Library Day-- Morgan Clark

Charles Pratt, Garden and the Wilderness--

Looking through this collection of Charles Pratt’s images really got me thinking about when a landscape photograph becomes a landscape photograph. What are the limits of a landscape photograph?  When does a landscape photograph become simply an image of nature or is the landscape always nature? Whether it be a super close up macro image or a justified image with a horizon. How much human involvement can be depicted in a landscape until it no longer can be defined as a landscape? Are cityscapes still landscapes? Or does everything in a landscape have to be “natural”. Garden and the Wilderness is a collection of Charles Pratt images that range from the conventional landscape image that pops into your mind to macro, close up images of leaves and frogs to photos with a little or a lot of human presence. Every photo in this collection is indicative of the photos we have taken in class. Charles Pratt looks up and down and at different angles with his camera but he also looks forward. I want to believe that those photos that look directly down or directly up are landscapes and they are-- they are part of the landscape. However, part of me believes that it is a horizon or more of an expansive space that makes a photograph a photograph of a landscape. Is a photograph of only tree branches and leaves and sky of just that or is it a landscape? Land is part of the word landscape and in a photo of only tree branches, leaves, and sky there is no ground/land. But then would that still make a macro image of a leaf on the ground a landscape image or does that not count because there is no horizon? Would that just be considered nature photography?

Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer of the American West--

Paging through this collection of Carleton Watkin images I am struggling with some of the same concepts as I did in Charles Pratt’s collection. Not so much the macro and exaggerated angles portion of the photographs, but the human aspects of the landscape. Unlike Pratt, Carleton Watkins’ photographs continually have a visible horizon and are that justified, looking straight out at eye level composition. Similar to Pratt, there is a variation of human presence in the landscape photographs of Watkins. The collection ranges from images of the wilderness to images of small settlements to larger scale industrial exploitations of the landscape. I find myself again struggling with the question of how much human involvement can be documented in a landscape photograph until it can no longer be defined as a landscape photograph? I do not think that a landscape photograph necessarily has to be that of a wilderness. A lot of Watkins’ photographs are documenting a changing landscape, the expansion west, so they do feature some strong and some slight human involvement. These images still resemble landscape photographs to me. However, then I begin to think about whether farm fields are truly landscapes. Human involvement in a photograph of a farm is huge but I would still consider that a landscape if I was asked. So what makes farm fields different than a town? Couldn’t they be considered the same thing in essence, both having heavy human influence? Is there a specific ratio of buildings to natural land that would qualify or disqualify an image as a landscape photograph?