AS ADVERTISED

By MICHAEL PERKINS

CALIFORNIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN ITS OWN BEST PUBLICITY AGENT, burnishing its already dazzling visual beauty with idealized vistas in posters, packaging and legends that elevate the state from a mere paradise to something like a fairyland. Anchored in my midwest reveries in Columbus, Ohio, my own first glimpses of scenes of the far west were not candid photographs or documentaries, but the golden bounty of the land as depicted on fruit crate art. Long before I experienced the range of light that is a daily miracle in its mountain skies and coastal beaches, I saw it simulated like some fantasy landscape in Maxfield Parrish’s over-the-top posters for Edison Mazda Lamps. And decades before I would step off a plane to experience the Golden Gate first-hand, I marveled at postcard-perfect views of San Francisco through the lenses of a View-Master.

Now, long past all those childhood visions of California, I actually live here, and am amazed to see the same sort of light and color that I had assumed were mere hype and boast, only to find the very vistas that inspired so many brochures, magazine spreads and travel guides. The amazing thing is that the real deal is not that much removed from the imaginary when it comes this place. The shot you see here, of part of the old Santa Barbara State University campus, is pretty much straight out of the camera, although I retreived some details from the more extreme shadows. And this picture, I find, is not an anomaly, but the daily legacy of life out here.

The only thorn on this rose is what the California native knows about his Eden…that protecting it from the ravages of the very people who claim to love it can break your heart, overwhelm you with the task you are charged with, to save, serve, defend, replenish. Photography is the religious worship of light and what it can beautify. But in all that beauty is buried a challenge; we must remember that we are not owners but merely caretakers, and that we must use the arts for, among other things, reminding everyone just what is at stake. Only in that way can the wonders we cherish most about this world continue to delight as advertised.