ANNE WHISTON SPIRN is an author, landscape architect, photographer, and teacher. Her books include the award-winning Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field (2008), The  Language of Landscape (1998), The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (1984), and The Eye Is a Door: Photography and the Art of Visual Thinking (forthcoming). Spirn is professor of landscape architecture and planning at MIT. Previously, she taught at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she chaired the Department of Landscape Architecture. Spirn directs The West Philadelphia Landscape Project (www.wplp.net), which has integrated teaching, research, and community service since 1987; she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a book-in-progress on that work. In 2001, she was awarded Japan’s International Cosmos Prize for “contributions to the harmonious coexistence of nature and humankind” in recognition of her life’s work. For more information, see www.annewhistonspirn.com.