John Brinckerhoff "Brinck"[1] Jackson (September 25, 1909 – August 29, 1996) was a writer, publisher, instructor, and sketch artist in landscape design.
In 1923, at age 14, he was enrolled at the elite Institut Le Rosey in Rolle, Switzerland, where he became fluent in both French and German.
He savored an environment of mountains, meadows, and forests, but also absorbed the human face of the Swiss cities and cantons.
He attended Eaglebrook School, Choate, and Deerfield Academy in New England and spent summers on his uncle's farm in New Mexico.
Jackson gained an insight into architecture and planning from the social criticism of Lewis Mumford and Oswald Spengler's revelation in Decline of the West that "landscapes reflected the culture of the people that were living there.
He was a part of the Ritchie Boys and his language skills were used to serve the United States Army in understanding issues on the European front.
But Jackson's work, which dominated the first five issues of the magazine, was grounded in what he would later call the vernacular: an interest in the commonplace or everyday landscape.
In an opening essay, The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, Jackson states that "It is from the air that the true relationship between the natural and the human landscape is first clearly revealed.
His writings allowed him to raise questions and present controversial statements especially in reference to humans and their role in shaping the landscape.
"[8] As a scholar, historian and writer, John B. Jackson greatly influenced the development and trajectory of contemporary cultural landscape studies in America.
The New Deal writers and painters explored a strong regionalist theme, which was also connected to the architectural and urban criticism of Lewis Mumford.
The concern for environmental degradation caused by human activities was another American theme, spurred particularly by the Vermont writer George Perkins Marsh.
Wilson and Groth write that German cultural landscape studies were primarily based on scientific categorizations of regions and settlements, with strong cross-disciplinary ties to geology and economic analysis.
"By World War II," the editors remark, "each French region had its own well-written guidebooks to local physical and social landscapes" (4).
During the height of his career, Jackson lived just southwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, near an historic property known as El Rancho de las Golondrinas (The Ranch of the Swallows).