ABSTRACT
The relationship between aesthetics and landscape is typically explored through the discourse of the Sublime. A complex theory with no specific definition, the Sublime is based on the work of a group of eighteenth-century writers and philosophers, who promoted a number of attributes as key triggers of Sublime experiences. This chapter suggests that, in response to fears of global warming and climate change, the twenty-first century witnessed a revival of Sublime aesthetics in the visual arts translated through representations of the natural environment. Furthermore, the images adopt "fear-inducing" aesthetics that is pictorially magnificent yet imbued with a human and personal dimension rather than operating from a technical base. Sublime imagery appears in the film Chasing Ice, which follows National Geographic photographer James Balog as he tries to capture the changes that are occurring in icebergs. The cinematography captures the landscape's pictorial beauty, which coexists with the preoccupation of destruction, producing images that seem to transcend the rhetoric of fear.
