banff Alberta in the earlier part of the 20th century. A good majority of his images of then wilderness Canadian Rockies contained hikers and fellow climbers, presumably for scale. Even pack horses were included as well as camping equipment. These are now classic images and I believe his grand daughter still runs a gallery in Banff featuring reprints of some of his most famous images. I have an image of Helen Walcott in front of a tent at Mt. Assiniboine taken in 1925.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Kirk Gittings
3-Feb-2009, 09:09
There is at least one human presence implied in every landscape photograph and that is the photographer, the witness.

Rider
3-Feb-2009, 09:18
It's hard enough to shoot a landscape without people in it; add the human element and it becomes exponentially more difficult.

jb7
3-Feb-2009, 09:19
There is at least one human presence implied in every landscape photograph and that is the photographer, the witness.



Does that imply that some landscape photographers are sociophobes?
That the idea of perfection in nature can only be achieved by finding somewhere devoid of other individuals?

Just asking, you may deliver your ton of bricks here...

j

claudiocambon
3-Feb-2009, 09:32
As people have noted, the impulse to include or exclude visual traces of the human experience have shifted depending on the time and medium. Landscape painting in the 19th century (Cole, Bierstadt, for example) both includes and excludes figures. Photography does the same, and some photographers (Watkins) do both.

Adams in the 20th century is a bit of a throwback (not meant as a bad thing) to the Bierstadt vision of a "pure, Romantic" nature. Most everyone else adopted other aesthetics in the 20th century, but Adams held fast.

Philosophically, it is about wanting to imagine nature in its pure, virgin form, without our presence, which is deemed as corrupting. This is both a religious, puritanical sense of ourselves, one which sees ourselves as outside nature, kicked out of the garden of Eden in terms of goodness, as it is a more contemporary political reaction to our polluting habits. In this way, among others, Adams very much follows John Muir's lead.

Much as I admire Adams' work, and understand this vision of purity as essential for the conservation of wilderness, the one problem for me is that Adams (as did Muybridge before him) managed in Yosemite to ignore fully the presence of the Yosemite Indians. Yosemite was once the most densely inhabited Indian enclave in all California (they had good taste in real estate!), and you would never know it from their photographs; I don't think they appear once. Just to be more specific, it's one thing to use Yosemite as your "studio" to bring forth your vision, but it's another to then make factual claims about "what Yosemite" is, ie pure, virgin territory, which were thus historically inaccurate.

Vaughn
3-Feb-2009, 10:00
Maybe since all the "serious" photographers started shooting at f/64, the exposures got so long that nobody holds still long enough to show up...

Sure they do -- one just has to train them up!

Alex, Fern Canyon...f45 for 30 seconds
Three Snags, Three Boys...f45 for 60 seconds

Dang, I thought I used f64...I got to get more serious!;)

Vaughn

PS...if this link works here is an example where some folks did not hold still... http://bostick-sullivan.invisionzone.com/index.php?automodule=gallery&req=si&img=41

walter23
3-Feb-2009, 20:55
Sure they do -- one just has to train them up!

Alex, Fern Canyon...f45 for 30 seconds
Three Snags, Three Boys...f45 for 60 seconds


Wow, good example. Nice size reference. Completely transforms the impression once you notice them.

Frank Petronio
3-Feb-2009, 21:55
I don't see any people when I look at Google Earth images... kind of like the Twilight Zone episode where....

Kirk Gittings
3-Feb-2009, 23:05
Does that imply that some landscape photographers are sociophobes?
That the idea of perfection in nature can only be achieved by finding somewhere devoid of other individuals?

Just asking, you may deliver your ton of bricks here...

j

No, I was simply observing that there is always at least one human present, but unseen, in every landscape photograph. Nothing more nothing less. There are no landscape photographs devoid of the presence of people.

z_photo
4-Feb-2009, 04:06
Why are there no people in Wildlife photos? I think that calendar shot of the "searing eyes of a leopard" should also have in the frame the beer gutted animal wrangler with an electrified cattle prod.

given my frequent visits to the smokies i am certain that i will get a wildlife image with a person in it. the absurdity of how closely people appraoch bears in the park is a virtual guarantee

as for landscapes and people i prefer to keep those subjects separate although i am considering a few cliches with body draped rocks, trees, and streams

z_photo
4-Feb-2009, 04:11
No, I was simply observing that there is always at least one human present, but unseen, in every landscape photograph. Nothing more nothing less. There are no landscape photographs devoid of the presence of people.


the quantum mechanical view of photography! a daguerreotype uncertainty principle

Kirk Gittings
4-Feb-2009, 09:47
the quantum mechanical view of photography!

Despite the fact that I have never had physics class in my life, I get it. Very funny.

paulr
4-Feb-2009, 12:09
It's helpful to look at the history of landscape art in its entirety, which is actually a pretty short history. Until late in the 18th century, there really wasn't a tradition of landscape art the way we think of it today. People painted landscapes, but with a few isolated exceptions they were considered background for the real subject, which involved people in some way. The landscape was the stage set on which the action took place.

Landscape became an independent tradition when artists started treating stage set as the subject itself. People may have been present, but the roles were reversed: the people served the landscape (providing scale, or simply as small elements of the scene) rather than vice versa.

Removing people entirely can serve many purposes. For one, this is just the idea of landscape taken to a logical conclusion. The subject is the land, so why do you need anything/anyone else in the frame?

Of course, this is too simplistic to answer the whole question. There's also a technical consideration: in the early days of photography exposures were long and people were difficult to capture. In the first photograph ever printed (a cityscape by Niepce) the only form recognizeable as a person is a shaddowy figure standing still to get his shoes shined.

Another reason to erradicate people has to do with the kinds of wilderness myth building or metaphor making that Ansel popularized. But that's a whole other topic.

Yet another reason is that some pictures represent people in indirrect ways ... and the photographer doesn't want any direct representation of people to overwhelm this.

With respect to Frank's snark about the settlers killing everyone in their path, it's worth noting that the pioneering landscape photographers of the West usually put people in the picture. It's hard to find anything by O'Sullivan that doesn't have some kind of figure in it (occasionally his covered wagon acted as a surrogate). Same with Carleton Watkins. William Henry Jackson more often took unpeopled pictures. These guys may have been party to conquering the West, but they seemed to feel more effective at this when they included some conquerors in the frame.