Visual Analysis Of Wilderness

The idea of wilderness has been severely redefined throughout history. It has transformed from a genuine piece of nature that was not thought of to be sacred, to a museum-like section of land that needs to constantly stress the importance of conservation and protection. It is not a casual place anymore, but rather something that is not necessarily guaranteed and cannot be taken for granted. However, throughout all of the change, there is one aspect of wilderness that has remained intact. Wilderness serves as a place for people to escape; It is a getaway that allows humans to avoid reality and all the troubles that come with it. It is a setting for people to gain stability. In the analyzed image, it features children playing in the beach during …show more content…
It captures children scattered amongst the beach enjoying their summer vacation post-Hurricane Sandy. The long shot at an eye-level angle provides a good depiction of the scene. Straightaway, the girl on the chair grabs the attention of the audience, as she is standing in the center of the image at the highest point. She is looking out to the ocean, absorbing all that it has to offer, and appears to be having a moment for herself. Though this girl is surrounded by others, it appears as if she is in her own world. Appreciating the view and allowing it to assist an escape from the real world, is something that nature allows society to do. This adolescent girl has just experienced a lot of trauma. Hurricane Sandy has potentially had a huge, negative impact on her life. Nature provides people an aesthetic appeal that makes them look for more than a second at a time, being able to forget about outside issues. In the far background, there is another chair, however this one is isolated with nobody on it. An empty chair represents loss or sorrow, but because of its far distance, it depicts that it is in the past. Across from the empty chair is an American flag blowing in the wind. It is the spark of color that stands out amongst the rest of the picture which has a brown undertone. It represents that even after catastrophes such as natural disasters, society must stand proud and remain …show more content…
However, not all programs were able to prove the claim correctly. In the journal article, Dissecting the Wilderness Therapy Client: Examining Clinical Trends, Findings, and Patterns, the authors were disappointed to reveal that their clients had negative results. The authors examined the almost 1,000 clients that participated and explained the different diagnoses and newfound results. This program “incorporates a strong clinical emphasis [on] the wilderness setting that uses staff as a part of the treatment team instead of merely as outdoor guides” (Hoag, Massey, Roberts, 3). The use of wilderness is to provide a natural recovery. The staff is not there to provide information and historical facts about the environment, but rather encourage the use of the surroundings as a form of therapy. Overall, the wilderness therapy resulted in an increase of diagnoses rather than having them become minimized. Nevertheless, the authors claim that wilderness therapy is necessary to become resilient and lose the negative aspects in one’s life. Although the results were contrasting, the authors state that the ideas and beliefs still remains intact. This lead to the experimenters “conduct[ing] a secondary analysis of records” (Hoag, Massey, Roberts, 4) as they truly believed wilderness is the prime