The urban environment perforce renders us somewhat autistic. We avoid eye contact in crowds for fear of making contact with a madman or a criminal. Working in windowless rooms, where temperature, light, and air are controlled by powers beyond our reach, we become habituated to stoic resignation. Survival increasingly depends on suppressing stimuli. But being protected from over-stimulation has as its price an ever-increasing incapacity for emotional response to perception-a kind of living death.

Not submitting to such death entails facing these stimuli and making sense of them, even though they may be disconcerting or repellent. As experience is translated in imagery, the monstrous becomes incomprehensible. For example, no plants can grow on soil poisoned by industrial waste, yet the huge cylindrical bodies of chemical tanks, exposed to wind and weather, take on formal dignity that can stand up against the beauty of the wilderness they have invaded.