from my big landscape work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3
from my intimate landscape work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3
from my tangles and thickets work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3
from my on the gound work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3
MORIBUND-def. (of a thing) in terminal decline; lacking vitality or vigor. A word which, iMo, could justifiably be used in conjunction with the phrase / nomenclature of Landscape Photography.
To be clear, it should be noted that the genre of Landscape picture making is not an single organized picture making movement which adhers to a single, uniform picture making aesthetic / norms. I would not even try to count and/or describe the number of sub-genres taking refuge under the umbrella of Landscape picture making.
That written, I do believe that here is one undeniable fracture in Landscape picture making spectrum. That is, the picture making divide between the ANSEL Adams crowd and the ROBERT Adams crowd (feel free to choose your own particular examples).
iMo, the diference between the crowds is that the A. Adams crowd-by far the largest of the 2 crowds-focuses their attention and lenses on the grand, the majestic, the dramatic landscape. Most often with the intent of capturing sentimental / romanticized depictions of the natural world with the use of art sauce-to-the-max visual "hyperbole, theatrical gestures, moral postures and expresivo effects" (quote thanks to John Szarowski). And, it is well worth noting, there is, almost (but not quite) exclusively so, never any evidence of human kind in their pictures.
On the other side of that coin, there is the R. Adams crowd. A picture making crowd for whom "the shrill rodomontade of conventional conservation dialectics has lost its persuasive power" (again, a Swarkowski quote). A crowd which pictures the entire landscape to include, most definitely, evidence of humankind as well as the more quiet / ubiquitous (everyday) natural world. A crowd wihich has discovered that beautiful pictures can made by picturing referents which are not made up what are considered to be the trappings of iconical / conventional beauty.
A quote from Robert Adams, taken from his Introduction in his book The New West kinda somes up, for me, the difference between the A. Adams and the R. Adams crowds:
"...we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience a peace; all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty....Even subdivisions, which we hate for the obcenity of the speculator's greed, are at certain times of day transformed to a dry, cold brilliance."
All of the above written and re: MORIBUND, iMo, it is the A. Adams crowd that is cononically moribund inasmuch as, for better or for worse, there practitioners aplenty which insures that the genre ain't dying. However, in the case of the R. Adams crowd, I have a sense of moribunity inasmuch as there has been little new activity and/or work from that crowd of late. At least, little that I am aware of.
It is possible that the paucity of such activity / work is a condition dictated, temporally, by COVID restrictions. It is also quite possible that my sense of real or imagined paucity is the result of my lack of concentrated effort in searching for such work.
That written, any recommendations of where to find such work will be well apppreciated.