... I found the article tedious and virtually impossible to finish... I think it also tries too hard with overly constructed sentences and "concepts"...
... Josh's writing is tortured and very pretentious...
Perhaps. But only if one is accustomed to reading and comprehension skills of a 5th grader or below. Or if someone finds that landscape photography is "just another tree, another rock (ARAT)," then describing it in anything above 5th grade might certainly feel "tortured." Sorry if I offended any 5th graders.
Those who think that landscape photography is just about snapping what's already there, and requires mostly a bladder fortitude, finding anything else in it (landscape) would certainly seem like an intellectual overkill.
I find Josh' intro text and questions well written, in terms of meaning and concept, concise, intellectual (gasp!), and addressing all the major points about landscape photography that the ARAT crowd is missing.
Josh is rightly using the following words and concepts that elevate landscape photography above a snap: primordial force, elemental and mythic, archetypal, pre-civilization tethers, collective psyche, etc. Every one of those words carries a weight that explains why landscape photography is the most popular genre - it hits our primordial links to nature, elements, survival, fear.
Me thinks.