Average customer rating:
- Not what I thought
- The finest Grand Canyon book at the lowest price....
- off the charts superb stunning startling good heavens
- Review by Jennifer Owings Dewey, author/illustrator
- A superb choice as a Memorial Fund acquisition for any library system
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Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography
Stephen Trimble
Manufacturer: Northland Publishing
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The Grand: The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon a Photo Journey
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Photographer's Guide to the Grand Canyon and Northern Arizona
ASIN: 0873588940 |
Book Description
One of the most photographed subjects on earth, Grand Canyon continues to inspire awe, admiration, and frustration for those who attempt to capture its majesty with a camera. Reaching back 125 years into the photographic record of the Canyon, this book artfully explores the experiences of the earliest photographers and today's most exceptional artists.
Accomplished writer and Ansel Adams Award-winning photographer Stephen Trimble deftly navigates the stories of the Canyon's photographic history and takes us down the river and along the rim with the next generation of photographers and their photographs. Also included are twenty-one essays by the finest contemporary photographers recounting their experiences at Grand Canyon, along with fascinating details of changing equipment and a timeline of important moments in the Canyon's photographic record.
Customer Reviews:
Not what I thought.......2007-09-13
I bought this as a present for my wife. We had just returned from a trip that included a visit to the Grand Canyon, and I wanted to get her a memento of the visit. This book sounded good, but was not the one that included the beautiful vistas that we wanted. There are some photos too dark to really discern why they are included. There are some photos of a boat on the bank of the river. That could be from anywhere.
Although I suppose others may find it interesting, we didn't want a book of prose, we just wanted amazing photos. This was not that book.
The finest Grand Canyon book at the lowest price...........2007-02-15
This book is so awesome, and of such high quality, that its Amazon price seems surreal...I have two copies and am ordering a third, for posterity or whatever.
Intensely beautiful photographic prints, at the very leading edge of Canyon photos....almost beyond description!
If you buy one copy of this book, you'll then want another for a gift, and another for your own collection.....etc.
off the charts superb stunning startling good heavens.......2006-11-03
Yes, you would expect truly astounding photography here, and you get exactly that, in lots of different flavors too, but the stories are deft and revealing -- far more than in a book of photos alone of a place that you couldn't take a bad photo if you tried. Trimble himself is a master craftsman with the camera, but his service here is to gather some really remarkable work and voices into a tome that anyone who has gaped and prayed there will want to paw through before you get major brownie points for giving it to someone else. Terrific work.
Review by Jennifer Owings Dewey, author/illustrator.......2006-09-28
Lasting Light is a treasure, a compilation of photographs taken of the Crand Ganyon over a broad stretch of time. The viewer/reader may gain a sense of history, passing from the old to the new. The book is an experience in images of the vast wonder of the Canyon and the smallest, most discreet detail. Because the text is direct and not-technical, anyone interested in what is grand and lit by extraordinary light, the Grand Canyon itself, will find this work a delight.
A superb choice as a Memorial Fund acquisition for any library system.......2006-07-10
Lasting Light: 125 Years Of Grand Canyon Photography by award-winning author and photographer Stephen Trimble is a visual celebration and documentation of the beauty and grandeur of one of the most photographed subjects on earth -- the Grand Canyon. Comprised of the best of 125 years of great photographs beginning with the pioneering glass plate negatives of the 19th century to the digital images of the 21st century, Lasting Light produces spectacular visuals enhanced with an accompanying text of fascinating details regarding the advances of photography, stories of various individual photographers, and the relationship between the photographers and the unique American icon that is the Grand Canyon. As a coffetable art book, Lasting Light is a simply wonderful contribution to any personal, academic, or community library photography reference collection and would make a superb choice as a Memorial Fund acquisition for any library system.
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Birds of Arizona
Allan Phillips ,
Joe Marshall , and
Gale Monson
Manufacturer: Univ of Arizona Pr
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ASIN: 0816500126 |
Book Description
Glen Canyon, now Lake Powell, is rediscovered through wonderful color images by Eliott Porter.
