Photography still important to national parks celebrating 100th anniversary

During the 100th anniversary year of the National Park Service, the US Department of the Interior is looking for a photographer, but the position is less Ansel Adams and more Library of Congress.

|
Ansel Adams/Sotheby's/AP
This undated photo provided by Sotheby's shows a mural-sized, 1938 photograph by Ansel Adams, 'Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park," probably printed in the 1950s or 1960s. The US Department of the Interior is looking for another photographer like Adams.

Ansel Adams photographed America's most iconic natural wonders – its national parks – cementing the country's pastoral identity on film during the 20th century. He traveled from sea to shining sea and hit Yellowstone on the way back. And, 100 years after its founding, the National Park Service is still into pictures.

A job listing for a photographer with the US Department of the Interior has generated misplaced media buzz that the National Park Service is hiring the next Ansel Adams to honor the National Park Service's 100th anniversary, but this position reflects the parks' tradition of photography in other ways.

The media has hoped for a riveting set of iconic photographs to document the splendors of the American landscape, wrote Sam Byford for the Verge.

Names don't get much harder to follow than that of Ansel Adams, but the National Park Service's desire to hire someone into a similar full-time role is encouraging. Whoever ends up filling the position should be giving us some amazing pictures of the American landscape soon enough.

Social media has misrepresented a position that mostly involves documenting railroads, buildings, and some landscapes, Jeremy Barnum of the National Park Service told The Christian Science Monitor.

"It won't just be about hiking through the Grand Canyon and catching nice sunsets unfortunately," Mr. Barnum says. "We do want to be very clear that this is not an unusual position."

The 100th anniversary of the National Park Service is Aug. 25, 2016, and it is making plans for the occasion at the country's more than 400 national parks. Although the new photographer will work with the Heritage Documentation Program rather than the birthday festivities, the National Park Service has a tradition of using photography to promote understanding of the outdoors.

The National Park Service commissioned the already well-known photographer Ansel Adams to capture the national parks on film in 1941. His collection of photos from across the American West, some of which he took in the 1930s, consists of 226 photos now held in the National Archives. The theme was "nature as exemplified and protected in the US National Parks," although World War II cut the project short.

The National Park Service employs photographers now, as well. Tim Rains, a park service photographer at Glacier National Park, said photographs provide some of the parks' "best ambassadors."

"It is a thrill to show a softer side of the parks to visitors, and acknowledge that part of the park experience," he wrote on the National Park Service website.

Unlike Mr. Rains's position, the new job will be based in Washington, D.C., and require travel. The job description on the posting is to create "large-format photographic documentation to the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the HABS/HAER/HALS permanent collection at the Library of Congress." The park service wants the photographs in digital and film format and black-and-white.

The job posting warns of "long periods of standing; walking over rough or rocky surfaces; recurring bending, crouching, or stretching; and recurring lifting of moderately heavy equipment and materials," so it's safe to say the job requires some hiking. This would be all-in-a-day's work for a parks enthusiast, whether it's the centennial celebration or not.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Photography still important to national parks celebrating 100th anniversary
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/1209/Photography-still-important-to-national-parks-celebrating-100th-anniversary
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe