VOA常速英语:Renowned Photographer Captures America’s National Treasures in Stunning Images(翻译)

Carol Highsmith has been called America’s photographer. She’s been travelling the U.S. for more than 3 decades, taking pictures of the people and places that make America unique.

“When I go out across America, what do I photograph? Everything!Someone said to me, ‘Well, why would you photograph the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance. Everybody’s taking photographs of it.’Yes, there will be images of the Golden Gate Bridge that may exist 500 years from now,but the ones that we know will exist in high resolution will be mine at the Library of Congress.”

Highsmith is collaborating with the Library of Congress in Washington, the largest library in the world, to capture as many images as she can.

“It’s important that we have our beautiful things tucked away at a place that knows all about preservation.”

Her vast collection all copyright free, includes many memorable images of America’s National Parks.

I’ve been to most of them, and it’s everything from the spectacular and vast grand canyon to, winter time scenes of Yellow Stone.

At Yellow Stone, America’s first national park, she was mesmerized by the bison.

I would say, really in all the wildlife images I’ve taken and I’ve taken a lot, the bison are the best.In a sense that they look like they come from a hundred thousand years ago. Looking at this vast gorgeous landscape of the Yellow Stone, and the winter and the fall and the spring,and you are seeing the bison’s babies, seeing all and all of the calves, you just think about‘will this always be’?

Highsmith shoots at all hours and every weather condition, and has even had to face her fear of flying.

"So I finally get to Alaska and I’m going to Denali, and I hire a plane to take me up there and all the way there I’m thinking ‘How can I get out of this?’I just say, ‘You must do it.’ So I did it!But to photograph it, and then to photograph Ruth Glacier, which is huge,and to know that maybe someday it’ll be gone — it was just an experience and a half!”

It is that fear of iconic American landscapes and landmarks one day disappearing that motivates her.

“They say Yellow Stone, it could just blow up! When the bisons being there in the Yellow Stone, that the Washington Monument,we had an earthquake here in Washington D.C， that whole thing could just have collapsed.So I’m just there to capture that as it looks right now.”

Some of her experiences have been especially meaningful.“So I’m at Ford’s Theatre, 150 years after Lincoln died, right there. And there are re-enactors,and there was this man who held a candle and that’s how his face was lit.And I thought, ‘Whoa, you could almost feel like what it must have felt like to be there that night,’I also photographed, for instance, the coat that Lincoln wore the night he died, with his bloodstains on it.So to be close to these artifacts — it’s just incredible.”

Carol Highsmith will be remembered not only just for her work, but for the singular active generousity that has defined her career.

I’m just glad to be there, I’m glad to have this as my job.