“Tourists wanted an image of wilderness, not a realistically dangerous wilderness experience”
So like most millennials I have an Instagram. Now I don’t consider myself an active participant, like I don’t post pictures but I’ll go check out the pictures every once in while. One of the accounts I follow is the U.S. Department of the Interior. The department posts pictures of incredible views advertising National Parks and grand vistas with the slogan “Protecting America’s Great Outdoors and Powering our Futures”.
Seeing a post the other day reminded me of the Byerly piece and how the American view of the nature has been turned into this staged beauty meant to sell these places rather than appreciate their surroundings. This account is selling a product and trying to get people come out and see these same views for themselves.
So while I still enjoy these posts, I might look at the pictures a little differently knowing the potential reason behind them.
Tory, I appreciate your insight here. I think after reading that piece and others from class I will look at pictures of nature quite differently. Furthermore, especially with these images I found myself thinking about if this is the way these images looked in the original photo taken. No doubt these place are beautiful without any sort of edits, but it makes you wonder if some of the images of nature we are shown are “touched up” as a way to make them more picturesque and staged beauties.
I was thinking of using the US Interior’s Instagram as a GORP! It’s so funny you did a post about it. I also follow the US interior as well as NatGeo, hipcamp, US fish & wildlife, etc. I have also been thinking differently about the pictures they post since readying the piece by Byerly. However, I still maintain that those pictures and instagram posts are valuable to the environmental cause. Every time I see pictures like that, I learn about a new place or a new thing in nature that I now want to go explore and see. I’m always amazed by the things they post. They don’t make me think “oh I saw it in a picture, now I have no desire to find it myself.” They make me want to go and experience not only the frame or subject of their post, but the journey to get to that thing.