Deborah Bright’s insightful and in-depth review of American landscape photography gave me a new way of looking at not only landscape images but photographs in general. I mean, it wasn’t life changing or anything but it was definately a perspective on landscapes that I hadn’t been exposed to before.

I especially enjoyed the connections Bright made between the national park craze of the early 20th century and the ideas about picturesque landscapes that emerged from that movement. Bright asserts that landscape photography is not the innocent, “high art” that many people perceive it to be. She goes to great length to show how landscape photography is just as influenced by politics and culture as any other form of art. I suppose I knew that landscape photography is a boys club – but I was surprized to learn the extent to which women are excluded from landscape photography publications and exhibitions.