Thoughts on Landscape: Collected Writings and Interviews

by Frank Gohlke

A lifetime's meditation on photography and the landscape.
Frank Gohlke has been a leading figure in American landscape photography for over thirty years. He has photographed grain silos in Minnesota, the aftermath of a tornado in Texas, the destruction and rebirth of the land after the Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington, and a riverA a�a s quiet course in Massachusetts. His is a career of deep, unbroken contemplation of the enduring landscape and of our place within it. And for nearly as long as Gohlke has been photographing the landscape, he has been writing about it.
In the spirit of Henri Cartier-Bresson's seminal book, "The MindA a�a s Eye," and Robert Adams's "Beauty in Photography," GohlkeA a�a s writings on photography span from the philosophical to the personal. In interviews, essays, artist statements, and lectures, Gohlke focuses both on his own work and life, and on the works and lives of the photographers around him. Woven throughout is his affection for and loyalty to the landscape around him, and his uncanny ability to convey the richness of his experience to readers--in words just as in images.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, Essays

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2009

Reviews

[RJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read on the human relationship with the landscape. Gohlke's writing is outstanding and his thinking and observations are complex, and rewarding to contemplate. In the past few years I've felt that much of what I've read, particularly about the environment, has pandered to predictable viewpoints or attitudes. This book re-complexifies questions of wilderness, art, anthropology, spirituality, and conservation; obliquely, it challenges so many assumptions that should be challenged.

The book is, of course, a book about photography that actually contains very few photographs. At first I thought this would be a problem, but by the middle of the book I appreciated the scarcity of images. It left room for the imagination to play. Some familiarity with Gohlke's photography is probably a good idea before delving in, but even if you know his work, you end up wanting to explore it again, along with the work of the numerous other photographers about whom he writes.

Finally, the book as an object is very pleasing. The size, the type-setting, the texture of the cover, and the color scheme all lend a sense of tangible pleasure to the experience of reading it.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read any of Gohlke's writing before and was deeply moved by the clarity, both emotionally and technically, of the way he talks about his work. In a turn of time and space that I think he would find pleasing, I received this book as a gift while living in Providence in 2021 but didn't get a chance to open it until now, when I live in Westborough, a few miles from the Sudbury River about which Gohlke writes so eloquently in this text. I have kayaked on the Sudbury many times in the last few years, and felt an immediate sensory connection to the world he was describing, which I might not have if I had read this book right away when I received it. The serendipity made this an even sweeter reading experience, and overall this book made me appreciate one of my favorite photographers even more.