Why Look at Cabin Porn?

The rise of cabin porn—images of beautiful cabins in nature—as a visual genre reflects a growing international interest in cabins, shedworking, and rustic, exurban living off the grid, most of it romanticizing rural and low-tech lifestyles. On the surface, the digitally mediated and disembodied architecture of cabin porn seems to be a form of nostalgia, where the dream of the cabin becomes an arena for resolving an ambivalent relationship to technology and all the bothersome things of modern life. Delving deeper into the cabin porn phenomenon, however, can also reveal something about the mediated experience of nature through digital media.