Customer Reviews:
Death of a Canyon.......2007-06-10
This not a book about photography and should not be purchased just for the "pictures". It is literally a memorial to the death of Glen Canyon. It is a reminder of our obligation to stay informed.
Glen Canyon Dam should never have been built and would never be built today. The American people would never stand for it. Ironically and sadly, it was the loss of Glen Canyon that inspired many to say, "Never again." When the Bureau of Reclamation attempted to follow Glen Canyon Dam with a series of dams down stream in the Grand Canyon, the agency met a solid wall of opposition. In ways, the river still flows free through the Grand Canyon because of the sacrifice that was made with Glen Canyon.
Even former staunch proponents of Glen Canyon Dam lived to regret their support. As late as 1974, Senator Barry Goldwater still felt the dam was an improvement over the untamed river. But by the mid-80s, he felt otherwise. In one interview, in fact, Goldwater lamented that if he could change just one Senate vote he'd cast in 30 years, it would have been his vote to approve construction of Glen Canyon Dam.
Sad.
Historically valuable, photographically bland.......2005-09-30
"The Place No One Knew" is the famous book that comes up anytime someone mentions the submersion of Glen Canyon. It was the Sierra Club's--and the environmental movement in general's--first major statement on the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, the flooding of Glen Canyon, and the filling of Lake Powell.
The book is a companion, or I should say the polar opposite, of "Lake Powell: Jewel of the Colorado," a book by Floyd Dominy, then Commisioner of the dam-building Bureau of Reclamation.
Both books are basically propaganda, though for seperate sides of the same issue; both feature scenic photos of a place, praising text, and pertinent quotes.
Glen Canyon was referred as to "the place no one knew" because its lack of national park status (and protection) was a major factor in its being inundated by the trapped water of the Colorado River. In actuality, a lot of people knew it--just not many with the Sierra Club. In fact, more people rafted through Glen Canyon a year than did through the Grand Canyon. C. Gregory Crampton wrote ten books about Glen Canyon before its demise, and liked to joke that THIS book should have been called "The Place the Sierra Club Didn't Know."
Which would have been more correct.
All that said, this book is a valuable historical document--for its role in the Glen Canyon controversy, and for its role in this century's environmental movement.
But it's not that good of a book. The photos are below average: many have a grainy, low quality-feel to them, and most of them are of very small things, and fail to give the true scope and grandeur of what Glen Canyon was. They are not Eliot Porter's best work, and some of the photos aren't even of Glen Canyon, but of other red rock from other places in Utah. (That's true, believe it or not, and it's well-documented.)
The quotes that accompany the photos are all right, but they're not amazing, they won't make you jump up.
A far, far better book featuring photos of Glen Canyon is Eleanor Inskip's "The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell." Check it out.
And a far, far better collection of Eiliot Porter's is "Eliot Porter's Southwest." It's full of gorgeous black and white images from all over the Interior West.
A visual rhapsody.......2003-06-06
I got a copy of Eliot Porter's Glen Canyon book after reading Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire," a chapter of which is devoted to a downriver rafting trip along this stretch of the Colorado River just before the dam was built. While Abbey's descriptions are vivid, I wanted to see with my own eyes what he was describing. And Porter's camera is the closest you can get to doing that today.
His pictures are, of course, not the real thing, but they are about as breathtaking as photography can be. The colors, textures, reflections, and the play of light and shadow are wonderful, and each photograph is distinctly different. His own description of the canyon's display of color and light in the introductory essay "The Living Canyon" give an instructive insight into the eye of the photographer. His awareness of what he is looking at and his ways of choosing to look help the reader to see even more in the 80 photographs that follow.
While some of the photographs capture the monumental scale of the canyon walls and formations, many focus on the myriad surfaces that are revealed to the eye: erosion patterns, lichen, rippling water flow, the dark streaking mineral stains extending from seeps, the rough texture of weathered sandstone in glancing sunlight, smooth river stones, the layered stripes of exposed sediment, the trickling spread of water falling from overhead springs, the hanging tapestry coloration of the walls, whorled and striated rock, dry sand. There are also photographs of plants: moonflower, maidenhair fern, willow, tamarisk, redbud, columbine, cane. Above all, there is the rich array of colors, capturing a great variety of moods and attitudes.
