Photography and The Gothic

The photographs taken by Terry Evans in the collection “Heartland” show a range of perspectives of the Midwest prairie. “Heartland” displays characteristics of the traditional Gothic through the combination of wide landscapes and dilapidated factories. Photos from three collections portray the transition of the untouched landscape to an overgrown and gothic scene.

The first photos of the gothic transition come from the “Prairie Images of Ground and Sky” collection. The collection shows untouched nature that gives a feeling of the sublime. It shows wide green expanses, bathed in warm light, that shows a raw beauty and goodness created by nature. This feeling of the sublime is a major aspect of the gothic due to its ability to provide contrast with the often dark plots. This aspect also gives the reader a sense of wonderment that causes a confrontation and reevaluation about the power of nature versus the characters and other elements of the novel. The photos from “Prairie Images of Ground and Sky” collection instill the sublime in the viewer but lack the evil component often in gothic novels because the landscapes are pristine. These open expanses represent the unknown, but not in a traditional gothic manner that would cause worry for the possibility of something treacherous hidden in the landscape. Instead, they are lacking of any sign of human activity and utilize soft lighting associated with virtue and goodness. This collection shows the distant and sublime before contact with other gothic themes that cause a darker scene to unfold.

In many novels, such as The Turn of the Screw and The Mysteries of Udolpho, the role of the sublime is not to induce a power of nature in a familiar way but to use nature as an agent or conduit o...

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...and suspicion of forgotten power tied to the ruin.

The collections of photographs tom Terry Evan’s “Heartland” visualize core gothic elements through a progression of themes. Starting with the sublime amazes the viewer which then is quickly corrupted with suspicion by the fear of isolation created by sparse, but noticeable human activity. The sublime then is perceived as something that may be used as a cloak of an evil rather than the purity of nature. The last perspective shows the loss of power and presentation of remnants that show what one was. The ruins add more mystery of what happened to this specific location in addition to the suspicion and isolation of the landscape previously provided. Through the series of photographs, “Heartland” shows a development of the integrity of nature into a more complex history and mystery that exhibits primary gothic elements.