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Show 376. America, published in 1872, which aspired to prove that American scenery was as wonderful as Europe's, it used the combination of "pen and p e n c i l , " writer and a r t i s t , attempting to see Nature as if i t were a r t. These were the forerunners of the Sierra Club Exhibit Format books, which have even been used to explicate Muir, as in Brower's e d i t i o n of Muir's F i r s t Summer in the Sierra, called Gentle Wilderness. Such a book assumed that the reader could not see Nature, unless i,t were interpreted through the eyes of a p i c t o r i a l a r t i s t . Such a book f i n a l l y replaced the viewer's perceptions with a p i c t o r i a l a r t i s t ' s perceptions, the two-dimensional f l a t p r o j e c t i o n s , paintings, etchings, or photographs. The e d i t o r of Gentle Wilderness said in effect that Muir, even a f t e r a l l his "pathetic fallacy" had been edited away, was not objective enough. For true objectivity, for us to r e a l l y appreciate F i r s t Summer in the Sierra, we needed the eye of the camera. Although Kauffman's photographs have their own charm, the r e s u l t of reading such a book is a strangely mixed response. Somehow, the r e a l i t y of the Sierra is formed not so much by Muir's words, as by the more dramatic and impressive color photographs; they create the image of the Sierra presented in the book. Most readers, I think, would assume that those photographs are t r u t h f u l and objective; they t e l l what the Sierra "really" i s . Finally, the audience which has accepted the conventions of the picturesque expects or even demands t h a t Nature be portrayed in a e s t h e t i c terms, that Nature follow the rules of p i c t o r i a l a r t . The camera |