Porter was recognized for his photography of birds, and while there are no birds visible in these photographs, his introductory essay makes mention of them, and when looked at with that awareness, many of the pictures also seem to capture a sense of "air space" for flight. Before turning to photography, Porter was a Harvard professor of biochemistry and bacteriology, and it's interesting to see the somewhat dispassionate eye of the scientist in the way he uses the camera. While the story of Glen Canyon may induce sorrow or anger, the photographs are strong for their lack of sentimentality.
The pictures also excite a curiosity about the geology of the river, and the book concludes with a short essay describing how the canyon walls reveal the geological ages that have gone into forming this part of the earth, going back millions of years. The book also includes a catalog of all the plants and animals that inhabited Glen Canyon before its inundation. Altogether, with its quotes from other writers, including Loren Eiseley, Joseph Wood Krutch, Wallace Stegner, and members of John Wesley Powell's expedition in the 19th century, this book is a fitting record of a great lost national treasure.
A heartbreakingly beautiful book.......2002-11-13
These photographs are just about all that is left of Glen Canyon. After the Sierra Club and other environmentalists had lost the battle to prevent the Glen Canyon River Dam from being built, Eliot Porter took this extraordinary series of photographs to memorialize the gorgeous area that has been lost forever. Few people at the time knew much about the Canyon. It was too remote, too difficult to get to. Although it was one of the areas that John Wesley Powell found most beautiful in his first expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers, no access roads or paths were ever built to make it possible for many people to view the areas firsthand. As a result, very few people knew precisely what we were about to lose.
The tragedy is that these areas are really, truly are gone. Even if the Glen Canyon River Dam were magically removed, many of the areas viewed in these gorgeous photographs have already been silted up. The Green and Colorado Rivers carry extreme quantities of minerals, and when the dam stops the flow to form a reservoir, they tend to drop to the bottom. All dams have a limited life. They don't last for as long as one might imagine. Basically, they create a new landmass behind them over the course of a century or so. Many of the spots photographed in these pictures are now solid earth.
One would hope that such beautiful photographs as these, photos that create tremendous longing for what we have already lost, would make us more concerned to preserve what is left. But with the current presidency even today as I write this review opening the national parks to snowmobiles and with people speculating that there will be new attempts to open arctic areas in Alaska to oil exploration, we can't assume that in the least. These photographs may end up being emblematic of all endangered areas, of the ongoing fragility of all of nature.
Oversized Paperback Rivals Original Sierra Club Hardback.......2000-08-13
I was expecting a reprint similar to the small-sized Ballantine issue of the late 1960s. I was surprised to receive a book almost as large as the original Sierra Club hardback! The color in several of the photographs is even better than in the original (and difficult to find/very expensive) book, thanks in part to the cooperation of the museum which received Porter's works as a bequest.
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Eliot Porter: The Grand Canyon
Manufacturer: Te Neues Publishing Company
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ASIN: 3791312332 |
Book Description
The work of two great American landscape photographers presented together for the first time—revealing an artistic progression from one generation to the next
· 88 color and duotone reproductions of works from a major exhibition organized by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas
· Both photographers are celebrated for creating art for environmental activism
· Includes an introductory essay by John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Carter, and closing remarks by Robert Glenn Ketchum
· Includes chronologies of both artists along with lists of their publications and major exhibitions
Eliot Porter (1901-1999) was the first established artist-photographer to commit to exploring the beauty and diversity of the natural world with color film. Widely exhibited, Porter set the standard for color landscape photography. But he was also a passionate ambassador for environmental causes: in 1962, the Sierra Club's publication of his book "In Wildness is the Preservation of the World" set him on a lifelong path. His artistic vision in service of environmental activism inspired generations of photographers, and Robert Glenn Ketchum counts himself among them.
