Significant Detail
“Visual thinking is an art of patternseeking, of culling the significant from a
welter of the irrelevant or peripheral.
Significant details and their
relationships expose a larger pattern.
Anomalies—things out of place or from
another time, a break in pattern—point
to a hidden order or a meaning
overlooked. Photographers seek
significant detail as metaphor to stand
for a larger whole, to hint at the deeper
meaning beneath the surface, to tell a
story.”
Anne Whiston Spirn
Glen Loy, Scotland. September 1978
Significant Details
An old stone wall: A reminder of the
Highlanders who were evicted from this
land in order to make way for sheep
pastures providing wool for English
textile mills.
Newly planted seedlings: These will
grow to create a future forest and signal
the continued human impact on this land.
El Camino de Santiago. Basque Country, Spain. May
2011
Significant Details
Weathered limestone: Over thousands
of years, water has exposed this jagged
stone in the Basque mountains of Spain.
Nature has shaped and molded this area
into a bowl-shaped meadow.
Hand-cut stones: The Romans cut and
placed these chunks of limestone to
create an elevated road. The stones have
been worn smooth by the passage of
feet and hooves over hundreds of years.
A sinkhole: This is the natural feature
that leads into the San Adrian Tunnel, a
passage through the mountains that was
formed by the slow dissolving action of
water.
Uluru. Central Desert. Australia. June 1988.
Significant Details
Black streaks: This discoloration of the
red rock indicates the presence of
organisms such as microbes, algae, and
lichen, and marks the channel where
waterfalls stream down during rare
desert rains.
Green plants: Green, the color of
chlorophyll, signals the presence of water
at the base of Uluru, the large sandstone
rock formation that rises above UluruKata Tjuta National Park in central
Australia.
Deep red: This color indicates the
presence of iron oxides in the rock. Iron
is metallic grey in its elemental form but
becomes rust-colored when it combines
with oxygen through the process of
oxidation.
High Plains, Colorado. March 1989.
Significant Details
A clump of trees: On the high plains,
a clump of trees like this is the
indication of a homestead. In this
region, trees only grow in lines along
waterbeds or in clumps around homes
where people plant and care for them.
Distinct shadows: The direct
sunlight creates crisp, defined
shadows on the short-grass prairie.
Trees are planted around homes to
provide some shaded relief from
the harsh glare and to break the
fierce wind.
Skaftafellsjökull (Vatnajökull Glacier). Iceland. May
2008.
Significant Details
A kettle hole: This hole marks
the spot where a piece of ice,
broken off from a receding
glacier, melted into the earth.
The concentric rings of coloration
display the passage of time as
the pool of ice and water slowly
disappeared.
The receding glacier: The toe of
the glacier is visible in the
distance—its melting is an
indication of a warming climate.
Green plants: Within the sand
and gravel left by the receding
glacier, new life is taking hold.
Parc de Sceaux. Paris, France. May 1993.
Significant Details
A cone-shaped yew: This yew, a type of
shrub, has been carefully clipped into a
conical shape. It is one detail that points
to the larger regimented geometry of
French gardens like this from the
seventeenth century.
A distant grove: Freely growing
trees seem to push against the
carefully maintained order of the
clipped row of yews in front of
them.
A white statue: This sculpture of the
human figure seems to point to the
tension between the gardener’s
attempted sculpting and mastery of
nature and the ways that natural
processes continually resist that
control.
Södra Sandby, Sweden. June 2003.
Significant Details
Multi-colored boulders: The granite
stones that form the walls of this barn in
southern Sweden were transported
hundreds of miles by a glacier long
ago—the different colors and textures
make it possible to identify the part of
northern Sweden or Norway where they
each originated.
Red and black: These are among the
primary colors of the Swedish
countryside. The pigments are produced
by roasting waste product from the
copper mine near the city of Falun.
Historically, this mine was the primary
source of Europe’s copper roofing and
Sweden’s most profitable resource.
Cinder, Ring of Fire. Mount Aso, Japan. October 2002.
Significant Details
A volcanic bomb: This porous rock
was ejected from the mouth of Mount
Aso, the largest active volcano in
Japan. It was formed when magma
(liquid rock) and water combined
beneath the surface of the earth.
Black sand: The black sand found near
volcanoes is made up of tiny
fragments of lava. Lava quickly
shatters into sand as it comes into
contact with water—when it flows into
an ocean it can produce a new black
sand beach practically overnight.
Marnas. Södra Sandby, Sweden. November 2008.
Significant Details
Pruned trees: This garden’s
designer/owner Sven-Ingvar Andersson
was inspired by the trees in Meindert
Hobbema’s painting of 1689, The
Avenue at Middelharnis (London,
National Gallery).
The briar rose: Andersson designed
Marnas as a laboratory to explore a
framework that accommodates
change. He does not overplan,
leaving room for the unexpected—
like this briar rose that pokes out of
the hedge. The garden becomes a
metaphor for planning human
settlements.