Standing on the Shawnee

The symbolic image of the landscape has been a part of our heritage since the Hudson River School painters first glorified the American wilderness. The sense of spiritual renewal, new opportunity and endless bounty to be found in nature informed and motivated the call to manifest destiny that spurred Americans' migration across the continent. This tradition has been paid homage by photographers ranging

Cypress trees Horseshoe Lake

from Timothy O'Sullivan and Carlton Watkins to Ansel Adams and Meridel Rubenstein. Their photographs have vastly enriched our cultural and aesthetic heritage through recording and interpreting a major, defining feature of American experience: the landscape.

As controversy surrounding the uses, economic and recreational, of the Shawnee National Forest intensifies, it is important to reflect upon the nature of this place, to bring a visual record of

this landscape to public attention, and to record the forest as it now stands.

The end of the 20th century is rapidly approaching. It promises to be a watershed mark in our environmental history. As in the era of the 19th century exploration of the Western landscape, it is time to take stock of our natural heritage. The record of the Western landscape produced in the 1870s stands as an enduring cultural and aesthetic achievement in the annals of American history.

The Shawnee itself is on the brink of change. Its future uses, now being debated, will shape its character and alter its image. The photograph can preserve a record of the forest as it now stands in a way no other medium can approach.