NPR Post on Landscape Photography

[Steve Hamley]

Folks,

An interesting although short read at the NPR site:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2009/10/national_parks_and_the_power_o.html

I thought it interesting that still photographs may have started the National Park system many years ago, and that the significance of a single image is mentioned.

In a way, I think that drives all of us LF landscapers, to produce a single image that has the ability to move people.

Cheers, Steve

[Nino Grangetto]

Very Good Steve, I wait for a single of my imàgenes makes think by 10 seconds the spectator. Greetings from Argentina:)

www.ninograngetto.com.ar

[mandoman7]

The history of photography is filled with movements that were affected by an image or a small grouping. Child labor in the early part of the century, the napalm girl from Vietnam. Its not limited to landscapes...

[Scott Knowles]

It was just after the introduction of the first sheet film by Kodak (about 1890) that opened the door to many landscape and nature photographer and the introduction of more photographs in articles and books. I've been researching those who worked around Mt. Rainier (http://wsrmtrnp.blogspot.com/2008/10/pre-1900-photographers.html) before it became the fourth NP in 1899. Almost all of the negatives are in collections, and while some have been scanned, many haven't due to their deteriorating condition.

It's interesting that in those days, photographers were generous with (original or duplicate) sheets for inclusion in various publications. All of the (~20) photographs in a report on an 1896 expedtion (http://www.wsrphoto.com/mtexpedition01.html) were taken outside the time of the expedition, from 1894-98, but no credits were included in the report. I've found some (or copies) in library collections, but another 40+ sit in the USGS archives attributed to the author, not the photographer.

I didn't watch all of the PBS series on the NP's, so it may have been mentioned, but in most cases many documentaries or histories on NP usually overlook the contribution of the scientific community, including the federal government, to preserve the land as a NP for their unique scientific value to the nation, often bring more or the necessary weight to get the NP designation. This was the case of Mt. Rainier NP.

[benrains]

I'm kind of surprised NPR didn't do their homework a little better. That introductory paragraph is just plain wrong on a number of counts.

"The power of photography can be summed up by one incident in 1872. Way back in the day of Lewis and Clark, when photography was just a baby, a bunch of explorers surveyed the land around the Yellowstone River. In that bunch was a photographer named William Henry Jackson, whose photographs inspired President Ulysses S. Grant to sign a law creating Yellowstone National Park, the very first of its kind. [...]"

Lewis and Clark's expedition was in 1804-1806, well before even Nicéphore Niépce's work in the mid-1820s and long before Talbot's and Daguerre's processes. Furthermore Lewis and Clark were both dead and buried before William Henry Jackson was even born.

[Robert Hughes]

Facts? Dates? Well, ya know ... Louis XVI, Elvis, sometime around then. After all, it's NPR, not some news channel...

[benrains]

Or perhaps they're referencing the Lewis and Clark undead reunion expedition when they headed west in search of braaiiiiins.