Product Description

Ansel Adams has been called by many the greatest photographer of all. He proved most decisively that photography could be a major art form. His pictures, whether still life, portrait, or the landscape and nature studies for which he is is most famous, are all imbued with a poetic feeling, a poetry enhanced by the exceptional clarity of the images. Adams's work was part of a tradition of western American photography that began in the late 19th century and included the work of Carlton E. West, Edward Muybridge, and several Civil War photographers including Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan and A.J. Russell, among others. Photographer Edward Curtis's ambitious 30-year documentation of eighty tribes west of the Mississippi came out of the same fascination with the region's grandeur and wildness and the drive to record it. Nature's glory shines through in this beautifully produced work, with over 280 photographs and a fascinating text by noted photographic historian Eva Weber. It will be treasured not only by legions of amateur photographers but by anyone interested in the history and beauty of the American West.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1515431 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent!
This book is a fine introduction to some 19th c. landscape photographers of the American west, as well as Adams. The chapter "Views Aesthetic and Spiritual" has the best explanations of the key early 19th c. concepts "sublime," "picturesque," and "beautiful" that I have encountered. Weber is clearly extremely well informed about the subject and an excellent writer of a quality rarely enocuntered. This alone makes the book worth while, even without the pictures. (Everyone knows not to judge a book by its cover. I am amazed anyone would review a book based on the cover, or have the nerve to make such a review public.)

An excellent collection
I think the only other review so far of this book dismisses it too quickly. It is actually an excellent collection of photographs with an insightful text. Many of the photographs are given a full page and I think this increases their impact over other books I considered buying. The photographs are, themselves, mesmerizing which is to be expected with a photography great such as Ansel Adams, but I also enjoyed being introduced to the work of other artists with whom I was not familiar. Together, it is a complete collection of photography for those who are interested in black and white photography (as I am), landscape photography, or even (I would think) just the American West.

Cover design an insult to Adams
Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover! Here Adams' photograph has been downgraded from work of fine art to mere "design element." This is a sure sign of a schlocky book -- no publisher with any clue about fine art would ever obliterate an artist's creation by placing three other pictures on top of it. To do so violates one of the cardinal rules of fine art publishing.