Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 4))

LANDSCAPE—A REVERIE.
TO THE nature-lover, prisoned within the labyrinthine cañons of a great
city with its endless ranges of lofty buildings that shut out all horizon
and show of the broad, beautiful universe, only the long, narrow streaks
of sky immediately above its streets, what longings, what memories
brings the mention or sight of the mere word landscape! And the longings,
memories, ideas thus awakened of green fields ; of open country ; of broad
stretches of sky; of some river-drifting dream ; of some idyllic woodland-
wandering; of some sudden realization of the serene sublimity of the
limitless star-studded country night — how vastly different from the one
dominating idea, ever present, overwhelming, of struggle, of contention, of
immense power, irresistible, crushing, awful — embodied in the sleepless
energy and massive towering structures of a mighty metropolis. They
represent stupendous energy, these structures of stone and iron that shut us
in, vast force, never-ceasing toil. They are the mighty monsters of material
progress through whose ramifying veins of wire animating electric fluid ever
pulses and throbs; through whose arterial corridors, daily, plethoric flow
of composite human life and brain-force ever courses and circulates.
Always they are building higher, relentlessly crowding the freedom of the
sky further away, shutting us in more and more. Upon the inner walls
of the more pretentious will be found record of the conflict between the
spirit that has called them into existence and man’s love for the open
country, the freedom of nature — in frescoes, paintings, and prints, breaking
the monotony of the dreary wall-space with snatches of landscape; while
few even of the most insignificant are without the garnishment of some
little, inexpensive picture of open field and sweeping horizon. Such is almost
the only horizon that many city-dwellers know, for the city horizon-line is
made up of entrances and windows and street-gaps, and its vistas of trolley-
tracks disappearing in the distance between rows of lofty buildings that seem
to close in upon each other as they recede, as if jealous of and determined
altogether to blot out the attenuated strips of unbuilt land still left for
streets. Of the great world without the city’s bounds, with its noble
landscapes and varied scenery, there is small time to concern oneself, no
matter how much the desire, much less to journey out and see. Indeed,
it is more than probable that the great majority of real cityites, such as
were born and have continued to dwell in cities, regard the rest of the
universe in a vague sort of way, as something more substantial than a
dream, but yet as an unsubstantial, possible reality known only through
pictures, books, magazines, associated-press notes, extravagant red-captioned
newspaper articles and omniscient editorials, lined in poor type and
malodorous printing-ink. Even these imperfect glimpses of that
bigger, outer world, so vague and insignificant, are obtained in moments
snatched hastily from the onward rush too soon to be almost completely
forgotten in the fierce, endless striving of the surging on-pushing crowd.
Vastly mixed and ever hurrying is that crowd. Morning and evening

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