How Photographers Have Depicted An Iconic Landscape Like The Grand Canyon (Essay Sample)

How photographers have depicted an iconic landscape like the Grand Canyon
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How photographers have depicted an iconic landscape like the Grand Canyon
Introduction
“Landscape refers to an ensemble of material and social practices and their symbolic representation; it is a social product that embodies a point of view”. Photographs of various landscapes reveal visual representations of social practices confined in geographical border lines.[Downes, Daniel. Interactive Realism: the Poetics of Cyber space. (Mc-Gill Queens University Press: Quebec City, 2005), 102-103.]
Most of the artists such as photographers, designers and painters do their work with a lot of professional prowess. This makes them want to add to their work something extra that will make it outstanding and marketable. This happens even when it comes to depicting some landscapes. Most of them manipulate landscapes so that they can capture the scene’s mood instead of its details. Some photographers like Anne Brigman may manipulate objects to form metaphorical images and manipulate their negatives to enlarge and come up with new images. This is the kind of manipulation that photographers have carried out on the Grand Canyon and other iconic landscapes through movies, television programs and publication issues. This has depicted a fantastic picture of the canyon as being a wonder of nature. It has made this canyon be an iconic landscape with most people at least developing an urge to have a trip to the scenery. This term paper vividly explains how photographers have depicted iconic landscapes such as the Grand Canyon and how this has influenced the perception of most people towards such landscapes.[Scott, Amy and Museum of the American West.Yosemite: Art of an American Icon. (California: University of California, 2006), 195]
How photographers shaped the Americans’ perception of the Grand Canyon
A huge two volume piece of work was edited by William Cullen Bryant in 1872. There was an attempt by Bryant and other contributors to shift the attention of the Americans to landscapes that were more native. In his introduction, Bryant suggested that America had a diversity of sceneries that many other countries did not have. He also maintained that the American sceneries presented the artist with a variety of subjects. Besides, he insisted that through the overland communications that had been recently introduced between the Pacific and the Atlantic Coast, Americans were able to have access to one of the most excellent scenery.[3Joan, Schwartz and James, Ryan, Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination. (NY: L.B. Tauris, 2003), 76]
Some of the Western landscapes that had been newly discovered were captured in the volume that Bryant had edited due to the fact that they had been maligned by the Civil War’s bloodshed. Yosemite and Yellowstone featured a lot in the volume and made a majority of the citizens to identify with them. He even expressed his thoughts with regard to the way the west had influenced people’s vocabulary with the use of a new word; canon, as written by Spaniards. The American people could spell it as canyon. This made Bryant to take the initiative and provide the definition of this word to the readers. His explanation was that ‘Canyon’ referred to chasms between walls or walls that were perpendicular and whose depth was dreadful with the length similar to that of a river.[Joan, Schwartz and James, Ryan.Ibid, 76.]
Since, at that time there was no specific part of the river had been identified as the crayon; Bryant did not refer to the Grand Canyon by its name. Instead, the entire river to the northern part of the Black canyon was termed as a single site and the Canyons of the Colorado were covered in the nine pages of the second volume. The Grand Canyon had not only been identified as a unique physical location, but the American preference for canyonlands and deserted landscapes was not yet developed. Bryant game more attention and space to the eastern landscapes than to the Colorado. Picturesque was his ideal landscape and the desert canyons that were rugged did not fit in that aesthetic.
Most of the eastern audience preferred the sublime’s test. This had been institutionalized in former sites like the Niagara and the Virginia’s Natural Bridge. It is not surprising that some of the former sublime images of the canyon came as a result of this sublime tradition.
