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Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold
Usage Conditions Apply
Artist
Thomas Coleman
Printer
Mark Gulezian
Sitter
Aldo Leopold, 11 Jan 1887 - 21 Apr 1948
Date
1939 (printed 2008)
Type
Photograph
Medium
Inkjet print
Dimensions
Image: 34.6 x 24.6 cm (13 5/8 x 9 11/16")
Sheet: 36.3 x 27.3 cm (14 5/16 x 10 3/4")
Topic
Costume\Headgear\Hat
Costume\Dress Accessory\Eyeglasses
Equipment\Smoking Implements\Pipe
Aldo Leopold: Male
Aldo Leopold: Literature\Writer
Aldo Leopold: Science and Technology\Scientist
Aldo Leopold: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Environmentalist
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Aldo Leopold Foundation
Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
Object number
NPG.2008.56
Exhibition Label
Aldo Leopold began contemplating an ecological approach to conservation in the 1920s. It differed from more utilitarian perspectives advanced by his forestry mentor Gifford Pinchot, who emphasized sustainable resource use. Leopold began his career with the U.S. Forest Service working in national forests in the American Southwest (1909–28). In 1924, he urged the establishment of the world’s first designated wilderness area, Gila Wilderness, within New Mexico’s Gila National Forest.
Leopold is best remembered for A Sand County Almanac (1949), a posthumous essay collection in which he describes his influential “land ethic,” a philosophical basis for mid-twentieth-century environmentalism. “Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient,” Leopold argued. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Aldo Leopold empezó a contemplar un enfoque ecológico de la conservación en la década de 1920. Este difería de la visión más utilitaria promovida por su mentor de silvicultura, Gifford Pinchot, quien enfatizaba el uso sostenible de los recursos. Leopold comenzó su carrera con el Servicio Forestal de EE.UU. en los bosques nacionales del suroeste del país (1909–28). En 1924 instó a la creación de la primera zona designada “área salvaje” en el mundo, Gila Wilderness, en el Bosque Nacional Gila de Nuevo México.
Leopold es muy recordado por Almanaque de Sand County (1949), una colección póstuma de ensayos que describen su influyente “ética de la tierra”, una de las bases filosóficas del ambientalismo de mediados del siglo XX. “Examine cada cuestión en términos de lo que es correcto ética y estéticamente, así como apropiado económicamente”, proponía. “Lo correcto es aquello que tiende a preservar la integridad, estabilidad y belleza de la comunidad biótica. Lo incorrecto tiende a hacer lo contrario”.
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Exhibition
Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism
On View
NPG, North Gallery 220