Ketchum is recognized as one of the leading contemporary photographers of the American landscape. Like Porter, Ketchum creates portraits and publications of ecologically significant places. The images in Regarding the Land reveal how Ketchum has honored Porter's pioneering use of color and graphic composition, but moved beyond Porter's careful description of place. Ketchum presents landscapes as ideas that can be shaped, even defined, by the imagination. An essay by John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, illuminates the development of these two artists. Rohrbach reveals how Ketchum has expanded upon Porter's visual vocabulary, both with his photographs and with magnificently embroidered translations produced by China's renowned Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute.
Customer Reviews:
Stunning, simply stunning; splendid and challenging.......2006-12-14
First, I can review this book without even cracking its spine (though I have), as I have seen the Porter/Ketchum exhibit at the Amon Carter in Fort Worth, Texas. (I live in suburban Dallas.)
Eliot Porter was the country's first color nature photographer. This was when photographers such as Ansel Adams were moving near their peak and color film shooting was considered askance, suitable only for things like fashion magazine slicks.
But Porter showed what could be done with color, including building on Adams' work at places like Glen Canyon to jump-start environmentalism into a new era.
He was a seminal influence on Glenn Ketchum, who then took his camera to places like the Cuyahoga River south of Cleveland, documenting efforts in the '60s and beyond to bring national parks and other preservation to scenic areas of the East that had already suffered human encroachment and alteration. Ketchum even went beyond that in spots, in some cases juxtaposing stereotypical "Rust Belt" industrial development with land still showing environmental quality.
Ketchum then went on to be a leader and pioneer in aerial nature photography. His Arctic and Antarctic shots are simply incredible.
His and Porter's photos are displayed in sizes as large as six feet wide at the Carter exhibit; should this show move on the road and come to your area, you must go see it.
The essay in the book by John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter, is a definite must-read. (The Carter has one of America's best museum collections of photographs, and works much more with photographic exhibits than the typical art museum.) Rohrbach discusses how Ketchum has built on and moved beyond Porter, as good students of photography can readily determine. This includes working with China's renowned Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute, which has created some difficult and highly creative tapestry reproductions of some of his scenes. (About 8-10 of these tapestries, ranging from display piece size to triptych room screens, are also on display as part of the exhibit.
Environmentalists will love to see what both photographers were trying to say about different aspects of preservation and how they were "speaking." Nature photographers will gain new ideas for lighting and perspective angles.
Contrary to another reviewer here, neither photographer represents an "all or nothing" version of environmental activism, and in fact, the idea that there is such a thing, while not strictly untrue, is as much a caricature as reality.
Indeed, Ketchum's photography on the Cuyahoga River National Recreation Area, before it became a national park, and elsewhere in the northeast, puts the lie to the idea that environmentalists of his generation never included human artifacts or aftereffects in their artistic work, or that they thought the only true environmentalism was environmentalism that totally eradicated all human traces and touches. Ketchum does NOT present "simply preservation and destruction" as the only alternatives in photographs such as on the Cuyahoga "The Indian Point Atomic Power Plant," and others. Showing the ugliness of ugly development implies nothing as to whether or not Ketchum thought there was a "third way" of man-made artifacts being incorporated into environmental preservation.
And, the fact that this reviewer holds up discredited global-warming skeptic Bjorn Lomborg as an intellectual grounding point for a new environmental ethos should show just how much his comments are to be trusted.
A Retrospect of Environmental Activism Past.......2006-12-11
For most people, environmental photography starts and ends with Ansel Adams. His famous black and white prints of Yosemite and the High Sierra, and his advocacy for national parks and wilderness areas has made him a household name among conservationists and a perennial calendar favorite among the broader public. But color photographer Elliot Porter was nearly as influential, even if less popular. His work helped preserve much of the Glenn Canyon area. He also helped inspire Robert Ketchum whose work is the focus of this book.
