WPA-Style Posters Imagine a Bleak Future for US National Parks

[demmiblue]

Artist Hannah Rothstein created a series of images in the style of vintage posters for US National Parks that imagines what they will look like if we don’t act against climate change.

Source: Hyperallergic

In 1938, the National Park Service launched a poster program to increase visits to America’s outdoor sites, from Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon. It hired artists from the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project — created under the New Deal — who produced 14 stylized designs before the program ended a few years later at the onset of World War II.

Capturing scenes of nature in all its wonder, from the monumental eruption of a geyser to textured logs of Petrified Forest, the silk-screened works were serene and idyllic. But these protected regions are now under threat, as a new series of WPA-inspired posters by artist Hannah Rothstein starkly reminds us. Set in the year 2050, her illustrations present our future parks as they may appear if we don’t act against climate change. Rather than the nature walks, field trips, and campfire programs advertised in the original WPA posters, among the delights we may look forward to are disappearing geysers, warming rivers, dying trout, and starving grizzlies.

Such are the sunny outlooks Rothstein has listed in her update of a Yellowstone National Park poster, which is one of two original WPA works she has edited. Five other depressing creations, which reimagine a charred Redwood forest (“Once home to world’s tallest trees”) and an arid Denali/Mount McKinley (“Visit melted permafrost, snowless peaks, & vanished tundra”), are dystopian visions of contemporary posters designed by Ranger Doug’s Enterprises, a company launched by historian and former national park ranger Doug Leen, the self-styled “Ranger of the Lost Art.” Leen began his business by diligently tracking down the original posters, which are dispersed among the Library of Congress’s archives and private collections, and painstakingly restoring them as derivative art — which then led to many national parks requesting that he create posters for them in a similar, WPA-inspired style.

Rothstein’s series (which has received Ranger Doug’s full blessing) arrives amid increasing worry over President Trump’s proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is now run by climate-change denier and IRL Satan Scott Pruitt. While terrifying and pessimistic (although, in this vision of 2050, at least the Park service still exists), her images are especially resonant, illuminating how our actions today — or lack thereof — can have dramatic impact on iconic and irreplaceable landscapes.

More: https://hyperallergic.com/371693/wpa-style-posters-imagine-a-bleak-future-for-us-national-parks/

[BumRushDaShow]

1. Pretty cool

and sad.

[lpbk2713]

2. Future national parks will have visitor centers with dioramas.

Showing how it used to be when flora and fauna abounded.