Ruth Bernhard
[Photographer, b. 1905, Berlin, d. 2006, San Francisco.]
The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations—each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.
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Sally Mann
[Photographer, b. 1951, Lexington, Virginia, lives in Lexington.]
Working in the inexhaustible natural pageant before me, I came to wonder if the artist who commands the landscape might in fact hold the keys to the secrets of the human heart: place, personal history, and metaphor.
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Emmet Gowin
[Photographer, b. 1941, Danville, Virginia, lives in Princeton, New Jersey.]
[In nature] we may even glimpse the means with which to accept ourselves. Before nature, what I see does not truly belong to anyone; I know that I cannot have it, in fact, I’m not sure what I’m seeing.
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Joel Meyerowitz
[Photographer, b. 1938, New York, lives in New York.]
Arriving at the rim of this famous landmark, they shuffle about, searching for a sign that says “shoot here.” With one pre-set image labeled GRAND CANYON in their minds, blinding them to what lies below, they search for the one and only “right” spot to stand.
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Peter Henry Emerson
[Writer and photographer, b. 1856, LaPalma, Cuba, d. 1936, Falmouth, Cornwall, England.]
Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.
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Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
Color is vulgar, beauty is unimportant, and nature is trivial.
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Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
I was living in Monterey, a place where the classic photographers—the Westons, Wynn Bullock and Ansel Adams—came for a privileged view of nature. But my daily life very rarely took me to Point Lobos or Yosemite; it took me to shopping centers, and gas stations and all the other unhealthy growth that flourished beside the highway. It was a landscape that no one else had much interest in looking at. Other than me.
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Bill McKibben
[Writer, b. 1960, Palo Alto, California, lives near Lake Chanokaub, New York.]
After a lifetime of nature shows and magazine photos, we arrive at the woods conditioned to expect splendor—surprised when the parking lot does not contain a snarl of animals attractively mating and killing each other.
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