From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 12/21/02-03:00:23 AM Z
I live farther west than the west most people mean when they say "out
west" and I don't have grand sweeping inland views any more than you
have on the east coast. The woods here are full of brush, not kudzu but
vine maple and alder shoots and just...stuff. If there's not a trail,
forget getting through it. I do have grand sweeping views out to sea,
but I've never been interested in photographing those, preferring a
closer view of how water and wind interact. One of my routine spots to
photograph is a much-photographed cove with a lighthouse-capped scenic
headland on the other side. From my photographs you would never know
that the headland or the lighthouse were even there. My photographs are
not of specific objects or locations but of the essential elements of
the landscape: water, air, land, trees and the like. I call my
photographs landscapes; my galleries call them landscapes.
I think it's a combination of what's available to see and a person's
personal "view" of what's interesting to him/her that determine what a
landscape photograph is, and I'm afraid I have little interest in
academic arguments about what is or isn't a "true" landscape photograph.
There are as many different kinds of landscape photographs as there are
combinations of views and photographers in the world. IMO. To limit
"landscape" to mean only a sweeping vista of kind seen in the American
mountain or desert west would be a very narrow view of what landscape
is, and would unnecessarily exclude landscape photographs from other
parts of the world.
Katharine
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