The Saddest Landscapes

I put forward the idea that the landscape photograph will be our last example of
environmental futility, much like the extinct animal we will only have images or
memories of such an existence. Our landmarks are becoming extinct, so we feel the
need to document the surviving in hope that we can spark some realization that the
earths natural scape needs to be protected. So of course this is what we do: we create
campaigns to promote spending less and to use less resources- which is now a social
norm that can give a person a sense of fulfillment and importance. Self-satisfaction
has overcame the importance of the environment.

I quote Roger Gottlieb: The bleak truth is that unless we totally withdraw from
society we will be participating in morally questionable collective forms of life, forms
that can be made moral only by political change
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We are selfish beings, its the common lesson taught to Look out for ones self even
in the act of trying to be selfless, subconsciously we are still selfish.

To say that if we spend less and take in fewer resources, we will be helping the
environment but these ideas are advertised with saving money for you, but where
does that other money go? It wont sit safely untouched in a bank; eventually the
money will lead to investments and financial growths. It doesnt matter whether we
save the money or spend it, the money will follow the same old cycle and no dramatic
transformations will occur.

So as we analyse this mass ideological thought, we see its on the individual to make
the change, but perhaps it should be a new collective consciousness that needs to
happen or will it come back to whether we are following the correct set of beliefs.
This derives back to Robert Jay Liftons Theory of The Protean Self, The term
protean means to readily take on varied shapes, forms and/or meanings, we as
humans are constantly adapting to our environment and what we feel is at most
importance. Through these adaptions, according to Lifton, we will always fail- the
idea follow a common pattern and that cause predictable types of psychological
damage in individuals and societies.

Are we in a totalitarian state that we need to break from? Do we need to leave society
and create a new reform, go back to nature and live just like our indigenous
guardians of the land did before us? Maybe this is the case, but perhaps we have
gone beyond repair, that the damage is done and we only merely hinder the process.

In Robert and Shana ParkeHarrisons body of work The Architect Brother
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we see a
series of images based on what seems to be the final days of Earth, where one man is
shown trying to fix the earth back into its natural state. These methods he uses can be
seen as futile and nave but he still persists and upon seeing the images our
environmental ethics are challenged. Robert ParkeHarrison said, I want people to

1. Roger S. Gottlieb A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future 2006
A Greener Faith
2. Diane S. Hope, Reporting the future, pg. 32 Visual Communication Quarterly 2009


realise the fragility of the Earth
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, and its only when showing the viewer the crippled
end result of the earth is when we get a sense of fragility, as opposed to common
landscapes of strong and vast environments, flooding with life.

Humans tend to retreat to nature for guidance and escape, we climb mountains to get
the sense of fulfilment that a consumer good couldnt give us. Why do we really
climb the mountain? I bring back to the words of Robert Lifton; he says "The dream
of the human heart is that life may complete itself in some meaningful pattern before
death." We believe everything is derived from nature so we must return to it, finishing
the climb gives us the sense of accomplishment, something to tick off the bucket list.
We have goals we want to achieve and they are all come from many different
traditional standards of culture whether it is spiritual or scientific, we think this is how
we will find fulfilment.

Id like to talk about a certain forest located in Japan called Aokigahara or
commonly known as the Suicide Forest. The area is intensely dense and there is a
lack of wildlife to be found, but for some reason many people of japan have travelled
long or short distances here to die, these people have returned back to nature to kill
themselves, but why? Perhaps its instinct to return to the soil and to be embodied
with the land once again. There could be a different kind of fulfilment, perhaps the
true fulfilment is death itself, these people couldnt find their meaningful pattern so
perhaps the only way to feel that completion was through death itself, be that in
another life due to reincarnation or in the spirit world or even heaven? Whatever you
want to believe. The human condition is faced with many problematic issues and can
make it impossible to live a certain quality of life, the realisations of how this world
works can cause much trauma to an individual so we try to find sense in it- Religion
and Culture offer this sense.

Landscapes come in all different shapes and forms, the photograph can manipulate
our ideas of what a landscape can mean to us. Upon remembering the destructive
accounts of our environments we look to landscape photography as the saddest of
landscapes.



















References:

Diane S. Hope, Reporting the future, pg. 32 Visual Communication Quarterly 2009

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, The Architects Brother. http://parkeharrison.com/architect-
s-brother

Roger S. Gottlieb A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future
2006 A Greener Faith