E. Scott Mitchell

Flattering the View: Photography, Synoptic Vision, and the Making of Landscape

Scott Mitchell is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Landscape Architecture. His research interrogates the entangled visual and cultural histories of photography and the making of landscape. His dissertation explores this through visual historical analysis of the entangled public histories of post-war 20th century American photographic and landscape practices, particularly through the networked relationships and photographic archives of landscape photographer Morley Baer (b. 1916 – d. 1995), whose career spans the period of growth of photographic practice and technology, shifting aesthetic and political culture of its production, and the growing availability of media spaces related to the production and reading of landscape. Recognized by the American Institute of Architects in 1966, Baer’s architectural work has been widely published though rarely scrutinized in visual scholarship. Furthermore, his personal work, primarily produced over the decades he resided in California, has long been overlooked. An exploration of Baer’s commercial practice in the post-war construction boom, his practices in fine art and commercial landscape photography, and careful study of his works’ sustained legacy in representation and publication, seeks to uncover possible new understandings of the role of the synoptic image and the way we understand the American landscape, revealing the unique features of the changing relationship and lasting impact of the American experience and cultural reading of landscape.