From: Greg Schmitz (gws1@columbia.edu)
Date: 09/06/02-03:12:04 AM Z
In reply to Keith (in a particularly tree-hugging mood)
BINGO! And as I recall O'Sullivan had a show of 16x20 and larger
prints on Capital Hill which had been credited for the influence it
had on Congress which led to the creation of Yellowstone National
Park, or was it Yosemite. The exhibition was, I think, the first
photographic exhibition on Capital Hill. Adams and his work, I think,
had a similar effect on some in later generations.
I'd been thinking about the landscape thread and serendipitously
happened on a copy of Robert Glenn Ketchum and Carey D. Ketchum's book
THE TONGASS: ALASKA'S VANISHING RAIN FOREST. If you think landscape
is dead - take a look at the Ketchums book and read the text. We've
really f____d-up this nation big time. There are few, if any places
in the lower 48 where you can really get away. What passes for
wilderness, is usually just a rationalization. For example, most of
the "wilderness" places in Wisconsin, my home state, have been logged
3 or 4 times - and thus are a far cry from what they would be if they
had been left alone. We killed off the people who lived here to make
a profit - and now we're doing the same all over the world (actually
have been for quite sometime). In many cases those "boring
landscapes" are the only record of what once was.
Maybe I'll go into my anti-globalization tirade later, so I'll close
with a quote from the Ketchums:
"The fur trade remained the main economic interest for a short while,
but the declining market and diminishing numbers of fur-bearing
animals eventually signaled and end to the enterprise. In the classic
pattern familiar to places colonized by those who have no spiritual
or moral attachment to them, a resource was over-used to depletion and
the exploiters moved on to something new."
-greg schmitz <gws1@columbia.edu>
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