David Freese has spent the last sixteen years photographing North America’s major waters, resulting in a trilogy of books: West Coast: Bering to Baja (2012), East Coast: Arctic to Tropic (2016), and Mississippi River: Headwaters and Heartland to Delta and Gulf (2020). His prints are in many collections, including the Center for Creative Photography, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Haggerty Museum of Art, and Library of Congress, and his photographs have appeared in Communication Arts, Photo District News, Photo Insider, Polaroid International, Popular Photography, Smithsonian Air and Space, and View Camera magazines. Simon Winchester was born in North London, England, in 1944, and was raised there. After receiving an undergraduate degree in geology from Oxford University in 1963, he worked as a field geologist in Africa for a Canadian mining company before switching careers in 1967 and becoming a journalist for The Guardian and a frequent commentator on, and contributor to, BBC radio. Over the years Winchester has written for Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Conde Nast Traveler magazines, and he is the author of more than twenty best-selling books, including The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Harper Perennial, 1999), The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology (Harper Perennial, 2001), Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded (Harper Perennial, 2003),A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (Harper Perennial, 2005), and Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories (Harper Perennial, 2010). In 2006, Winchester was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to journalism and literature." His Website iswww.simonwinchester.com. Naomi Rosenblum was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1925, and moved to New York in 1933. She received her Ph.D. in American art history in 1978 from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and today is an esteemed photographic historian, writer, curator, and art critic. She has been on the Acquisitions Committee of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography, a Scholar-in-Residence in the Photography Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Paul Strand Committee of the Aperture Foundation. She is the author of five landmark books, including A World History of Photography, originally published in 1984 by Abbeville Press and now in its fourth edition, and A History of Women Photographers, originally published in 1996 by Abbeville Press and now in its third edition. She has also written numerous articles on contemporary American, Canadian, and European photographers as well as various movements in photographic history. In 1998, Naomi and her husband, noted photographer and teacher Walter Rosenblum, were awarded the Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement by the International Center for Photography in New York City. Her Website iswww.rosenblumphoto.com.
"Experienced freelance photographer David Freese and writer Simon
Winchester have gotten together to change the way readers see the
West Coast. They do it through a book of photographs of wild
landscapes from the northwest tip of Alaska to Baja California. The
photos are in black-and-white, beautifully printed with plenty of
white space, and owe a great deal to Alfred Steiglitz and Ansel
Adams. As simply a book of landscape photographs, they owe too much
to Adams and Steiglitz, though they are often breathtakingly
lovely. This is where the book's idea comes in. By combining
digital sepia and black-and-white toning effects from the Photoshop
tradition with skilled 35mm camerawork from the Adams/Steiglitz
tradition, Freese's images get readers to notice that the iconic
images of pioneer photographers are the same territory as
contemporary California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. In its
careful balancing of deep honesty and sleight of hand (in Los
Angeles, the wilderness of the Santa Monica mountains is now a
portrait of the sky), the book inspires us to ask where we have
come from, where we are now, and where we may be going. It's an
equally good question about art, the environment, and culture. The
book's foreword is by photographic historian and critic Naomi
Rosenblum. Winchester's text is a spare, restrained partner in the
project. He focuses the reader's attention on geology, the fluid
tectonic nature of landscapes that, on the scale of a human
lifespan, seem poised between changelessness and catastrophe. The
book offers a postmodern turn with old-fashioned care for skillful,
serious craft. For any general reader, it can be simply a quietly
beautiful coffee-table book. For readers tuned to its key,
interested in photography, wildlands, West Coast history, or
contemporary art, it may also inspire wonder on another level."--
"Book News, Inc."
"There's a natural serene beauty that the Western side of North
America carries, unique to it and it alone. West Coast: Bering to
Baja is a collection of photography focusing on the western coast
of the continent, from the frost touched coastlines and forests of
Alaska to the sun and sand of California, using sepia tone to set a
mood all throughout the coast with high quality photography all
throughout. For those who want to experience much of North
America's natural beauty, West Coast: Bering to Baja is a much
recommended pick not to be overlooked."-- "Midwest Book Review"
"What elevates West Coast: Bering to Baja above the level of a mere
coffee-table book is the consciousness behind it. This deftly
balanced combination of ecology, geology, geography, and history is
presented through a photographic vision in which its environmental
message comes through as clear as the natural imagery. While areas
of the Pacific Rim have been captured visually many times before,
it's rare to find them presented sequentially in one volume. Though
the reproductions are not as large as one might expect from a
hardcover, the quality of the presentation compensates by offering
very educational contents. Ultimately, this book instills within us
an awareness of both the fragility of the landscape and the majesty
of the vast geological forces over which we have little control."--
"City Book Review"
"This black and white photography book has an unusual format in
that the photos are rather small, about 4x6 inches framed by a
large amount of white space surrounding them on each page. Mr.
Freese is the first to make a book of photographs documenting the
entire west coastline of North America from the Bering Straits in
Alaska to the tip of the Baja peninsula at Cabo San Lucas. The
photographs are presented as if you are traveling from North to
South in the order in which a driver would see the sights. Each
photo emphsizes nature, omitting almost entirely the impact of man,
so that the resulting images could have been made in the 19th
century. However, the skilled photographer that David is, he has
combined film photography with digital and has manipulated the
photos in the computer to their best presentation. The accompanying
text is beautifully written and deeply enhances each image, as well
as explaining what is depicted."--Bonnie Neely "Real Travel
Adventures"
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