Headlines Portray Built Landscape Exquisitely

It wouldn’t be completely absurd to look for “Looking at Landscapes; Environmental Puzzles from Three Photographers,” at an art museum—the small, gray room that holds the exhibit’s 52 photographs could easily be part of one. But in order to catch the collection of works by Alex MacLean, Anne Whiston Spirn, and Camilo José Vergara, students have to walk past the Fogg and the Sackler and head to the Harvard Museum of Natural History instead. The reward for the journey? A new awareness of natural phonomena one might never notice if these images weren’t so exquisitely captured, mounted, and brought together.

After seeing Alex MacLean’s aerial shots, I was motivated to whip out my Nikon on my flight home for Thanksgiving break. Particularly striking were two adjacent photos taken in 2005, one titled “Hillside Preserve” and the other “Settlement.” The latter depicts the beginning of a process of development, with just a rectangle of construction interrupting a vast natural landscape.

“Hillside Preserve,” in contrast, shows an almost infinite grid of houses and streets punctuated by a large, verdant oasis that rises above the flat expanse of development. Together, the photographs draw attention to the disheartening reality that the environment within the land preserve—now viewed as a rarity amidst suburban sprawl—once constituted the entire landscape. What is so effective about these and MacLean’s other images is that they display an action and its consequences from the distance of a plane and a camera lens—just far enough to encompass a vision that our own eyes normally crop.

Like MacLean’s photographs, the work of Anne Whiston Spirn reveals a profound concern with the consequences of human efforts to shape nature. But where MacLean takes viewers miles above his subjects, Spirn forces them to look even more closely than they normally might. In 1986’s “Column of Victory, Army of Trees,” an infinitely tall stone column rises above small, newly planted trees on a rising hill. At first, this photograph appears to depict a neat landscaping job; upon closer examination, however, gaping holes emerge. Large tree stumps rest between the newly planted trees, serving as powerful commentaries on the destructive potential of human action.

The images by the third photographer in the show, Camilo José Vergara, center on juxtapositions. By focusing on buildings, streets, and neighborhoods, Vergara creates contrasts that are simultaneously unique and familiar. In his “Paired Houses” sequence of four photos, each picture shows two adjacent apartment buildings that differ in the degree of upkeep provided by the separate owners. In “919 S. 9th Street” (2004), the building on the left is newly painted with curtains in the window and a tidy garbage can on the street. Next door, there are no windows in which to hang curtains, and the dirty and soot-stained brick wall is punctured by holes. Uninviting and marred with graffiti, the building on the right is home to nothing but neglect.

In the series “View Along Fern St. from 10th St.,” Vergara attempts to depict the passage of time. In four photos from different years, Vergara shows how a view down the same street changes in response to its residents—or lack thereof. In the photo from 1979, two complete rows of apartments march evenly into the distance, complemented by people relaxed on porches and cars parked in neat lines.

Nine years later, in 1988, red “demolition” signs abound and a lone man walks down the middle of the street, perhaps in avoidance of the filthy sidewalks. The 1996 photograph, however, shows hints of new life: plants lend color to the bleak scene and children ride bikes in the street. By 2004, three large trees grow where there would not have been room in 1979, and four boys play outside.

“View Along Fern St. from 10th St.,” with its focus on change over time, is in many ways representative of the work of three photographers who view landscape as anything but constant. Like the exhibit itself, the experience of “Looking At Landscapes” is dynamic, not only showing viewers new perspectives on the world around them, but also encouraging them to keep looking even after they leave the show.