The Importance of Discerning Gazes

Why Dramatic Views Matter

I once had a friend who commented on my love for “gazes,” meaning my penchant for championing dramatic views and vantage points for reflection.

She was an artist, and we collaborated for a few years, often discussing how we understand places from memories of other places that, at first, seem to look the same.

Sometimes, our subjects were urban, but most often, we examined intersections of built areas with nature. It began in Scotland, then Paris, and included visiting the treetop walkway at London’s Kew Gardens.

I would try to explain my fascination with gazes. I used mindfulness analogies. I said that gazes should occur from strategic perches, where we look out over great distances, and reflect-not just about surrounding geographies-but also about where each of us might be headed over time.

Not too far from Kew Gardens today, I returned to my most favorite perch, the View from Richmond Hill. Long the inspiration of poets and artists, it is particularly known from J.M.W. Turner’s “ England: Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent’s Birthday” in the Tate Gallery. The view was protected by an Act of Parliament in 1902.

I have hundreds of variations of this view in my photo archive.

Prior to the pandemic I would bring visitors here regularly. During the pandemic, I would come to watch people on their lockdown walks, caught up in their own gazes-seeking their particular understandings of the relationship between the Thames and its surroundings-and themselves.

Today I watched some more. It was good to see that many still have their favorite place to gaze.

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Originally published at https://chuckwolfe.substack.com.