Unnatural Illusions: Some Words About Visual Resource Management

Abstract

Under the name of “Visual Resource Management” a number of federal agencies have institutionalized a set of landscape values which, while they give new teeth to the old saw “out of sight, out of mind,” simultaneously reduce what is in sight to a uniform pleasantness, a kind of visual fast food. This has the effect of minimizing the viewer's ability to make sense of what he or she is seeing (since it is intentionally manipulated to mislead the individual), at once with respect to what is going on (tree farming, for instance) and with respect to how it is being carried out (“naturally”). The program's goal, in two words, is to lie and to confuse.