前言 | Foreword
翻译 by Darren
美国人对纯真无知的梦想感到恐惧。我们仍发自内心地相信，只有在渺无人烟之处才有真正美丽的风景。不幸的是，在我们借住的这片大陆上所发生的种种都印证了上述观点。因此我们不辞辛劳地深入荒野，经过最遥远的驿站和最深处的旅馆，只为了能洗去眼中令人沮丧的证据，发现一块上帝的花园，并在其他人来毁掉它之前宣告它的主权。
而现在我们开始意识到世间已经没有幸存的荒野。这是一个悲伤的事实，但是承认这个事实也许是有益的，这或许让我们更加清晰，对于自然拥有通达而宽容的态度要求我们不仅要学会与冰雪、尘埃、蚊虫、八哥、豺狼和猎鹰共享地球，也要学会和其他人类分享。
不可否认的是，人类是这颗本来天然而共生的星球生态中一个独特的变异，一个例外的存在。然而如此这般的证词都来自人类自己的收集和诠释，因此我们不得不怀疑这是否是人类自吹自擂的结论。不过这个观点却给许多美国最杰出的艺术家提供了素材，其中最重要的莫过于现今影响最大的梭罗，他曾优雅地以消化不良为依据，说服了顽固的理性主义者们：人类并不是自然的一部分。
也许梭罗并不是一个成功的自然学家和哲学家，但他的的确确是一个伟大的艺术家。众所周知，艺术家的天分从来不是平白无故获得的，即使最平庸的艺术家也为自己的天赋付出代价。来看看这个摄影贸易文书上的广告：
新蓝天
如果因为某些原因，你照片里的天空看起来不怎么样的话，大多数情况下我们可以为你更换一片新蓝天，同时去掉电线、电线杆和其他出现在天空的讨厌的物事。
费用为20美金。
并不是免费但是足够便宜，这是一个充满想像力的概念化提议：这个体系只需要在修图师的桌子上改变山水，不必给世界上严肃的工作带来不必要的变迁和麻烦。
这便是我们力所能及的极限，我们不该对它报以轻视或鄙夷，因为我们最大的努力不该被当作玩笑。然而我们也许可以做得更好——比如找到一个不仅在照片里看起来好看，而且也适宜跨越、行驶、徒步甚至生活其中的景色——一片可以赋予认可和记忆的景色。这样的一个地方，必定是一片有人居住的自然风光。
我们一直将此看作是矛盾的。我们明白人类是极端危险的，我们只能容忍他们零散地居住在乡野，我们很少想到可以存在一片既天然美丽又有人类居住的土地。相反地，我们试着去探索另外看似合理的可行性。
最可行的方法曾是分离土地的美学特征和它的实际功能。多亏了U.S基金的设立，上述的观点被假以活力和智慧，在美国得以成功实践。这个观念的核心在于，自然风光的某些特别壮观的部分需要被围起来，不允许居民居住，或者仅仅允许短期的参观，并且需要足够的预防措施和监控。这个观点赢得了巨大的胜利，特别是在山顶、沙漠腹地、北部杉树覆盖的山脊，这些地域至今鲜有人长期居住。
我们每个人都应该感恩得益于传统维护观念的馈赠，它们既是过去的，又指向未来。我们也应该保持谨慎，因为这些围栏是人所树立，若出于必要，也会为人所拆除。
然而一个可能存在的事实是，这些广袤公园的示范价值，只有在围栏内外的景色存在某种可以识别的关系时，才能保持下去。当这种关系不再显而易见或者不再被铭记时，人们将会占领这些土地并采集标本作为异域风情的纪念品，就像我们对待那些被遗忘的宗教祭物一样。
因此即使是为了保护我们的国家公园，我们也必须学会利用边界外的土地。如果我们将自己当作自然的天然敌人，我们很难做到这一切。我们不妨尝试将自己当作自然景色的天真而笨拙的爱人，而不是一个强暴者。
亚当斯的照片以精准、挑剔而公正的方式表述了我们近几十年对土地犯下的致命却又并不是无法原谅的罪孽。山脚下的合成木板建成的农场屋群、被拖车停车场、霓虹灯广告牌、公路上被挤压弯的塑料板……这些甚至对我们微小的期待都是一种折辱。然而他的照片也让我们看到了这些聚居点所传达的人类的愿望，因此它们并非无趣。很明显，这些地方修建得很随意，因此很快就会形成风格。业余的木匠、任性的维修工和当地吓人的气候都为建筑表面增添了丰富而多样的肌理。就像亚当斯说的，阳光在这些地方也会闪耀，尽管不如以前明亮。
亚当斯的照片是文明的、温和的、精确的，避免夸张、戏剧性的动作或道德立场，总的来讲就是避免那些过分富于表现的效果，这使得某些观者觉得他的照片没什么滋味。对此，我们也许是无能为力的。或者说，我们不确定是否需要做些什么来改变它，因为从本质上来讲，考究的经典立场并不比浪漫主义更好。而对于另外的观者来说，他们无法被传统的保护自然辩论法中刺耳的大话所说服，或许他们会觉得亚当斯照片里有营养、惊喜、指示、澄清、挑战，或许还有希望。
尽管罗伯特·亚当斯的书并不涉及道德立场，它却有道德观点。他的道德观点是，对我们而言，自然景色亦是我们居住的地方。如果我们不好好利用它，我们便是在轻视土地，也是在轻视我们自己。如果我们滥用它、破坏它的平衡，将它的纪念碑树立在我们的无知面前，它仍旧是我们的地方，而我们必须要学会爱它才能前进。
约翰·萨考夫斯基
纽约现代艺术博物馆摄影部主任
As Americans we are scarred by the dream of innocence. In our hearts we stillbelieve that the only truly beautiful landscape is an unpeopled one. Unhappily,much in the record of our tenancy of this continent serves to confirm this view. Soto wash our eyes of the depressing evidence we have raced deeper and deeperinto the wilderness, past the last stage-coach stop and the last motel, to see andclaim a section of God's own garden before our fellows arrive to spoil it.Now however we are beginning to realize