'Nature in the Balance': a gallery

"Nature in the Balance" is an exhibit of 150 years worth of photographs and paintings that document how the people of the Northwest (mostly Washington) have interacted with nature since settlement. It's showing at Seattle's Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) through Sunday, Sept. 9. a collection MOHAI's curator of photography, Howard Giske, has assembled an amazing and varied array of images – some locked away for many years, others reproduced on a scale that allows you peer into landscapes, longhouses, and bunkhouses of the past.

I've collected a baker's dozen of "Nature in the Balance" images. I've also written an essay about the exhibit.

1. Sacred grove?

In photographs of the Northwest, trees are often shown to give a sense of nature's scale. One of the reasons people were inclined to call this "God's country" was undoubtedly the cathedral-like quality of old-growth forests whose columns suggested ancient temples and medieval churches. "The hills and groves were God's first temples," said John Muir. In this photo, taken around 1915, the scale is captured by the figure of a lone man sitting at the base of a giant tree in the bottom right-hand corner. The image was taken by one of the famed Northwest Kinsey brothers photographers – it's uncertain which one. The most famous was Darius, who was very aware of the church-like qualities of the forests. He documented the Northwest with scenic pictures but is probably best known for his images of industry, especially railroads and logging. He died in 1940 after a fall from a stump. (Photo: Kinsey photographer)

2. Northwest gothic

When nature wasn't being worshipped, it was used as a prop to suggest the scale of the timber cutter's challenge. You can feel the tension in the picture between the power of old growth and the determination of settlers to transform nature into something they can live in, like a cabin. There are thousands of images of felled forest giants that have been bagged and tagged by timber workers, but this picture gives you the sense of the immense labor ahead for a single (albeit large) pioneer family as they look to clear the land for their homestead. Taken in Snohomish County, Wash., in 1895, it has a gothic feel, especially as the bearded settler has made a statement by burying his axe in the flank of this gigantic cedar, known as "the tree of life" to Northwest native peoples. (Photo: U.P. Hadley)

3. The hills are alive!

From the solo pioneer to industrial swarms: The hills are alive with the sound of chopping and sawing. The 20th century saw the systematic stripping of Northwest forests. Paul Bunyan morphed from a single giant with a blue ox into a horde of flannel-clad, axe- and peavey-wielding locusts. That feel is captured in this painting, circa 1940, by Northwest artist Richard Bennett. To me, it looks like a Franklin Roosevelt-era WPA mural gone mad. In a second painting in the series, also in the exhibit, the trees are no longer visible due to the logger swarm. If the forests were once cathedrals, what have we done to them? (Painting: Richard Bennett, gift of Helen Johnston)

4. Avatars of Bunyan and Babe

If we no longer worship the woods, we can celebrate the manly art of taming the forest beast. I love this picture for its pagan imagery. It was shot during Aberdeen and Hoquiam's celebration of Washington state's golden jubilee in 1939. Wherever there are (or were) forests in North America, there are giant statues and figures of the mythical Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue ox. They are shown here amid the bedlam as effigies, humorously reminiscent of the puppets used by environmental activists at the WTO demonstrations in Seattle in 1999. Only here they are the demigods of a horned horde of timber-town vikings – the Odorous Order of Blue Bulls – who in essence are celebrating their role in shaping the land as avatars of Bunyan and Babe. (Photo: Bliss Jones, Jones Historic Photo Collection, Anderson & Middleton)

5. Tasty salmon

Some Northwest native tribes believed that by putting the bones of salmon back in the rivers, they were reseeding the next crop of returning fish. Even with fish in abundance, longtime experience showed native peoples that you couldn't always take the miracle of the salmon's return for granted. Local nature worship still includes these kinds of notions, expressed by the people who interact with the resource, like fishermen. The exhibit contains a number of images of salmon and man by photographer Natalie Fobes, but I especially like this one taken in Alaska in the early 1990s. It shows fisherman Pete Blackwell kissing the first caught salmon of the season. Superstition holds that kissing the fish and throwing it back will bring good luck and good fishing during the season. Maybe so, but let's hope there are more reliable conservation and restoration strategies in place. (Photo: Natalie Fobes)