Victoria Olsen

Ray Atkeson, Timberline Lodge, 1945Back from Portland, where it snowed, to Brooklyn, where it is snowing. As the snow comes down it is light and lovely. It rests gently on the ground and muffles the city streets. It is briefly magical -- until the traffic starts up again. In Portland it was treacherous from the start, as cars slid across streets in front of us, and wheels churned on hills. Ray Atkeson's 1945 photograph of Mount Hood reflects both of these qualities. The whiteness of the snow is soft and clean and inviting, but those looming trees hover like gargoyles over the scene. The shadows are long and the sky is darkening. Suddenly winter is the season of nightmarish fairytales, and the historic Timberline lodge, pictured here in the background, is an ominous gingerbread house. No surprise that it was used for the external shots of the lodge in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. This is a landscape at once alluring and terrifying.