that there is no wilderness left. Thefact itself is without doubt sad, but the recognition of it is perhaps salutary. As thisrecognition takes a firmer hold on our consciousness, it may become clear that agenerous and accepting attitude toward nature requires that we learn to share theearth not only with ice, dust, mosquitoes, starlings, coyotes, and chicken hawks,but even with other people.
There is considerable evidence to support the view that man is a unique andforeign mutation, an exception, in the otherwise natural and symbiotic life of theplanet. Granted, this evidence has been collected and interpreted by men, whichsuggests that the conclusion might be a perverse sort of bragging. Nevertheless,this view has provided grist for the mills of many of America's most distinguishedartists. The most important of these in terms of recent influence is perhapsThoreau, whose elegantly expressed dyspepsia has convinced many otherwiseintransigent rationalists that man is not in fact a part of nature.
Whatever his failings as a naturalist and a philosopher, Thoreau was a verygreat artist. And, as is well known, the gifts of artists are not really free. Eventhe gifts of very minor artists are not free. Consider this ad from a photographictrade paper:
NEW BLUE SKIES
If for some reason the sky in your transparency is unsuitable,we can, in most instances, substitute a new blue sky and at thesame time remove wires, telephone poles and other objectionableObjects appearing in the sky. Charge for this is $20.00.
Not free, but a bargain surely, and a proposition that contains a very imaginative concept: a system for renewing the landscape at the retoucher's table, costingno inconvenient displacement of the world's serious work.
If this is the best we can manage, we should not scorn it, for our best deservesbetter than easy jokes. On the other hand it is possible that we might do better-that we might achieve a landscape that we would find not only good to look at inpictures, but good to fly over, drive past, walk through, and even live in-onethat might offer the rewards of recognition and remembrance. Such a place wouldbe a natural landscape with people in it.
This we have considered a contradiction in terms. Since we have understoodmen to be dangerous at best, and tolerable in the countryside only at very lowdensities, we have given little serious thought to the proposition that a landscapemight be simultaneously beautiful, natural, and populated by human beings. Wehave instead explored the plausible alternatives.