Timothy O’sullivan was the first photographer at the Grand Canyon. He came up with a wheeler expedition in form of large plates and stereographs. O’sullivan together with other photographers was among the first people at the scene and some mountains have been named after them. Jack Hillers, the new photographer was among these photographers and like O’sullivan; he tried to capture canyon’s geographical scale. These photographers joined other painters and made a literal move to the ground. For example, Hillers guided Thomas Moran during his visit in 1873. Moran valued artistic truth to topographical precision. He also preferred the Yellowstone landscape. The works that were formed by Hillers had a basis of Moran’s studies. Occasionally, he could depict scenes that he did not have a personal witness on. The most remarkable one was the drawing of Kanab canon that featured in Bryant’s works.[Newby, Rick. The Rocky Mountain Region. (West Port: Greenwood Publishing Press, 2004), 35]
In brief, the perception of the Americans towards the Grand Canyon was greatly shaped by photographers. This was through several ways such as photographs, engravings and paintings since the time that the Anglo-Americans began to know of its existence. The fact that in Brant’s works, only a few pages were devoted towards the whole length of the Colorado shows that the Grand Canyon had not fully been recognized as an icon in America and that the initial images were not as powerful as those of the Yellowstone and Yosemite.[Joan, Schwartz and James, Ryan. Ibid, 77-78]
J.H Beadle also demonstrates the failure in perceiving the Canyon as a sublime object through his voluminous work titled ‘The Undeveloped West’. It entails a description of a descent into Colorado’s canyon. On the other hand, there is no appearance of the name Grand Canyon. Emphasis is not put on the river landscape and there is an elaborate description with regard to the journey’s hardships rather than a description of the scenery. Beadle’s little attention paid to the Grand Canyon is baffling given that he caught in touch with one of the photographers of Powell’s expedition besides using Powell’s boats to cross the river. This happens despite Beadle having a lot of interests in impressive landscapes. This recurs one decade afterwards when Charles Gleed comes up with a voluminous general guide. In the guide, Gleed still accords a lot of emphasis on several western scenes such as the garden of the gods, Yellowstone and Yosemite. The guide is devoid of any illustration that depicts the Grand Canyon.[Joan, Schwartz and James, Ryan. Ibid, 80]
Difficulty in depicting the Grand Canyon
Thus, taking the analysis of the works of Gleed, Bryant and Beadle, it is certain that during the 1870s, Americans had not yet perceived the Grand Canyon as a an important cultural hall mark although, apparently they were ideologically set to perceive it as a sublime. There could be questions as to what barred the Grand Canyon from quickly getting fame like the Yellowstone or Yosemite. Although photographers were close to the site at the time of discovery, the Grand Canyon became not only hard to depict, but also challenging to be understood imaginatively. Its large size and complexity made it difficult for photographers to be satisfactorily depict it as either a single image or a progression of images. Besides, it did not have outstanding landmarks like was the case of Yellowstone and Yosemite.
Although its extension was about 2000 square miles, the Grand Canyon did not have any feature at its center. It was not possible to represent its height, effects, size and power from its innermost parts revealing the river underneath and the cliffs above. This view was the big picture as seen by the river explorers while at the sides of the canyon. Upward views sought to change the scenery at the canon into mountains. However, this was not visible to tourists who could look downwards and not see the river. It was not easy to trace the river voyage through the site and even up to the mid nineteenth century, less than one hundred individuals had managed to pass through the Grand Canyon using a boat.[Joan, Schwartz and James, Ryan. Ibid, 80]
How professional photographers publish issues and film movies from the Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon’s office of public affairs receives numerous inquiries requesting for filming permits but only issues about half of the inquiries. The main concerns for restrictions when giving permits are the protection of natural resources and the possibility of interjecting the visitors’ experiences. The park Management prohibits acquiring a photographic license to depict activities that conflict the park management’s goals and objectives. However, a photographer will be allowed to use their camera in the same way a visitor does. Use of the signs and emblems of the Grand Canyon to promote an individual’s product may not be acceptable. However, using the National Park’s image on a calendar is allowed. Some movies have been depicted to have been filmed at the Grand Canyon were actually filmed out of the park. A good example of this is ‘Thelma and Louise’.[Neumann, Mark. On the Rim: Looking for the Grand Canyon. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 166]
On the other hand, there...