Significant Detail

“Visual thinking is an art of pattern-

seeking, of culling the significant from a

welter of the irrelevant or peripheral.

Significant details and their

relationships expose a larger pattern.

Anomalies—things out of place or from

another time, a break in pattern—point

to a hidden order or a meaning

overlooked. Photographers seek

significant detail as metaphor to stand

for a larger whole, to hint at the deeper

meaning beneath the surface, to tell a

story.”

Anne Whiston Spirn

Glen Loy, Scotland. September 1978

Significant Details

An old stone wall: A reminder of the Highlanders who were evicted from this land in order to make way for sheep pastures providing wool for English textile mills.

Newly planted seedlings: These will grow to create a future forest and signal the continued human impact on this land.

El Camino de Santiago. Basque Country, Spain. May 2011

Significant Details

Weathered limestone: Over thousands of years, water has exposed this jagged stone in the Basque mountains of Spain. Nature has shaped and molded this area into a bowl-shaped meadow.

Hand-cut stones: The Romans cut and placed these chunks of limestone to create an elevated road. The stones have been worn smooth by the passage of feet and hooves over hundreds of years.

A sinkhole: This is the natural feature that leads into the San Adrian Tunnel, a passage through the mountains that was formed by the slow dissolving action of water.

Uluru. Central Desert. Australia. June 1988.

Significant Details

Black streaks: This discoloration of the red rock indicates the presence of organisms such as microbes, algae, and lichen, and marks the channel where waterfalls stream down during rare desert rains.

Green plants: Green, the color of chlorophyll, signals the presence of water at the base of Uluru, the large sandstone rock formation that rises above Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in central Australia.

Deep red: This color indicates the presence of iron oxides in the rock. Iron is metallic grey in its elemental form but becomes rust-colored when it combines with oxygen through the process of oxidation.

High Plains, Colorado. March 1989.

Significant Details

A clump of trees: On the high plains, a clump of trees like this is the indication of a homestead. In this region, trees only grow in lines along waterbeds or in clumps around homes where people plant and care for them.

Distinct shadows: The direct sunlight creates crisp, defined shadows on the short-grass prairie. Trees are planted around homes to provide some shaded relief from the harsh glare and to break the fierce wind.

Skaftafellsjökull (Vatnajökull Glacier). Iceland. May 2008.

Significant Details

A kettle hole: This hole marks the spot where a piece of ice, broken off from a receding glacier, melted into the earth. The concentric rings of coloration display the passage of time as the pool of ice and water slowly disappeared.

The receding glacier: The toe of the glacier is visible in the distance—its melting is an indication of a warming climate.

Green plants: Within the sand and gravel left by the receding glacier, new life is taking hold.

Parc de Sceaux. Paris, France. May 1993.

Significant Details

A cone-shaped yew: This yew, a type of shrub, has been carefully clipped into a conical shape. It is one detail that points to the larger regimented geometry of French gardens like this from the seventeenth century.

A distant grove: Freely growing trees seem to push against the carefully maintained order of the clipped row of yews in front of them.

A white statue: This sculpture of the human figure seems to point to the tension between the gardener’s attempted sculpting and mastery of nature and the ways that natural processes continually resist that control.

Södra Sandby, Sweden. June 2003.

Significant Details

Multi-colored boulders: The granite stones that form the walls of this barn in southern Sweden were transported hundreds of miles by a glacier long ago—the different colors and textures make it possible to identify the part of northern Sweden or Norway where they each originated.

Red and black: These are among the primary colors of the Swedish countryside. The pigments are produced by roasting waste product from the copper mine near the city of Falun. Historically, this mine was the primary source of Europe’s copper roofing and Sweden’s most profitable resource.

Cinder, Ring of Fire. Mount Aso, Japan. October 2002.

Significant Details

A volcanic bomb: This porous rock was ejected from the mouth of Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan. It was formed when magma (liquid rock) and water combined beneath the surface of the earth.

Black sand: The black sand found near volcanoes is made up of tiny fragments of lava. Lava quickly shatters into sand as it comes into contact with water—when it flows into an ocean it can produce a new black sand beach practically overnight.

Marnas. Södra Sandby, Sweden. November 2008.

Significant Details

Pruned trees: This garden’s designer/owner Sven-Ingvar Andersson was inspired by the trees in Meindert Hobbema’s painting of 1689, The Avenue at Middelharnis (London, National Gallery).

The briar rose: Andersson designed Marnas as a laboratory to explore a framework that accommodates change. He does not overplan, leaving room for the unexpected—like this briar rose that pokes out of the hedge. The garden becomes a metaphor for planning human settlements.