The most useful of these alternatives has been the idea of segregating theaesthetic and the practical functions of the land. This concept has been pursued inthe United States with vigor, intelligence, and considerable success since theadministration of U. S. Grant. The concept says in essence that certain especiallysplendid parts of the natural landscape should be fenced around, in order to keepthe citizenry out, or to allow them in as transient visitors, under adequateprecautionary controls. This idea has achieved great victories, especially in thecase of lands which lie on the tops of mountains, or in the basins of deserts, or onthe rocky spines of the northern spruce belt, to which areas relatively few of thecitizenry have, until now, demanded permanent access.
For the great past and future gifts of the traditional conservation concept weshould all be profoundly grateful. We should also be vigilant, for the fences areerected by men, who are equally capable of removing them, after exercise of theirbest judgment.
Nevertheless it is probably true that the exemplary value of the great parkswill obtain only as long as there is some recognizable relationship between thelandscape inside the fence and that outside. When this relationship is no longervisible, or remembered, honest men will storm the parks and collect its specimensas exotic souvenirs, as we do the cult objects of forgotten religions.
Thus even to preserve our national parks we must learn to use naturally theland that lies outside their boundaries. It is not likely that we will manage this aslong as we consider ourselves nature's natural enemies. As a step in the rightdirection, we might try to think of ourselves not as rapists of the landscape, but asits clumsy and naive lovers.
In this self-conciliatory spirit, what, if anything, can be said in defense of thesprawling non-towns that suddenly cover so much of what was recently ourbeautiful countryside? It is well known that these recent settlements do notcompare favorably, by any known aesthetic standard, with Positano, for example,or Stockbridge, Mass., or for that matter with any ordinary American farm townbefore World War Il. Nevertheless a man of objectivity, intelligence, and good willmight conceivably find even in this chaff the seeds of new virtues, as yet unlabelled. Or, alternatively, to the degree that the alleged objectivity might really be a traditional Yankee contrariness the other side of the perverse Thoreauviancoin- such a man might actually prefer to discover a suggestion of hope right inthe middle of God's Own Junkyard than in the places where he has been told tolook. We should also keep in mind the artist's close affinity to the magician, andthe pleasure he takes in making silk purses out of sows' ears.
But whether out of a sense of fairness, a taste for argument, or a love of magic,Robert Adams has in this book done a strange and unsettling thing. He has,without actually lying, discovered in these dumb and artless agglomerations ofboring buildings the suggestion of redeeming virtue. He has made them look notbeautiful but important, as the relics of an ancient civilization look important. Hehas even made them look, in an unsparing way, natural.
Adams's pictures describe with precision and fastidious justice some of themortal and venial sins that we have committed against our land in recent decades.The gaggle of plywood ranch houses at the foot of the mountain, fenced in by thetrailer parks, acid neon, and extruded plastic of the highway, is an affront even toour modest expectations. But his pictures also show us that these settlementsexpress human aspirations, and that they are therefore not uninteresting. It isclear also that these places are very casually built, and will therefore acquire character soon enough. Amateur carpenters, willful repairmen, and the fearfulclimate will add a sort of architectural variety. And as Adams says, the sun shineson these works also, even if not quite so brightly as it did.
Adams's pictures are so civilized, temperate, and exact, eschewing hyperbole,theatrical gestures, moral postures, and espressivo effects generally, that someviewers might find them dull. There is probably nothing that can be done aboutthis. It is not even certain that anything should be done about it, since themeasured Attic view of things is not intrinsically better than the romantic. Butother viewers, for whom the shrill rodomontade of conventional conservationdialectics has lost its persuasive power, may find in these pictures nourishment,surprise, instruction, clarification, challenge, and perhaps hope.
Though Robert Adams's book assumes no moral postures, it does have amoral. Its moral is that the landscape is, for us, the place we live. If we have used itbadly, we cannot therefore scorn it, without scorning ourselves. If we haveabused it, broken its health, and erected upon it memorials to our ignorance, it isstill our place, and before we can proceed we must learn to love it. As Job perhapsbegan again by learning to love his ash pit.
Tohn Szarkowski
Director, Department of Photography
The Museum of Modern Art