Preservation or Conservation: Landscape Photography’s Role in Idealizing and Destroying the American Wilderness

Landscape photography hinders conservation by equating the value of landscape with aesthetic beauty and spectacle. While landscape photography often garners support for the creation and appreciation of national parks, it idealizes pristine and untouched wilderness. Conservation is not about preserving vast swaths of untamed land while destroying other areas. Ultimately, conservation is about developing sustainable agriculture and land-use techniques, which are far less photogenic. Landscape photography is all about aesthetic. We, as viewers, are drawn to scenes of “wilderness, ” untamed, uncivilized, pristine areas. The idealization of wilderness is in part due to the works of two great landscape photographers, Ansel Adams and Carleton Watkins. Ansel Adams may be the best known landscape photographer of the twentieth century. However, he is especially guilty of popularizing a wilderness aesthetic through his depictions of the sublime. The sublime in photography is categorized as the depiction of formless and uplifting shapes that produce feelings of awe and terro