Peter Dombrovskis’ exquisitely beautiful Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River is probably Australia’s most famous landscape photograph. It achieved that status because, as the embodiment of threatened Tasmanian wilderness it was enormously influential in the ultimately successful effort to prevent the Franklin Dam from going ahead.
A century before Peter Dombrovskis, William H. Jackson’s photographs of the Yellowstone region in the USA led to the creation of the world’s first national park. Carleton Watkins’ images taken around the same time in California’s Yosemite Valley led to President Abraham Lincoln declaring that the lands should ‘be held for public use, resort, and recreation… inalienable for all time.’
There is no question that photography has lost none of its power to create, and to nurture, profound empathy for the wonders of…