Ketchum differed from Elliot in that he made color the central focus of his study. For Elliot, color was but a medium, whereas for Ketchum it was the main element of his work. But like Elliot, Ketchum also used his photography to capture scenes for the express purpose of furthering environmental activism. This book contains numerous photos from two of Ketchum's published works, 'The Hudson River and Highlands' and 'The Tongas" which were both used to further environmental causes in the 1980s. Finally, this collection explores how Ketchum has tried to caputre his photographic images on a new medium: Chinese embroidery. The resulting embroidery is every bit as revolutionary as Ketchum's own photographs.
If Ketchum's technique was influenced heavily by Porter (many plates of the latter's work also grace these pages) his environmental philosophy, like many others in his generation, comes from Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) and Aldo Leopold (Sand County Almanack). These works portray nature as a seemless web always tending towards stasis or "balance." Only man's activity destroys this seemless web. Whereas Porter (and Adams) had tried to promote conservation by capturing the beauty of nature, Ketchum has gone further and attempted to show the ugliness of civilization. Readers of this book will be treated to "The Indian Point Atomic Power Plant," "Railroad adjacent to Beacon Landing," and many similar works of this sort. But this sort of vision is problematic in many ways. Man can be a destructive influence on nature, but the alternatives are not simply preservation and destruction. A third possibility also presents itself, surprisingly within Ketchum's own work. Humanity can contruct attractions which actually complement the beauty of the natural surroundings. The plates "Taconic Parkway" and "Popolopen Bridge" illustrate this well.
And this raises a larger problem with the environmentalist heirs of Carson and Leopold in general. For them, conservation is an all or nothing issue; a zero sum game. "Preservation" means not merely conserving resources for future enjoyment, but eradicating the influence of "man." Little consideration is given to man's creative powers to actually augment the beauty of nature, as Bill Bryson suggested in his book on the Appalachian Trial. What is needed now is a new environmentalism: one which truly incorporates people into the world we try to protect and preserve. The intellectual groundwork for such an environmentalism has already been laid by Bjorn Lomborg (Skeptical Environmentalist) and Alston Chase (Playing God in Yellowstone and In a Dark Wood). All that remains is for some talented photographer to capture the reality these writers describe. Just as Ketchum looked to Elliot Porter for inspiration, so future photographers may find in Ketchum a glimpse of the coming new environmental movement.
Book Description
Eliot Porter's photographs present an eloquent call to respect and value nature, while taking careful note of humanity's varied relationship with it. Eliot Porter: The Color of Wildness, the first in-depth retrospective of Porter's work, reflects his intimate encounters with diverse ecosystems the world over. His photographs invite the viewer to observe more closely at the natural world and appreciate the breathtaking variety, complexity, delicacy, and beauty found there. Through such appreciation, Porter suggests, we can lead fuller, more balanced lives.
Over the course of his long career, Porter pursued a wide range of subjects. From personal landscapes, like the coast of Maine where he spent childhood summers, he constantly expanded his vision to encompass such remote and unfamiliar terrain as the Galapagos Islands and Antarctica. With the immense success in 1962 of his Sierra Club publication "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World," Selections & Photographs by Eliot Porter, Porter became a sort of ambassador for environmental causes. An early and learned advocate of environmental conservation, his photographs continue to inspire contemplative and protective feelings toward nature.
The Color of Wildness also reveals how Porter's ecological interests led to his deepening fascination with humanity's cultural roots. Central to this expanded vision were his evocative portraits of Greek and Egyptian ruins and his extensive portrait of China, all work made late in his career.
This volume also investigates the artistic, scientific, and humanistic foundations of Porter's photography. The central essay by curator John B. Rohrbach addresses Porter's journey from medical student to world-renowned master of color nature photography. Detailing for the first time the artist's radical break with the classical black-and-white techniques of the master modernists Paul Strand and Ansel Adams, the essay reveals Porter's persistent commitment to his art and clarity of vision. An essay by Porter's son Jonathan, who often accompanied his father on photographic expeditions, discusses Porter's lifelong love of the natural world, his working methods, and his interests outside of photography. Writer Rebecca Solnit contributes an essay that positions Porter's work within the fledgling environmental movement and shifting political climate of the 1960s.
The Color of Wildness
dn0 has been produced in the same Exhibit Format as Porter's landmark 1962 publication "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World." In conjunction with the release of this book, the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, has mounted a traveling exhibition of Eliot Porter's work.
