Landscape Photography Repertoire
Reshooting the American landscape—again
Mesquite Flat Dunes | Death Valley National Park
Part Two Among the shoulders of giants
Much of photography's appeal comes from its power to act as a proxy, bringing places to people who might never ordinarily experience them. Considering that the public appetite for nature photography is often based on a wish for solitude, escape, and natural beauty, it is ironic that so many landscape photographers should spend their time shoulder-to-shoulder with others, steps from their car. Of course, this is never shown, and the lie of omission is a guilty little secret among the photographers of the repertoire. Contained within the frame is nature in its grizzled, rugged isolation, but just outside the border is the paved road, the full garbage can, the interpretive sign, and the tourist offering cheetos to the chubby, half-domesticated animals. About two years ago I went to Glacier National Park to hike through the Belly River valley. While not an epic hike, you climb a couple passes and walk about 50 miles in the course of a few days. Despite the abundance of photography opportunities I didn't see a single tripod in the five days I was there. The morning I was leaving I got up early to catch sunrise at the overlook of St. Mary Lake. (Like many repertoire locations, you can follow the road signs with a little camera symbol that the park service conveniently erects to help those photographers with poor orienting skills.) About ten minutes before first light they started arriving. By the time light was hitting the distant mountains I was standing in a sea of tripods. There were photographers of every type. Some were clearly amateurs out for some fresh air and more interested in everyone's gear than in taking photos, but others were undoubtedly professionals whose livelihood depended on shooting the same scene as the competition next them. Here we were, a group of people crowded into a tiny, worn piece of earth a few steps from our cars, trying to communicate the ideas of solitude, wilderness and isolation. Some of the photographers even left their cars running. One had a cigarette under the dark cloth of his view camera, emerging from time to time in a puff of smoke.
The repertoire locations have become the celebrities of the natural world and, like Hollywood celebrities, most people don't know much about them, but are always happy to see a picture. I imagine the life of the paparazzi to be similar to that of the landscape photographer. Most of your time is spent waiting with the hope of catching your subject in an unusual situation. With the exception of the occasional candid nude of British royalty, celebrity photos don't really tell us anything about the subject or the photographer other than the fact that they were both in the same place at the same time. In chasing the celebrities of the natural world, photographers invariably step over the interesting things without noticing. Arches National Park, for instance, is littered with tiny piles of chert that are the two thousand year old leftovers of toolmakers once living in the region. I've never known a photographer to be interested. While they may not seem overtly interesting in a photographic sense, they do have a story to tell and they can't be less interesting than another photograph of Delicate Arch with the La Sal Mountains in the background. The market is certainly to blame to a certain extent. People buy publications with images that are familiar. There is less risk for a publisher who publishes images that the public recognizes immediately and, with paper-thin margins in the publishing industry, risk is a luxury editors do not have. If this is what publishes are buying, a certain number of photographers will always accommodate them. You do need to make a living after all, and if you bill yourself as a landscape photographer, aren't you going to feel foolish when a editor calls you for worldwide rights to a picture of Delicate Arch—the Eine Kleine Nachtmusik of the photography repertoire—and you don't have it in your files.
This winter in Death Valley I was sitting on the tailgate of my car cleaning my camera (a daily necessity in Death Valley) when a truck stopped behind me, and a large, moustached man, with a cowboy hat got out and approached. He noticed my 4x5 camera on the tripod and introduced himself as a professional photographer.
"Was it windy last night?" he asks.
"No. Not really."
"Hmm, too bad, I've come to shoot the dunes."
He's talking about the mesquite flat dunes. They are lovely, with sharp edges and interesting shapes—they even come complete with a mountain backdrop. They are also close to Stovepipe Wells where there is a hotel so you can wake up at the last possible moment, stumble into your car, and be shooting sunrise shots on the dunes ten minutes after getting out of bed. This fact alone makes them the most photographed subject in the park. But they are also popular among people who like to saunter through the sand and are frequently covered with footprints, interfering with the photographer's desire to portray them as isolated and wild. A good windstorm, of course, erases the footprints returning the dunes to original, unblemished, marketable condition.
"Well, we just drove in. We're gonna take a look and then stay the night," He says. "If there's no wind tonight we're out of here. Heading on to the Valley of Fire."
"Valley of Fire? Isn't that about 200 miles away?"
"A little less, but if I can't get my shot here I'd just as soon spend more time there."
"Do you ever shoot any thing else in the park?"
"Not really, we come in for the dunes but if the idiots have been crawling all over them, leaving footprints everywhere, we just move on."
"Have you ever checked out the Panamint Dunes?" I ask. "They get very little foot traffic."
No interest; the Panamint dunes are a few miles from the road.
This wouldn't be so odd if we were in a place called Mesquite Flat Dunes National Park, but we are in Death Valley National Park—the largest national park in the continental United States. In the over 3 million acres that is Death Valley exists an 11,000 foot mountain abutting a valley floor over two hundred feet below sea level, large rocks who, of their own volition, move across a dry lake bed, peculiar salt formations, desert bighorn sheep, joshua tree forests, a funny little plant called the pickleweed that survives in salt water by keeping it's salinity still higher—in all more bizarre and fascinating features than anyone could hope to explore in a lifetime. Yet this photographer is only interested in one thing, the shot of the dunes that everyone else is shooting, the one you can see in the gift shop, the repertoire piece.
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©2003 Mark Meyer