Are museums collecting modern landscapers?

[Brian C. Miller]

And it's even more the case in Europe, which is almost entirely deforested. There is no European Wyoming.

(Insert very loud audio interpretation of Der Schrei der Natur here) I suppose I would be making Siberia a favorite stop for myself. If anything, this is exactly why that which is vanishing should be photographed all the more frequently.

Most Americans spend virtually all their time in a built or highly-built environment.

A crying shame! "Soylent Green is people!" How many distopias are urban or suburban? "In the desert you can remember your name, 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
-- George Orwell

If photographers are trying to make sense of what they see day in and day out ... or just trying to work with the landscape that's available to them ... then of course they'll show us a lot of city and suburb. And these days it will include a lot of wrecked city and suburb.

Time for a Mad Magazine moment. In one of the issues, America the Beautiful was illustrated using contemporary photographs. Such as, "And crown thy good with brotherhood," with images of Detroit riots. There have been plenty of photo exposés of Detroit's decay. One might be led to imagine that it has become a completely rotted corpse of a city, and there is no hope but the bulldozer. How much sense of that does the viewer need to make?

Another thing that pops into my mind is the Shoe Event Horizon, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (link) Where does a person focus their attention when depressed? What does a person do to try and cheer themselves up?

The photograph frames a moment of time for consideration. It is mute. Upon a slab of wall, it is a window to another place. What shall we put into that window? Is it something that focuses attention "up," or "down?"

[Drew Wiley]

Wyoming might be forested with more gas wells than trees at the moment, but at least not where I'm going.

[jnantz]

i seem to remember jorge g. years ago
spewing all sorts of stuff about how terrible ink prints were
how they were utter crap and anyone who did these terrible things was a fool &c.
until he visited someone from this forum ( name escapes me ) saw some of his prints
and admitted how wrong he was

... it was kind of refreshing ..

[marfa boomboom tx]

Mr Boombox, why on earth would I want to pay someone else to print my work? Then it wouldn't be my print, not even my work, as far as I'm concerned. Besides,
I already have a fully equipped personal color lab. And back to Paul.... well, I do count myself lucky to be living in an urban area with more public open space
than any other comparable place in the country. I am within three blocks of a seven thousand acre park, within minutes of driving to so many others that I haven't
even visited half of them. New ones are opening up soon. Don't compare these to city parks. I was on a ridgetop walk a few weeks ago where I didn't see another person the entire day. Then I finished off the day at on old port on the river where you can photograph rust and peeling paint forever if you want to. Just minutes from my house. Plus we have several nearby state parks, plus a sizable National Seashore. Then the Sierra is only about three hours away, so a fairly comfortable drive after traffic dies down at night. This part of the state is very different from LA. And if we squabble about things like taxes just like everyone else, at least the vast majority of people here will fork out a little both to protect and expand our public land trusts, trails, etc. Even at very popular areas like Pt Reyes or
Mt Diablo it's very easy to find solitude. Ninety percent of the people visit only ten percent of the places. The most crowded spot anywhere is Muir Woods. There
will be a dozen tour buses parked there at any given time, plus two hundred cars. Just cross the creek and walk the trail the opposite direction. You'll probably see two or three people the whole day, and it will be lovely. Probably the majority of 8x10 shots I took this year showed some kind of human imprint, even if it was only old roads, fences, and cattle. I go for what strikes my eye, regardless. Done far more than my fair share of wrecks and ruins or whatever, hundred of prints.
But to think that one has to work hard to find subject matter totally void of apparent human inflence is to be very naive about a lot of the West.

Hell I'll pay to find out if you're worth it. Or I'll fly to sf, my expense to see how strong your skills.

[Drew Wiley]

I'm not a commercial lab. I don't do other people's negs, just my own. And I'm allergic to RA4, so I only do limited numbers during mild weather when I can roll my
big drum processor outdoors. Half this game is learning how to shoot a neg or chrome to exactly match the suite of printing skills or equip you've mastered yourself. If you need a hired gun who works with other people's negs, talk to somebody like Bob Carnie. Otherwise, if you just want to see portfolios of completed prints, that's
an entirely different subject. My studio is torn up at the moment (distinct from the lab, which does not have a display area), so it would have to be at some prearranged location.

[Kirk Gittings]

But to think that one has to work hard to find subject matter totally void of apparent human inflence is to be very naive about a lot of the West.

