Ansel.......landscape context removal?.....

Ghost Ranch in the Shadows of virtual reality pornography......

Someone said: "Landscape photography, like pornography, attempts to seduce the beholder by presenting an image divorced from its actual physical context ... "

The thought I've had is that such beautiful images of nature collude with our fantasies that the physical context of such "pristine" beauty are "somehow" separate from the daily destruction of mother earth........and not by natural causes. Even well meaning tourists (such as me) attracted by such scenes exact a cost...........

Just as pornographic images arouse sexual energy without love, connectedness and intimacy, landscape images can create the illusion of feelings and connections with our plantet that only exist in "virtual reality"......

This phenomenon reminds me of the "tree museum" Joanie Mitchel talks about in her song "Yellow Taxi":
"They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no, don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parkin' lot"