land·scape | ˈlan(d)-ˌskāp 1
During an expedition in the Badlands of South Dakota in 1855, Captain John B.S. Todd, a cousin of the wife of Abraham Lincoln and later governor of Dakota Territory, wrote:
Landscape, a word that has changed and expanded in modern times. Most traditionally, or most conservatively, or most colloquially, it has referenced landscape paintings and the Western tradition of looking over a natural scenery from an elevated perspective, such as the one described above. It has often meant something seen from a distance, not immersed within. One has perspective, often one that feels sublime or like a higher power.
Landscape in this definition is a historical concept with a particular lineage: "Not only landscape painting, but landscape perception is "invented" at some moment of history”3, specifically in the seventeenth century in Western Europe.
This iteration has a long and complex history that ranges from and through paintings, to gardens, to science, to photography, to urban parks, to national parks, to many more. It has had tremendous impact on the way we understand the natural world - how we interact with it, how we monetize it, how we preserve it, how we define it, how we use it. It is inherently political and colonial, particularly in its definition of who is human, whose perspective dominates, and what is natural.
National Parks, the place where most people go to experience nature at its purest, are built out of this tradition.5 The winding roads that go through the most scenic parts, the overlooks that look down onto the great expanse and cause us to gasp that it looks just like a picture, the intentionally ‘rustic’ benches, the guided experience that allows a car to park, look, photograph, and keep driving. They show us nature through a deeply coded European centric perspective, one where nature is out there, under us, to be dominated and admired, and most importantly, controlled.
What other possibilities of seeing the land become mute with the dominance of this perspective? What does it look like to see the land from alternate contexts - the situated, the immersed, the uncontrollable, the flattened, the chaotic?
- a picture representing a view of natural inland scenery
- the landforms of a region in the aggregate
Landscape
During an expedition in the Badlands of South Dakota in 1855, Captain John B.S. Todd, a cousin of the wife of Abraham Lincoln and later governor of Dakota Territory, wrote:
“After leaving camp, we continued to ascend the gentle slope upon which it had been pitched, for nearly a mile, and on reaching the crest, the most superbly grand and beautiful sight burst upon our view, that my eye ever rested upon. Down for a thousand feet and more, the road abruptly wound into the valley below; while far away, on all sides, spread this magnificent panorama of mountain precipice and vale — solitary, grand, chaotic, as it came from the hands of Him "who doeth all things well." What a scene for the painter, what a wonderous field for the Naturalist!“2
Landscape, a word that has changed and expanded in modern times. Most traditionally, or most conservatively, or most colloquially, it has referenced landscape paintings and the Western tradition of looking over a natural scenery from an elevated perspective, such as the one described above. It has often meant something seen from a distance, not immersed within. One has perspective, often one that feels sublime or like a higher power.
Landscape in this definition is a historical concept with a particular lineage: "Not only landscape painting, but landscape perception is "invented" at some moment of history”3, specifically in the seventeenth century in Western Europe.
“Landscape, a richly nuanced word that started out as an early seventeenth-century term (originally spelled landskip) for a painting or drawing of a countryside scene, as opposed to a picture of the sea, or a person, or a building. As James A. W. Heffernan describes it in The Re-creation of Landscape, the word was soon used “to mean a particular tract of land that could be seen from one point of view, as it it were a picture; and finally it came to mean the whole of natural scenery.””4
This iteration has a long and complex history that ranges from and through paintings, to gardens, to science, to photography, to urban parks, to national parks, to many more. It has had tremendous impact on the way we understand the natural world - how we interact with it, how we monetize it, how we preserve it, how we define it, how we use it. It is inherently political and colonial, particularly in its definition of who is human, whose perspective dominates, and what is natural.
National Parks, the place where most people go to experience nature at its purest, are built out of this tradition.5 The winding roads that go through the most scenic parts, the overlooks that look down onto the great expanse and cause us to gasp that it looks just like a picture, the intentionally ‘rustic’ benches, the guided experience that allows a car to park, look, photograph, and keep driving. They show us nature through a deeply coded European centric perspective, one where nature is out there, under us, to be dominated and admired, and most importantly, controlled.
What other possibilities of seeing the land become mute with the dominance of this perspective? What does it look like to see the land from alternate contexts - the situated, the immersed, the uncontrollable, the flattened, the chaotic?
1. "landscape." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2021. Web. 7 December 2021. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/landscape︎︎︎
2.Ray H. Mattison, ed., The Harney Expedition Against the Sioux: The Journal of Captain John B.S. Todd, Nebraska History, XLIII (June 1962), 92, 122.
3. Mitchell, W. J. T., ed. Landscape and Power. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
4. Thompson, George F., ed. Landscape in America. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
5.Carr, Ethan. Wilderness by Design: Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service. U of Nebraska Press, 1999.