How Landscape Photography Learned to Destroy What It Loves

Photography, profit, and the normalisation of damage

Landscape photography has not collapsed because of technology. It has collapsed because of behavior. Over the last decade, the role of the photographer has quietly shifted.From observer to promoter.From interpreter to amplifier.

Images are no longer made primarily to express, but to perform.And places were never designed to survive virality.

From authors to amplifiers

The rise of the photographer-influencer has profoundly altered the photographic ecosystem.

Today, images are rewarded for being:

• instantly recognisable

• instantly consumable

• instantly shareable

Success is measured in reach, not in resonance.

As a result, photography has become a system based on repetition:

• the same locations

• the same viewpoints

• the same compositions

• the same light

• the same edits

What once felt like discovery now feels like industrial production.

Photography stopped asking whyand started asking where.

Why I never mention locations

I have never avoided naming locations out of jealousy.I have never believed in the idea of “owning” a place. I avoid citing locations for a much simpler and deeper reason:my primary goal has always been to make people travel with their imagination, not with Google Maps.

I want the viewer to feel they are looking at:

• forgotten places

• remote lands

• spaces outside time

Not at overcrowded destinations visited by organised groups, tripods aligned like fence posts.

When a photograph is immediately recognisable, the dream collapses.When it requires interpretation, it invites presence.

Decontextualisation is not secrecy. It is an artistic choice.

Madeira — from silence to devastation

When I visited Madeira in 2018, the island still carried a rare quality: restraint.

There was space.There was silence.There was the feeling of being inside a place, not on display.

Even then, I felt uneasy.I knew that photography — including my own — was part of a system that would eventually turn that quiet into noise.

Today, that fear has become reality.

Madeira has been heavily impacted by tourism accelerated by social media exposure. Seeing protective fences built around ancient trees broke something inside me.

If before I was convinced that locations should not be named, now I am one thousand percent certain.

When nature needs fences to protect itself from photographers, something has already gone terribly wrong.

Normalising damage: Iceland and the Dolomites

I have witnessed the same phenomenon in Iceland and in the Dolomites.

Places that were once fragile but accessible are now:

• restricted

• fenced

• regulated

• partially off-limits

Not because nature suddenly became weaker.But because human behaviour became worse.

This is not tourism. It is bad manners on an industrial scale.

A phenomenon so poorly managed that it actively prevents people from experiencing beauty at all.

Decontextualisation as resistance

In this context, removing geographic references is not romanticism. It is resistance.

It is an attempt to restore:

• mystery

• ambiguity

• silence

An image does not need to tell you where it was taken. It needs to tell you how it felt.

If a photograph can be consumed without slowing down, without thinking, without asking questions, it has already failed.

Lofoten Islands — saturation, not wonder

I was there to guide a workshop, and the experience was — frankly — terrible.

Not because of the landscape.But because photography had already exhausted it.

Everywhere I went, I saw:

• the same spots

• the same compositions

• the same expectations

It felt like walking inside an archive of images already made.

That trip marked a breaking point for me.

I made a conscious decision: I never published a single image from Lofoten.

Not as a statement. As an act of coherence.

Adding one more cliché to an already saturated visual space felt dishonest.

Competitions, profit, and the institutionalisation of cliché

There is another uncomfortable truth that must be addressed.

Many photographic competitions — especially those primarily driven by profit rather than artistic research — have played a decisive role in reinforcing this system.

Year after year, they reward the same images:

• from the same overexploited locations

• framed from the same iconic viewpoints

• built on the same visual formulas

The podium rarely changes. Sometimes, neither do the names.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a business model. Competitions built on submission fees and visibility need recognisable images. They reward familiarity, not risk.

Some of the most celebrated photographers today are not explorers of vision, but representatives of photography as a commercial product.

Is this wrong? No.

Is it criticisable? Absolutely.

Because when repetition is rewarded, art stops evolving.

The illusion of access and the failure of management

This situation is not inevitable. It is the result of choices.

Places could be protected intelligently:

• by limiting access

• by educating visitors

• by discouraging viral exploitation

• by shifting focus away from iconic viewpoints

Instead, we rely on fences, bans and emergency measures.

We treat symptoms, never causes.

And the cause is simple:we turned places into products and photographers into marketers.

Choosing absence over noise

This is not a manifesto against travel. Nor against landscape photography.

It is a refusal of visual pollution.Of repetition without thought. Of beauty reduced to content.

Sometimes, the most ethical image is the one you decide not to share.

And sometimes, protecting a place starts by refusing to turn it into a destination.

Vision & Philosophy

This article opens a series of reflections on authorship, responsibility and meaning in contemporary visual culture.

Not solutions. But questions we can no longer avoid.