If you know what you are looking for, even in a relatively unpopulated place like New Mexico, there is virtually no landscape that doesn't show the influence of man if you are looking for evidence from as far back as pre-historic and paleo indian presence. This includes deep desert areas and mountain tops. I've been fortunate to have had some archeological training by some of the best and know the NM landscape well. I amaze people by what I come up with even in places like the Bisti "Wilderness" where I have found ample evidence of human presence in that landscape. Just last winter on the volcanos west of Albuquerque in a very desolate area I found a Jay Phase basalt point approx. 7500 years old. There is a very innocuous native shrine near the top of Mt. Taylor 11,000+ feet. (what most people would consider a very "natural" place) that is 12,000 years old and has been a source for timber (Chaco) and stone for tools at least that long. It is so far from "untouched" that it is funny.

I would suggest that there are virtually no landscapes on this continent that haven't been modified in some way by the hand of man. What is "natural" in reality? Its all in the perception and definition. Is the Bisti natural and the Trinity site a human wasteland? Its just a matter of degrees. Neither, strictly speaking are natural, neither are any of the national parks. When some one suggests they are photographing "natural landscape" they are naive. I'm as big a sucker as anyone about getting away from modern civilization. But I always find myself in the midst of human history no matter where I go. A good popular read on the subject is "1491" where this is touched on somewhat.

[marfa boomboom tx]

I'm not a commercial lab. I don't do other people's negs, just my own. And I'm allergic to RA4, so I only do limited numbers during mild weather when I can roll my
big drum processor outdoors. Half this game is learning how to shoot a neg or chrome to exactly match the suite of printing skills or equip you've mastered yourself. If you need a hired gun who works with other people's negs, talk to somebody like Bob Carnie. Otherwise, if you just want to see portfolios of completed prints, that's
an entirely different subject. My studio is torn up at the moment (distinct from the lab, which does not have a display area), so it would have to be at some prearranged location.

Just off phone . Have reservation set. Will be in sf August 21, staying st Regis ... Would like to see dye transfer, ciba, some of your prior work is fine. Hope that is enough time to locate a couple prints...


Land after 3 pm...

[Drew Wiley]

Premature with DT. I'm only a wannabee in that dept. Have put together supplies and made some custom equip, and have remastered things like separation negs
pure darkroom using currently avail films, but otherwise am still learning the chords. Got plenty of Ciba work on hand except for big ones - almost all sold off some
time back, except for a couple I kept for our own house. Most of the C prints on hand are unmounted, since I only mount and frame those on demand (unlike drymounted b&w work), but they can still be viewed loose of course. If you just want to see a random portfolio of something portable like 20x24's for example,
that's not too difficult, just so you get a feel for the different media. Most people, for example, haven't seen just how well color negs print onto Fuji Supergloss fully analog, from an enlarger. Timing is a bit fussy due to potential bridge traffic. I'm on the other side of it from SF. I'll PM you a bit later.

[Drew Wiley]

Oh my, Kirk... you struck a chord there. I vividly remember reaching some of those remote mtn basins with no sign whatsoever of modern human activity, and seeing atlatl points littering the gravel. Of course, if moderns had been there, those all would have been picked up and taken home. This has happened numerous times. The artifacts were quite different from those of historic Indians, which predictably used the meadows, stream corridors, and easier passes that now trails grace. I have long surmised that they were either hunting different game at the time, had very different climate, different technology, or all the above. It's entirely possible, even probable, that some of the canyon routes were still blocked by valley glaciers. The small artifacts that normally people don't even bother picking up were entirely different from those of historic tribes. In fact, back then nobody confirmed my hunch until I came up here to Cal and showed them to Glynn Isaacs, and compared them to Paleolithic samples from Europe. He instantly recognized what I had. And there were times I was having a serious time groveling up some
nearly Class 3 pitch way above timberline, and there would be a broken atlatl point - maybe shot at a bighorn?? Whole different ballgame than how the historic
tribes went after the same critters. Only in the very most rugged areas, like the Enchanted Gorge and a few other mtn "sanctuaries" would there be an absolute
zero of such fragments of human presence. Was in one of them two years ago. Based on related artifacts I drew connect-the-dots maps, often using stereo aerial
photos, and the pattern was absolutely stunningly different than anything that made sense in the present climate regime, or even present or recent game patterns. But even relatively late Indians got around. They like to be atop the easier passes scanning for bighorn and getting away from the mosquitoes. But easy
is a relative term. One of the most dreaded "official" in Sequoia is undergoing maintenance, and hard enough to get up in modern boots. I got to the top and was
imagining just how rough it would have been on bare feet. But I knew they did it. While my buddies were resting and eating snacks, it took me less than two minutes poking around the summit rocks to find obsidian chips and identify the ethnicity.

[marfa boomboom tx]

Sounds good