American Beauty

For all their whimsy and nostalgia, the photographs also invite serious reflection on the complexities of American tourism and its fantasies of an unspoiled West. The series takes its title from an early-20th-century marketing campaign to promote domestic travel among the wealthy via the railroads (the original, longer slogan was “See Europe if you will, but see America first”). “See America First!” can be read straight, as intended by the railroad boosters—or with an ironic twist, through the hindsight of history. To acknowledge the many contradictions of our national parks—­areas that were touted as examples of “undisturbed creation” at the expense of Native American territorial sovereignty; places that cultivate an appreciation of nature even though they have long been commercialized—is not to negate their beauty or power.