David Hockney
[Artist, b. 1937, Bradford, England, lives in Bridlington, Yorkshire; London; and Los Angeles.]
…I’ve long felt that the one aspect of photography that seems to have let us down is, actually, landscape. Photography seems to be rather good at portraiture, or can be. But it can’t tell you about space, which is the essence of landscape… Even Ansel Adams can’t quite prepare you for what Yosemite looks like when you go through that [Wawona] tunnel and you come out the other side.
Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
Landscape photography can offer us, I think, three
verities—geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together... the three kinds of representation strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact—an affection for life
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
I’ve thought that when people appear in a picture, they automatically are perceived as the subject, irrespective of how they are represented. I wanted the only person in the picture to be the viewer.
Laura Gilpin
[Photographer, b. 1891, Austin Bluffs, Colorado, d. 1979, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
What I consider really fine landscapes are very few and far between. I consider this field one of the greatest challenges and it is the principal reason I live in the west. I... am willing to drive many miles, expose a lot of film, wait untold hours, camp out to be somewhere at sunrise, make many return trips to get what I am after.
(1956)
William Garnett
[Photographer, b. 1916, Chicago, d. 2006, Napa, California.]
To fly a small plane and see the variety of beauty the USA has to offer is a thrilling experience. Indeed, with such splendor spread out before me, I often feel guilty that I am up there alone.
Henry David Thoreau
[Writer and practical philosopher, b. 1817, Concord, Massachusetts, d. 1862, Concord.]
All distant landscapes seen from hilltops are veritable pictures, which will be found to have no actual existence to him who travels to them.
John Pfahl
[Photographer, b. 1939, New York, lives in Buffalo, New York.]
People think the camera steals their soul. Places, I am convinced, are affected in the opposite direction. The more they are photographed (or drawn and painted) the more soul they seem to accumulate.
Daido Moriyama
[Photographer, b. 1938, Ikeda-cho, Osaka, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
People steadily lose the landscapes they have accumulated. It’s not likely that anyone can faithfully recall how scenes appeared ten or twenty years ago... I think people continue to live in the present because we forget most every little thing. The remembrances that sneak up on a tired soul may sometimes stir us, but there is no tomorrow in that... Where in the world did the era beyond my memories and the people who lived in it disappear to? After time, which we can actually only see now in historical documents, there are memories we carry. After our time, what memories will be carried forth by the people who follow?
