Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform

by Finis Dunaway

Walden Pond. The Grand Canyon.Yosemite National Park. Throughout the twentieth century, photographers and filmmakers created unforgettable images of these and other American natural treasures. Many of these images, including the work of Ansel Adams, continue to occupy a prominent place in the American imagination. Making these representations, though, was more than a purely aesthetic project. In fact, portraying majestic scenes and threatened places galvanized concern for the environment and its protection. Natural Visions documents through images the history of environmental reform from the Progressive era to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, showing the crucial role the camera played in the development of the conservation movement.

In Natural Visions , Finis Dunaway tells the story of how visual imagery—such as wilderness photographs, New Deal documentary films, and Sierra Club coffee-table books—shaped modern perceptions of the natural world. By examining the relationship between the camera and environmental politics through detailed studies of key artists and activists, Dunaway captures the emotional and spiritual meaning that became associated with the American landscape. Throughout the book, he reveals how photographers and filmmakers adapted longstanding traditions in American culture—the Puritan jeremiad, the romantic sublime, and the frontier myth—to literally picture nature as a place of grace for the individual and the nation.

Beautifully illustrated with photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and a host of other artists, Natural Visions will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in American cultural history, the visual arts, and environmentalism.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2005

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Yet the history of environmental reform is more than the passage of a series of laws; it is also the story of images representing and defining the natural world, of the camera shaping politics and public attitudes. From magazines and documentary films to membership appeals and coffee table books, the conservation movement has relied on images more than any other American reform movement” (xvi).

In Natural Visions , Finis Dunaway tells the history of the 20th century environmental movement by examining several key men who produced images that affected the movement. This is important book because so little has been written about the use of images in U.S. environmental movements. Dunaway also covers periods and people often neglected in the histories that have been written. I found his discussion of Pare Lorentz’s work particularly important as so little has been written about conservation movements in the 1930s.

Dunaway opens with a chapter on Herbert Gleason. Dunaway argues that Gleason’s importance as a progressive era photographer is the link he made between nature and religion as well as the way his photographs of the natural world contributed to the commodification of natural beauty. Dunaway’s discussion of Gleason provides an opportunity for him to introduce Emerson and Thoreau (key influences on Gleason), as well as to review the Hetch Hetchy debate. Dunaway contends the newly formed National Park Service used Gleason’s photographs to promote their mission.

The second, third, and fourth chapters examine the federal government’s use of film during the New Deal with a particular focus on Pare Lorentz. I found Dunaway’s discussion of The Plow That Broke the Plains illuminating and I appreciated Dunaway’s attention to the problematic racial politics of Lorentz’s The River. This section closes with the production of Robert Flaherty’s Behold Our Land which was not distributed as the government shifted gears and messages with the start of World War II. I was really struck by the parallel in the narration of The Land and several passages I am familiar with in The Grapes of Wrath .

The fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters focus on the color photography of Elliot Porter and David Brower’s own commitment to photography which culminated in the Sierra Club’s production of coffee table nature books. This section provided an overview of the changes Brower brought to the Sierra Club, the fight for the Wilderness Act, and the shift in ecological thinking that occurred as photographs emphasized the fragility of the environment. I particularly enjoyed Dunaway’s comparison of the cultural politics at play in This Is the American Earth and in “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World”. I had not realized how actively the Sierra Club had promoted the famous Thoreau quotation - “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World” - in the context of its work on the wilderness bill. In Wildness suggested an interdependent fragile earth (an ecological view) while American Earth focused on broader issues of suburbanization, overpopulation, conformity, and consumerism. Teaching note: I might pair Chapter 5 with Erlich’s The Population Bomb to talk about the racial politics of the discourse on overpopulation.

One of Dunaway’s key terms is the sublime. He tracks the manifestation of an ecological sublime by the end of the 20th century. I wish Dunaway had said more about how he was using the sublime and how he envisioned the sublime changing. I was left unconvinced that the ecological sublime was really the right term for what he described. The wonder and awe of the natural world he linked to the sublime didn’t address the feelings of horror that are a key part of the sublime and do seem to disappear from the depiction of “sublime landscapes” by the end of the 20th century.