March 2023 MBR The Photography Shelf

The Photography Shelf

More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story
Janet L. Pritchard
George F Thompson Publishing
http://gftbooks.com
c/o Casemate Publishers
1940 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083
www.casematepublishers.com
9781938086953, $45.00, HC, 240pp

https://www.amazon.com/More-than-Scenery-Yellowstone-American/dp/1938086953

Synopsis: Photographer Janet Pritchard's romance with the American West began with horseback riding, watching movies, and hearing her dad's dreams of being a cowboy. When she began to spend adolescent summers in Wyoming during the 1960s, her world changed forever, as she fell under the spell of natural wonder in the shadow of the Grand Tetons. Only later did she recognize her feelings as a response to what nineteenth-century Romantics called the sublime.

A vintage 1916 picture postcard of Golden Gate Canyon by F. Jay Haynes inspired the project that would culminate with the publication of "More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story ". When Pritchard turned it over and read the message -- "I cannot describe the Yellowstone as the dictionary is only a book. It is more than scenery. In some places, it is so beautiful that the men take off their hats, and the women are silent!" -- she was back in a childhood place of wonder tempered by a lifetime of work as an artist and teacher in landscape photography.

Formed by fire and ice, embraced by a nation seeking an ancient past with a future as grand as the landscapes it inhabited, Yellowstone was established as the world's first national park by an Act of Congress in 1872. One hundred fifty years later, the park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem continue to occupy an iconic role in the public imagination of Yellowstone as a place that is both real and ideal. Here, in this complex ecosystem where wild nature and culture meet, the complexities of our relationship to the natural world are revealed unlike any other place.

Yellowstone is truly unique, and each generation who visits it invests Yellowstone with ideas, beliefs, and values reflecting its historical moment. In "More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story", Pritchard surveys these relationships with her captivating photographs and insightful text, and Lucy R. Lippard' sets the table with her heartfelt introduction to the world's romance with Yellowstone.

"More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story" reveals why Yellowstone is so important to American and the world and how its landscapes reflect more than scenery.

Critique: A magnificent coffee-table style (10.3 x 1.7 x 12 inches, 3.92 pounds) volume, "More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story" is an impressive compendium of full color photography showcasing America's oldest (and arguably best) national park. A please to simply browse through one fascinating page at a time, "More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story" will be of immense appeal to readers with an interest in landscape photography and the Yellowstone National Park. No personal, professional, community, college, or university library Contemporary Photography collection can be considered comprehensive without the inclusion of Janet L. Pritchard's "More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story".

Editorial Note: Janet L. Pritchard (http://janetpritchard.com) is a Guggenheim Fellow Professor of Art at University of Connecticut. Her previous landscape photography projects include "The Wild Heart of New England: The Connecticut River & Watershed" and "Like a Whisper: Time on the Land" .

An Affair of Flowers
John Robert Rodrigues, photographer
Stephen Buchmann, introduction
Patricia Z. Smith, contributor
Goff Books
c/o ORO Editions
31 Commerical Blvd., Suite F, Novato, CA 94949
www.oroeditions.com
9781954081727, $35.00, HC, 136pp

https://www.amazon.com/Affair-Flowers-John-Rodrigues/dp/1954081723

Synopsis: "An Affair of Flowers" is impressive book is richly illustrated with 91 gorgeous macro photographs of flowers (and also some of their pollinators) taken by John Rodrigues, an artist who has taken that time to truly see. John, with the eye of an artist, takes an old lens and new camera and gives a new look at an old photographic subject.

Critique: A magnificent and memorable coffee-table style (9.5 x 0.75 x 9.5 inches, 1.68 pounds), volume, "An Affair of Flowers" is a beautiful compilation of unique images quite unlike any previous flower-based photographic study. Simply stated, "An Affair of Flowers" is a seminal and unreservedly recommended contribution to personal, professional, community, college, and university library American Photography and Garden Pictorial collections.

Editorial Note #1: John Rodrigues (https://www.johnrodphoto.com) worked as a photographer for Motown. He took headshots for aspiring actors, photojournalism assignments for local papers, and of course some nice family pictures. From the very beginning of his career, his favorite subjects have been landscapes and nature. He was used the SONY A7R IV, and it became the perfect vehicle to meld old technology with new using a simple adapter to create a whole different way of seeing flowers. This allowed for a "live view" screen that gave license to see his subjects in real time - he could move in and out of petals, stamens, and leaves like a mini spaceship. These images with a narrow field of focus had the "look" Rodrigues had been striving to achieve throughout his whole career.

Editorial Note #2: Stephen Buchmann (http://stephenbuchmann.com/bio) is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees. He is an adjunct professor with the departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. A Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, he has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and eleven books, including The Forgotten Pollinators that warned in 1996 about global pollinator decline.

Editorial Note #3: Patricia Z. Smith (https://complementsthebook.com) is an award winning playwright, editor, photographer, interviewer, and the author of "Sixty Years Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women"

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