Like many photographers I have one or two subjects that I keep coming back to again and again. Landscape for me is that subject. My initial introduction to what photography can be came through photographers like Minor White, Paul Caponigro and Edward Weston and maybe a little bit of Ansel Adams. All of these men tried to capture the grandness and spirituality of Nature and the environment in general. Unlike previous artists who depicted Nature as Sublime and something apart from mankind, White and Caponigro captured the personal spirituality of nature. They got rid of the terrible beauty and brought it closer to home. Caponigro photographed the woods in his Connecticut backyard and some of his more famous images were taken steps from his house.
But they did still depict nature as something separate from man. For the most part they tried to hide any signs of human encroachment upon the landscape and placed the hand of man just outside the frame. Today in what many scientists are dubbing the Anthropocene the hand of man upon the landscape is everywhere. There is no place in this wide world that has not been touched by the hand of man. For me those signs of alteration are significant. I don’t mean the big, heavy encroachment that photographers like Edward Burtynsky depict, but rather little signs of changes to accommodate people. A small arrow painted on a tree showing the way, trail marks, a worn footpath, a name carved into a tree.
Force Of Seeing 