BiblioBuffet Lauren Roberts, Editor
Traveling
the World in Photography
June
14, 2009
When
the box of books arrived, I opened it with the same excitement and
sense of adventure any book-sized package engenders in me. But as I
pulled two of the volumes out, I felt my pulse quicken even more. I
adore most books, but when books that are exactly in alignment with
my personal tastes arrive unexpectedly, well, that is just perfect.
Since I indulged myself these last two days in them, I have found
them so wonderful I wanted to share them with you
Himalayan
Portfolios: Journeys of the Imagination is a fine art photography book filled with glorious black-and-white
photographs and illustrations of one of earth’s most
spectacular areas. This book came out of the Kenneth
Hanson’s experiences accompanying his wife on her teaching fellowship to
India. A side trip to the Himalayas with his 4x5 view camera yielded,
as he put it, a journey into “two imaginative realms: that of
the Tibetan Buddhist culture . . . [and] that of the
mountaineers and explorers. . . .”
For
most of us the Himalayas means Everest, the highest mountain the
world, the site of some of the most triumphant and the most tragic of
mountaineering adventures. But they are so much more than that. The
range, created by the Indian tectonic plate that is moving India away
from Africa and Antarctica by pushing the subcontinent against
Eurasia, has created three terrains: the High Himalaya, the
Kohistan-Ladakh, and the Karakoram. That geologic time is undeterred
by human events is noted, Hanson writes, in one of his photographs of
the Indus Gorge where “the river has cut through the northern
finger of the Himalayan chain near Nanga Parbat. The road belongs to
present day political realities, but this is the region where India
first collided with Eurasia 50 million years ago. The process
continues with no possibility of influence by human action. The
photographic record is bonded to the geological drama.”
The
photographs are divided into sections called portfolios, five of
them: The Mountains of Kashmir, The Hidden Realm, Mountains About the
Great Cleft of the Kali Gandaki, The Remoteness of Everest, and Five
Treasures of Great Snow. Each portfolio contains a detailed
description of the area, and maps that provide both an overview of
the region within the whole mountain range and a close-up with
routes, villages and peaks indicated, followed by approximately
twenty images. Each image is its own page, a stunning reproduction
accompanied by a detailed caption.
The
Namche Bazaar caption, for example, states that the small town,
elevation 3,440m/11,286ft, “is normally reached in two days
when approached from Lukla (2,886m/9,468ft). The last part of the
ascent is unpleasantly steep for those beginning their
acclimatization. The town is set in a bowl above the Bhote Kosi just
past the point at which it joins the Dudh Kosi. The tourist trade has
transformed the original Sherpa trading center into a collection of
tourist lodges and visitors now have a choice of several Internet
cafes (Photograph, Day 20, 1999.)” And of course the mountains
themselves are the stars of many of the images:
Snow Lake, Sim-Gang Glacier and The Ogre from the Hispar La (The
Karakoram, Pakistan, 1994)
More
than a fine art photography book, Himalayan
Portfolios aims to educate the Himalayan admirer about the mountains, the
culture and religion, the people, the impact of the world coming to
its doors, the importance of photography in discovering the Himalayan
story, and much more. This is less a photography book or even a book
of the Himalayas than a book that seeks to understand the life story
of a mountain range. It’s also a tribute to something
ultimately unexplainable, something beyond the ken of human
attributes.
The
second book, also from Fields Publishing, is Bolivia by Don
McLaughlin. It
is the result of his having been sent, as a Standard Oil geologist,
to Ecuador via Argentina and then on to Cochabamba, Bolivia in
1959….. “I was sent to Bolivia to help find oil,”
he writes. “After two dry holes and some $16 million dollars of
expenses, we found none. However, I did find a fascinating country
and had a wonderful time probing it with my lens.”
More than 100 glorious black and white photographs are the star of this book. They cover the land as well as the people, and share vast landscapes as well as intimate moments. [The editorial review discusses two photographs] They are the recordings of a man who was touched by the world into which he had been sent; a world he was invading as a representative of Yankee imperialism (according to local graffiti) but one which he, the individual, sought to understand and to appreciate…… It’s an extraordinary thing to capture the mundane in memorable photographs. What makes these images evocative is that the photographers made the invisible detectable and the unremembered remarkable.
[The Editorial follows on with two paragraphs on Book events.]
Until
next week, read well, read often and read on!
Lauren BiblioBuffet