Atlantica - 01.09.2000, Page 36

Window ViewingWindow Viewing
34 A T L A N T I C A
Window Viewing
How do people usually experience landscape? Nature photographers
show us visions of a world dominated by the beauty of form and colour:
landscape bathed in shadow-rich morning sunshine or swept by
dramatic rainstorms; landscape untouched by man or everyday life.
But when people travel through the landscape, they generally see it from
a window. From cars, trains or planes. They drive along roads and stop at
designated car parks; walk along marked trails and stand behind railings
to see the glory of the postcards with their own eyes. They take pho-
tographs of these places, but the results are rarely as beautiful in the
classical sense as the pictures shown on postcards. The conditions are
different; people tend not to bother to seek out the sort of viewpoints
employed by nature photographers; they don’t necessarily know how to
read the light to achieve the best effects.
I’m a traveller and photographer myself, but I don’t go looking for an
untouched utopian landscape. What I’m interested in is landscape as it is
experienced by the ordinary traveller. The landscape that rushes past on
the other side of the glass; the landscape that the engineers placed
before our eyes when they decided the route of the road.
A landscape marked by humans and their works. The true landscape.
Photos by Einar Falur Ingólfsson
Nazca, Peru.
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