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The student is asked to read the essay ‘Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men’ by Deborah Bright and then note the key points of interest and any personal reflections from the essay.

Bright’s essay was written in 1985, the midpoint in the Regan Presidency when corporate America and Reaganomics were the driving power behind the American ascendancy. The third opening of American manifest destiny was possible, the American dream, of expansion into space and leading the world into a new future. The first Manifest destiny had passed and was now a distant memory kept alive on TV screens playing old John Ford movies and in the advertisement ego of the Marlboro man; the last stand of the cowboy in the middle of the US, along with his horse and his cigarettes, alone in what remains of the American landscape around him (usually the high plains or Arizona’s painted desert.

Bright is correct in framing the Marlboro man images as proto-political landscapes, these images are redolent of the geographical photography of O’Sullivan, Adams and Weston, all of them missing any feminine point of view or interest. After all, Landscape painting was a male-dominated domain, one which in the 17^th and 18^th centuries were not welcoming to women, who were thought not to be intelligent enough to understand or produce worthy landscapes. Marlboro man’s version of the American pioneer completely erases the pioneering women who successfully drove west with the wagon trains and made a substantial contribution to American life and to American history.

As was pointed out, in Andrews ‘Landscape and Western Art’, pp 166, Landscape painting, while attempting to reflect a certain amount of scientific accuracy, was also a constructed text of selected subjects. Thus, as in the case in Constable’s Hay Wain where the workers have no faces or real detail, they are background figures, happily performing their duties. In reality, the workers in the fields were rioting due to a lack of work and income, partially due to war and partially due to the start of industrialisation and the industrial revolution which would render a vast number of these workers’ jobs as redundant. Constable did not include these social and political changes and upheaval as they were unsuitable subjects for a gentile landscape painting. Constable deliberately chose which parts of the landscape he wanted to represent and through that choice, disregarded the rest.

This very same choice was being made and driven within American Landscape photography from the 1940s onwards. With the growth of tourism, advertising was the biggest manufacturer of landscape images, ditching the landscape representation of change through human interaction and instead presenting the characteristic image of the wide-open America, a landscape which stretches on for miles, unexplored but yet ready and prepared to welcome tourists with roadside lodges and all modern amenities available. The marketing of the male gaze of the landscape, by the same marketing men as the Marlboro man, created the idea of the ‘back to nature’ trip, where for a short period of time, people would harken back to the nostalgia of the rigours of the pioneer life, but without the danger. These trips would, of course, be captured on camera as a memory of the holiday – nature fit for human consumption.

Certainly, within this aesthetic, the landscape of America was treated as the unexplored wilderness of Ansel Adams Eden-like interpretation. Very much like Constable’s Hay Wain, the political landscape is ignored in favour of the spectacular but sanitised view of the subject. Bright in the same way, points to Szarkowski whom she suggests lifted the works of O’Sullivan and Weston out of context and repackaged them ‘as the indisputable sires’ of landscape photography.

As a counterpoint, Bright suggests that the work of the New Topographics photographers was the start of a movement of social critique within landscape photography. It was a limited movement Bright details due to a lack of understanding and expectation on what should be critiqued and how. Certainly, the 1970s was not the hotbed of social activism and revolution that we see today, and now the barricade to keep art free from ‘overt politics’ has been broken down.

Bright is correct in saying that the artist themselves influences the final image, through their own practice and perceptions, both social and political. Bright is also correct in stating that in the 1980s, there was a lack of support for Landscape created by female photographers and artists and by using methods of mass production and low costs, female artists had replicated the methods used by male marketing teams to make their work available to the larger public. Therefore, circumventing the interwoven gallery-led market for art, which has allowed them to articulate their ideas and politics through their landscape imagery.

In closing, Bright suggests that women may eventually break the idea that Landscape photography is the sole domain of white male photographers, who like the Marlboro man, are explorer, guide, hunter and preserver, solely responsible for the land. It can be seen outside of America that this is already happening with the work of Artists such as Fay Godwin, Susan Derges, and Vanessa Winship. It can be seen as Bright wanted, that breakthroughs are happening, for example, the work of Lois Connor whose use of large format platinum prints, creates exemplary monochrome landscapes of beauty. Connors imagery of Utah, South Dakota and China are as resplendent as the work of Adams or O’Sullivan, in my opinion.

References

Bright, D. (1985) ‘Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men An Inquiry Into the Cultural Meanings of Landscape Photography’, , (), pp. [Online]. Available at: http://www.deborahbright.net/PDF/Bright-Marlboro.pdf (Accessed: 1st May 2019).

Andrews, M. (1999) Landscape and Western Art, Reprint edn., Oxford: OUP.

