Landscape or People?

Meg Ojala helped us with reading photographs of the Japanese internment camps, especially with understanding what Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams each brought to their work.  Three key differences:

1) Why each one was there: Lange was commissioned, Adams was there on his own.
2)  Technical skill and style: Lange was the less technically adept; she used a hand-held large (or maybe medium) format camera; she got close to the subjects.  Adams was more of a careful technician; he used a tripod; he allowed the subjects to prepare themselves rather than attempting something akin to "candid" shots.
3) Their larger body of work:  Lange had already made many photos of people as part of her earlier documentary work.  Adams made his reputation as a landscape photographer in the linage (sort of) of great western landscape painters.

All this led me to ponder a question:  which subject matter is best suited to portrayals of America?

The national parks, we've learned, were established at least in part as a statement of patriotic pride.  While the USA might not have a long, magnificent cultural history like Europe, the parks demonstrated that it did encompass monumental landscapes.  On the other hand, can the landscape without the people tell us much about the culture that is definitive of the nation?

And that of course sends me back to my interim course in Greece and Turkey where we talked about taking photographs and what we include and exclude.  More often than not the tourist post-cards are photos of buildings (or ruins of them).  Some are of spectacular landscape, though often as background for the human construction.  Seldom are people included.

Now I'm back to those photos Lange took.  (The one here is hers.  More via the link in the first paragraph.)  Some observers suggest that she portrays degradation in contrast to Adams who shows the people's dignity.   When I look at her photos, I see human vulnerability and am moved.  But, I wonder if that sort of intimacy is more than what is generally desired when we are looking for images to convey something large about a nation.  Perhaps we default to landscape or buildings because those are less personal.

More to ponder.