Photographs and Words by Paul Hempstead
Growing up in a dreich part of rural Scotland, I’ve always been captivated by the American West. The dry, red deserts, gun-slinging cowboys, and free-for-all saloons dramatized in westerns looked like another world compared to my sleepy town in Ayrshire. I’d dream of visiting these iconic landscapes, feeling the desert sun beating down on a wild, dusty vista, before chucking back a shot of whiskey and riding off into the sunset on a horse named Trigger.
But that was then, and this is now and although older and slightly less ambitious, I still feel a deep intrigue toward the American West and the cultures that it has produced. So I seized an opportunity to journey through it with my camera and try to document my own slice of that good ol’ American light.
With my lens firmly glued to my eye for 90% of the trip, I quickly took stock of my interactions and actions within this landscape. What I ended up with was a different kind of adventure: questioning my relationship with travel and how I now visit the places I once felt so detached from. Was I truly taking it all in? Or was I too busy taking photos to fully appreciate the magnitude and drama of these iconic surroundings?
This, then, led me to think about other people’s interactions with these landscapes. In an age of digital exploration, our Instagram feeds overflow with snapshots of awe-inspiring landscapes. Our bucket lists are filled to the brim with natural wonders, and once hard-to-reach locations are now well-documented destinations. But with nature now more digitized and commodified than ever before, it seems to me that there exists a paradoxical disconnect between us as travelers and the environments that we traverse.
A simple read through any natural attractions Google reviews or Tripadvisor page will quickly shed light on the complacency of the average tourist. And the expectations that we, as travelers, put upon nature’s most magnificent creations: “no toilets,” “bad access,” “too steep,” “don’t bother.” Has technology, mass tourism, influencer culture, and glossy travel photography contributed to the erosion of a genuine connection with the natural world?
Today, I question my interactions with nature as I try to embrace a mindset where it’s sometimes okay not to raise a camera or phone to document every detail of a journey. By using my camera sparingly, I aim to bring more meaning to both my photos and my exploration of nature.
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The Nature of Critique
The Nature of Critique
