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Much of photography's appeal comes from its power to act as a proxy, bringing places to people who might never ordinarily experience them. Considering that the public appetite for nature photography is often based on a wish for solitude, escape, and natural beauty, it is ironic that so many landscape photographers should spend their time shoulder-to-shoulder with others, steps from their car. Of course, this is never shown, and the lie of omission is a guilty little secret among the photographers of the repertoire. Contained with in the frame of the photograph is nature in its grizzled, rugged isolation, but just outside the border is the paved road, the full garbage can, the interpretive sign, and the tourist offering cheetos to the chubby, half-domesticated animals. About two years ago I went to Glacier National Park to hike through the Belly River valley. While not an epic hike, you climb a couple passes and walk about 50 miles in the course of a few days. Despite the abundance of photography opportunities I didn't see a single tripod in the five days I was there. The morning I was leaving I got up early to catch sunrise at the overlook of St. Mary Lake. (Like many repertoire locations, you can follow the road signs with a little camera symbol that the park service erects to help those photographers with poor orienting skills.) About ten minutes before first light they started arriving. By the time light was hitting the distant mountains I was standing in a sea of tripods. There were photographers of every type. Some were clearly amateurs out for some fresh air and more interested in everyone's gear than in taking photos, but others were undoubtedly professionals whose livelihood depended on shooting the same scene as the competition next them. Here we were, a group of people crowded into a tiny, worn piece of earth a few steps from our cars, trying to communicate the ideas of solitude, wilderness and isolation. Some of the photographers even left their cars running. One was smoking under the dark cloth of his view camera, emerging from time to time in a puff of smoke.
The repertoire locations have become the celebrities of the natural world and, like Hollywood celebrities, most people don't know much about them but are always happy to see a picture. I imagine the life of the paparazzi to be similar to that of the landscape photographer. Most of your time is spent waiting with the hope of catching your subject in an unusual situation. With the exception of the occasional candid nude of British royalty, celebrity photos don't really tell us anything about the subject or the photographer other than the fact that they were both in the same place at the same time. In chasing the celebrities of the natural world, photographers invariably step over the interesting things without noticing. Arches National Park, for instance, is littered with tiny piles of chert that are the two thousand year old leftovers of toolmakers once living in the region. I've never known a photographer to be interested. While they may not seem overtly interesting in a photographic sense, they do have a story to tell and they can't be less interesting than another photograph of Delicate Arch with the La Sal Mountains in the background. The market is certainly to blame to a certain extent. People buy publications with images that are familiar. There is less risk for a publisher who publishes images that the public recognizes immediately and, with paper-thin margins in the publishing industry, risk is a luxury editors do not have. If this is what publishes are buying, a certain number of photographers will always accommodate them. You do need to make a living after all and if you bill yourself as a landscape photographer, aren't you going to feel foolish when a editor calls you for worldwide rights to a picture of Delicate Arch—the Eine Kleine Nachtmusik of the photography repertoire—and you don't have it in your files.
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©2003 Mark Meyer