Investopediacom. 2019. Investopedia. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reaganomics.asp

Thebalancecom. 2019. The Balance. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://www.thebalance.com/reaganomics-did-it-work-would-it-today-3305569

Brendan seibel. 2018. Timeline. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://timeline.com/these-cowgirls-were-badass-56ccc26d3b9e

Adagecom. 1999. Adagecom. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://adage.com/article/special-report-the-advertising-century/marlboro-man/140170

Guggenheimorg. 2010. Guggenheim. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/cowboys

Adrian shirk. 2015. The Atlantic. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/the-real-marlboro-man/385447/

Denverpostcom. 2007. The Denver Post. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://www.denverpost.com/2007/12/06/wests-dying-myth-marlboro-man/

Nytimescom. 2019. Nytimescom. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/magazine/jim-krantzs-wild-west.html

Danzigergallerycom. 2019. Danzigergallerycom. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: https://www.danzigergallery.com/exhibitions/susan-derges

Vanessawinshipcom. 2019. Vanessawinshipcom. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: http://www.vanessawinship.com/projects.php

Loisconnernet. 2019. Loisconnernet. [Online]. [7 May 2019]. Available from: http://www.loisconner.net/

Exercise 3.4 – Persuasive Image

Lungs

wwf_lungs

Before it’s too late, WWF France (2008) TBWA\Paris

WWF France presents a clear visual image which presents the viewpoint of the importance of trees to the atmosphere. Here WWF has brought together two clear representations on the idea of clean air, one where trees produce oxygen that we as part of the second representation, as humans our lungs use the oxygen allowing us to survive. By presenting a green landscape where the trees have been planted into groves in the shape of lungs which have now been scarred by logging. The clean graphic design elements and semiotics make the communication is clear here, we need oxygen from the trees without the trees, we cannot fill our lungs.

The graphic advertisement above, ‘Before it’s too late’, elaborately demonstrates how visual manipulation through graphic design invokes emotional manipulation through semiotics, through the use of an image similar to the ones used to prevent smoking.

Wyoming

Wyoming by BVK ad agency - manifest destiny reflection

The original open country, BVK Advertising Agency, Wyoming Tourist Board (2016)

Harking back to the early age of America and to the early age of photography, this image shows the state of Wyoming as the land in the same state as photographed by Watkins and O’Sullivan. America as Manifest Destiny.

The photographer has used the Adams zone system to create a countryside which, although mountainous and grey, has been granted a golden sheen by the sunrise burning through the morning mist. The figures in the foreground are placed slightly off to the left, again harking back to the composition idea in a landscape scene that a figure or shape can be placed in the foreground to give a sense of scale.

Glenfinnan Monument

Landscape Advertising - Glenfinnan Monument - NTS

Glenfinnan Monument, Visit Scotland

By placing the road leading to the monument in the bottom middle of the scene, the photographer forces the eye up the line and into the main body of the scene. The landscape is presented in a format resplendently similar to the landscapes of Turner and Cozens, tame and peaceful, ideologically conquered by man and for the most part unadapted by man. The loch mirrors the sky and flows off into the blue-grey distance bordered by the mountains. It presents the idea of a land welcoming and peaceful, wide vista unspoiled and untouched.

In the foreground is the monument, the statutes gaze off into the peaceful lands, in contradiction to what the monument is representing, which is the Jacobite highlander who died fighting the cause but who was then driven out of the land to go overseas so that the new landlords could farm sheep in the lands formerly owned by the Jacobean clans, which was done as part of the highland clearances in the name of progress and modern land management.

Part 2

Consider an issue that you feel strongly about. Design an image that you think will have a persuasive effect upon the viewer.

The issue that I chose is one which many in the local area feel strongly about. A member of a local council has declared that no one is interested in the remains of a Jacobean battlefield and that a large industrial park should be built on the land.

Landscape format image, green fields separated by a path running off into the distance. In the foreground stands a small monument dedicated to the dead buried on the battlefield (for that it is what the green fields are) In the mid-distance two slightly shadowy faint figures stand heads bowed before a cross. The crosses are transparent and are multiples, spread across the fields, representing the dead. In the back of the image, bulldozers rip up the land, pushing over distant crosses while two large industrial cranes tower over the fields.

Banner in the top left of the image, History should be forever, not until politicians forget.

Sign
Signifier	Signified
Trail, open forest	Freedom, wilderness, open and fresh air, no barriers or rules.
Runner	Individual, health, happiness, self-reliance, healthy living, the pursuit of health and happiness. Excitement.
Mud Trail	Non-urban, create your own path
Running shoe with deep grips	The wearer will not slip or fall. Can go anywhere. 4×4 all terrain.

Leonard Scott Landscape

Learning Log of OCA Level 2 Photography Course – Landscape.