Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

First, I can review this book without even cracking its spine (though I have), as I have seen the Porter/Ketchum exhibit at the Amon Carter in Fort Worth, Texas. (I live in suburban Dallas.)

Eliot Porter was the country's first color nature photographer. This was when photographers such as Ansel Adams were moving near their peak and color film shooting was considered askance, suitable only for things like fashion magazine slicks.

But Porter showed what could be done with color, including building on Adams' work at places like Glen Canyon to jump-start environmentalism into a new era.

He was a seminal influence on Glenn Ketchum, who then took his camera to places like the Cuyahoga River south of Cleveland, documenting efforts in the '60s and beyond to bring national parks and other preservation to scenic areas of the East that had already suffered human encroachment and alteration. Ketchum even went beyond that in spots, in some cases juxtaposing stereotypical "Rust Belt" industrial development with land still showing environmental quality.

Ketchum then went on to be a leader and pioneer in aerial nature photography. His Arctic and Antarctic shots are simply incredible.

His and Porter's photos are displayed in sizes as large as six feet wide at the Carter exhibit; should this show move on the road and come to your area, you must go see it.

The essay in the book by John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter, is a definite must-read. (The Carter has one of America's best museum collections of photographs, and works much more with photographic exhibits than the typical art museum.) Rohrbach discusses how Ketchum has built on and moved beyond Porter, as good students of photography can readily determine. This includes working with China's renowned Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute, which has created some difficult and highly creative tapestry reproductions of some of his scenes. (About 8-10 of these tapestries, ranging from display piece size to triptych room screens, are also on display as part of the exhibit.

Environmentalists will love to see what both photographers were trying to say about different aspects of preservation and how they were "speaking." Nature photographers will gain new ideas for lighting and perspective angles.

Contrary to another reviewer here, neither photographer represents an "all or nothing" version of environmental activism, and in fact, the idea that there is such a thing, while not strictly untrue, is as much a caricature as reality.

Indeed, Ketchum's photography on the Cuyahoga River National Recreation Area, before it became a national park, and elsewhere in the northeast, puts the lie to the idea that environmentalists of his generation never included human artifacts or aftereffects in their artistic work, or that they thought the only true environmentalism was environmentalism that totally eradicated all human traces and touches. Ketchum does NOT present "simply preservation and destruction" as the only alternatives in photographs such as on the Cuyahoga "The Indian Point Atomic Power Plant," and others. Showing the ugliness of ugly development implies nothing as to whether or not Ketchum thought there was a "third way" of man-made artifacts being incorporated into environmental preservation.

And, the fact that this reviewer holds up discredited global-warming skeptic Bjorn Lomborg as an intellectual grounding point for a new environmental ethos should show just how much his comments are to be trusted.

For most people, environmental photography starts and ends with Ansel Adams. His famous black and white prints of Yosemite and the High Sierra, and his advocacy for national parks and wilderness areas has made him a household name among conservationists and a perennial calendar favorite among the broader public. But color photographer Elliot Porter was nearly as influential, even if less popular. His work helped preserve much of the Glenn Canyon area. He also helped inspire Robert Ketchum whose work is the focus of this book.

Ketchum differed from Elliot in that he made color the central focus of his study. For Elliot, color was but a medium, whereas for Ketchum it was the main element of his work. But like Elliot, Ketchum also used his photography to capture scenes for the express purpose of furthering environmental activism. This book contains numerous photos from two of Ketchum's published works, 'The Hudson River and Highlands' and 'The Tongas" which were both used to further environmental causes in the 1980s. Finally, this collection explores how Ketchum has tried to caputre his photographic images on a new medium: Chinese embroidery. The resulting embroidery is every bit as revolutionary as Ketchum's own photographs.

If Ketchum's technique was influenced heavily by Porter (many plates of the latter's work also grace these pages) his environmental philosophy, like many others in his generation, comes from Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) and Aldo Leopold (Sand County Almanack). These works portray nature as a seemless web always tending towards stasis or "balance." Only man's activity destroys this seemless web. Whereas Porter (and Adams) had tried to promote conservation by capturing the beauty of nature, Ketchum has gone further and attempted to show the ugliness of civilization. Readers of this book will be treated to "The Indian Point Atomic Power Plant," "Railroad adjacent to Beacon Landing," and many similar works of this sort. But this sort of vision is problematic in many ways. Man can be a destructive influence on nature, but the alternatives are not simply preservation and destruction. A third possibility also presents itself, surprisingly within Ketchum's own work. Humanity can contruct attractions which actually complement the beauty of the natural surroundings. The plates "Taconic Parkway" and "Popolopen Bridge" illustrate this well.

And this raises a larger problem with the environmentalist heirs of Carson and Leopold in general. For them, conservation is an all or nothing issue; a zero sum game. "Preservation" means not merely conserving resources for future enjoyment, but eradicating the influence of "man." Little consideration is given to man's creative powers to actually augment the beauty of nature, as Bill Bryson suggested in his book on the Appalachian Trial. What is needed now is a new environmentalism: one which truly incorporates people into the world we try to protect and preserve. The intellectual groundwork for such an environmentalism has already been laid by Bjorn Lomborg (Skeptical Environmentalist) and Alston Chase (Playing God in Yellowstone and In a Dark Wood). All that remains is for some talented photographer to capture the reality these writers describe. Just as Ketchum looked to Elliot Porter for inspiration, so future photographers may find in Ketchum a glimpse of the coming new environmental movement.