Photo books reflect beauty of the natural world

REVIEWS BY ALISON HOOD

Your inner adventurer can traverse the globe this holiday season via four stunning photography collections celebrating the world's most wondrous landscapes. These breathtaking images from renowned photographers offer up an unparalleled itinerary of shining shores, deep forests and vast canyon lands, as well as the high, wild and arctic places of our planet—with no plane ticket (or crampons) required.

Onward and upward

Expedition photographer Gordon Wiltsie, whose award-winning pictures grace National Geographic, has crisscrossed the earth on foot, by dogsled and on skis—all while toting a camera. A companion to many modern-day explorers (including the late Galen Rowell and Jon Krakauer), in To the Ends of the Earth: Adventures of an Expedition Explorer Wiltsie chronicles 10 climbs and treks—all ambitious, death-defying adventures—that took him up looming peaks, across frigid plains and through mysterious rainforests. This is Wiltsie's personal diary of being a load-carrying, pot-washing, full-fledged expedition team member—and the man responsible for capturing each dramatic moment on film. From Tibet's Potala Palace to a polar wall on Canada's Baffin Island, Wiltsie's spectacular images capture the exploits and travails of expedition teams, plus the inspirational landscapes and exotic cultures of the places visited.


Tragically, explorer and photographer Galen Rowell perished when his small plane crashed near Bishop, California, in August 2002. Thankfully, Rowell's photographic work—and his numerous books (among them, Mountain Light and My Tibet)—survive to enchant and educate us about the glories of wild places shrouded in light and shadow. A renowned climber, photographer, writer and eco-advocate who routinely ventured into the most remote corners of the earth, Rowell was tireless, passionate to the end about the conservation and celebration of the earth's landscapes and wildlife.

Galen Rowell: A Retrospective is a loving tribute compiled by Sierra Club editors—a grand collection of Rowell's exquisite images, accompanied by nine thoughtful essays and short remembrances written by friends, family and colleagues. According to colleague Frans Lanting, Rowell was a photographic pioneer, ever searching to capture the "dynamic landscape." Says Lanting, "What this meant to Galen personally was: Travel light, anticipate opportunities, shoot fast, keep moving, and enjoy yourself."


Art in the parks

Frenchman and award-winning photographer Philippe Bourseiller explored many of America's famous and lesser known national and state parks for an entire year. The result, America's Parks, is a heady and dramatic volume of his photographs, bookended by a triad of provocative essays (two by fellow countrymen, one by an American), that give both European and American perspectives on the origins, history and development of America's parks, as well as a thought-provoking look at the future of national parks worldwide.

The photography in America's Parks is almost over the top; photographic artistry, in the form of extreme technical manipulation, reigns supreme in this collection. We see mind-blowing sunsets, almost unreal close-ups of flowers in a cracked desert and the minute gradations of feathered texture found in a bird's wing. While Bourseiller's photographs are masterful, they are not fully representative of the parks they are supposed to depict; Niagara Falls is given short shrift, shown in a single photo of powerfully flowing waters, with no background perspective or setting. Bourseiller's work, though beautiful, is somewhat inaccessible: there is no elucidation of his motivation and vision, and his photos are not captioned; the reader must take their location and meaning from an appendix that gives a general description of the park in which they were shot.


Grandest of all

The vast spaces and close confines of the Grand Canyon, from rim to canyon floor, are given their due in Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography. This book, made all the more beautiful by author Stephen Trimble's words, is an homage complet to a much-loved space—one that is imperiled by an excess of visitation and environmental pollution.

The Grand Canyon has been explored and photographed since the mid-19th century. Lasting Light faithfully chronicles the photographers, their photographic technologies and their artistic visions from the early expeditionary years to the middle, more iconic (in terms of photographic innovation) times, through to the large field of contemporary photographers still mesmerized by this mysterious and challenging geography. From the Kolb Brothers to Eliot Porter to Jack Dykinga, each photographer and their unique interpretation of the canyon's features are included. This collection is a superlative explication of America's very own world wonder.


Alison Hood was formerly a National Park Service Ranger at Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

© 2006 ProMotion, inc.
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