More than 50 years ago, on Christmas Eve of 1968, as Apollo 8 rounded the far side of the moon, astronaut William Anders grabbed a camera and snapped a picture of the Earth as it slipped into view. That photograph, “Earth Rise,” is one of the most influential images ever created. It changed the way we thought about our place in the universe and helped launch the modern environmental movement.
But a hundred years before that, a select group of artists hauled their painting gear across America to capture somewhat-more-close-up scenes of the natural world. Their illustrations were published as wood and steel engravings in a series of coffee-table journals called Picturesque America. Those images were also hugely influential. In fact, the idea of the national park system can, at least in part, be traced to that project.
Of course, the mission of preserving nature is a never-ending one. Because the threats never go away.
In this episode, we meet one of the modern champions of the power of art to inspire environmental protection. Scott Varn recently moved his national non-profit organization, Preserving a Picturesque America, to Polk County – Saluda, to be precise.
What exactly his non-profit does will takes some explaining, but the short story is he’s working with today’s artists to raise money to protect the places first captured by their nineteenth-century predecessors. We talked in early July at his new digs in Saluda, where you can find much of that art, on display earlier this month.
