Landscape and Images

by Stilgoe, John R.

• ISBN13: 9780813923215
• ISBN10: 0813923212
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-30
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr

Summary

John Stilgoe is just looking around. This is more difficult than it sounds, particularly in our mediated age, when advances in both theory and technology too often seek to replace the visual evidence before our own eyes rather than complement it. We are surrounded by landscapes charged with our past, and yet from our earliest schooldays we are instructed not to stare out the window. Someone who stops to look isn't only a rarily he or she is suspect. Landscape and Images records a lifetime spent observing America's constructed landscapes. Stilgo's essays follow the eclectic trains of thought that have resulted from his observation, from the postcard preference for sunsets over sunrises to the concept of "teen geography" to the unwillingness of Americans to walk up and down stairs. In Stilgoe's hands, the subject of jack-o'-lanterns becomes an occasion to explore centuries-old concepts of boundaries and trespassing, and to examine why this originally pagan symbol has persisted into our own age. Even something as mundane as putting the eat out before going to bed is traced back to fears of unwatched animals and an untended frontier fireplace. Stilgoe ponders the forgotten connections between politics and painted landscapes and asks why a country whose vast majority lives less than a hundred miles from a coast nonetheless looks to the rural Midwest for the classic image of itself. At times breathtaking in their erudition, the essays collected here are as meticulously researched as they are elegantly written. Stilgoe's observations speak to specialists--whether they be artists, historians, or environmental designers--as well as to the common reader. Our landscapes constitute a fascinatinghistory of accident and intent. The proof, says Stilgoe, is all around us.

Author Biography

John R. Stilgoe is Robert and Lois Orchard Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
A Note on the Illustrations	xiii
Introduction	1	(26)
Treasured Wastes: Spaces and Memories	9	(18)
The Deep Past and Images	27	(92)
Landschaft and Linearity: Two Archetypes of Landscape	29	(18)
Jack-o'-lanterns to Surveyors: The Secularization of Landscape Boundaries	47	(17)
Archipelago Landscape	64	(14)
Walking Seer: Cole as Pedestrian Spectator	78	(10)
Smiling Scenes	88	(15)
Fair Fields and Blasted Rock: American Land Classification Systems and Landscape Aesthetics	103	(16)
Rural Looking	119	(96)
The Magic of Pennsylvania Travel Narratives	123	(11)
Mapping Indiana: Nineteenth-Century School Book Views	134	(17)
Narragansett Bay: A Particular Landscape	151	(9)
Deep Cold: Winter as Landscape	160	(10)
Skewing Private Climate	170	(23)
Camouflaged and Saving Energy	193	(10)
Hobgoblin in Suburbia: Origins of Contemporary Place Consciousness	203	(12)
Contemporary Space	215	(38)
Landscape Jellies, Landscape Jams	217	(4)
Rendezvous by Design: The Automobile City and the Loss of Serendipity	221	(4)
Hard Times and the Evolving Vernacular Landscape	225	(7)
Parts Cars, Green Roofs, and Rural Landscape Preservation	232	(5)
Everyday Rural Landscape and Thoreau's Wild Apples	237	(8)
Small Town and Urban Edges	245	(8)
Photographed Landscape	253	(82)
Reflected Light	257	(2)
Scrutinizing Photographs, Tracing Portals	259	(7)
Scrying Xanadu	266	(12)
Landscape in Limbo	278	(8)
Disjunction, Disunion, Daguerreotype	286	(12)
Popular Photography, Scenery Values, and Visual Assessment	298	(11)
Bikinis, Beaches, and Bombs: Human Nature on the Sand	309	(11)
Sunset Beach, Studio Beach	320	(9)
Sparse and Away	329	(6)
End	335	(10)
Four Mornings, Seven Afternoons	339	(6)
Index	345