Customer Reviews:
Pity about the printing.......2007-06-14
Eliot Porter's images are well known and there's some worthwhile essays herein, but the reproduction quality is a disgrace. Porter's dye-transfer originals (at least the ones I've seen) never looked as contrasty as presented in this book. I expected better from Aperture.
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Eliot Porter
Eliot Porter
Manufacturer: New York Graphic Society
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Binding: Hardcover
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Similar Items:
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The Color of Wildness: A Retrospective, 1936-1985
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Nature's Chaos
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Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum And the Legacy of Eliot Porter
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In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World
ASIN: 0821216759 |
Book Description
Eliot Porters photos of the natural world, spanning thirty-five years and five continentsfrom an Antarctic ice floe to a North American desert to an Icelandic lava fieldreveal in mesmerizing ways what scientists are beginning to see for themselves: the patterns, relations, and inter-actions present in natures disorder and wildness.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful and Profound.......2002-08-26
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to listen...does it make a sound? Is there any sense, order or meaning to the universe beyond our human projections?
These photographs of Eliot Porter--selected to provide an illustration and counterpoint to James Gleick's eloquent text--are among the most rapturously beautiful ever produced. They are the visual equivalent of poet Wallace Stevens' attempt to grasp that which lies beyond the limits of sentience. Looking through the original hardcover edition is both an act of meditation and of homage--to the greatness of creation, in all its mystery, as well as to the human need to think, feel, and reach for meaning. As I journey through these images, I ask myself, do we look out upon the universe from afar--or do we do so from within, as integral parts of the greater mystery? Let go...allow Gleick's text to pose the question--and Porter's photographs to frame the answer.
Great content, poor printing.......2001-10-31
I received my copy of the new (2001) printing of NATURE'S CHAOS earlier today. While the Porter photographs are both unusual and beautiful, it's great pity that this edition is poorly printed. I've not seen the original edition for comparison. In this printing, color is poorly balanced for many photographs, often to the point that the original vision is obscured. Plus, some photos are very "soft" and lacking in detail, which is surely the fault of the printers as well. What a shame, and what a surprise coming from Little, Brown.
A beautiful work that captures the natural essence of chaos.......1998-06-04
As a graduate student, there is little time or mental space for pursuits beyond the academe-especially one that does not operate in the verbal realm. At nights, on weekends, and in reveries induced by deoxygenated library atmospheres I am a photographer. An early inspiration for me was Eliot Porter. Very early on I became enthralled by the careful studies of trees and fields. I was drawn to the intense, microscopic details in his works, which could not be characterized as minute in any regard. I was amazed at how, by capturing a dizzying array of detail in his work, he could portray the raw, intricate, complex beauty of something I had stared upon, vacuously, every day. Later, when I first became interested in chaos theory, dynamic systems and complexity, I enjoyed a new appreciation of Porter's craft. I found that in the visual sense I was always looking to portray the orderly chaos, or the chaotic beauty of nature. Once, whilst in the office of a professor that I am writing book with (about cognition-emotion interaction as a self-organizing system) I came across the book "Nature's Chaos" by Porter. I immediately recognized the photography and picked the book up from the shelf. To my amazement, Gleick, whose book "Chaos" started a revolution of sorts in the biological science community, was a co-author. I was enraptured. I borrowed it. I tried to buy it from my colleague. I wandered through used book stores on my way to the campus. I made inquiries at the publisher.
Nihil.
So I ordered it through Amazon.com. It arrived, ahead of schedule. I justified the price to myself because I had won a small award for a photograph that was inspired by Porter.
The book is astounding. The text is lyrical and erudite, it flows and meshes with the startling images. I can't say much more-but if you are a photographer, or chaos buff, or god-help you both, then this is a requisite volume. Don't hesitate. Ta panta re!
Jason Ramsay
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Monuments of Egypt
Wilma Stern , and
Eliot Porter
Manufacturer: Univ of New Mexico Pr
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ASIN: 0826312322 |
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