On My Bookshelf Edition 2
Earlier this year, I presented at an online conference on the subject of “Cultivating Connection: Techniques for More Expressive Imagery.” I shared with the group about the importance of connecting with landscapes and nature, and why I consider it a critical pre-requisite to creating expressive landscape and nature photographs. I consider books an important part of this process. During one of the Q&A sessions, someone asked the question: What reading material would I recommend to photographers seeking to make these connections with nature? And that was when I decided to start sharing my own reading choices with my followers.
I try to surround myself with inspiration, and to live a creative, inspired life. Integral to both of these goals is reading, so this is a regular topic here in my Notebook. My choices will generally be naturalist titles, conservation-minded titles, or artistry/creativity titles, although occasionally I may go off on a bit of a tangent. These are not affiliate links (Amazon cancelled my affiliate account!). They are the books I’ve bought for myself that are currently in my library (as seen in my video).
I hope you find some material here that interests you! Happy reading!
Space, Stillness, Silence: The Solace of the Desert by Eric Bennett
From me: This book was a resounding WOW for me. Many of you likely know of my friend Eric’s remarkable imagery - filled with his signature subtlety, restraint and reverence - and each of the many images here embody all three of these qualities. His work is profound and inspiring to me, and by any measure, this is a gorgeous fine art photography volume. But it is the writing that elevates Space, Stillness, Silence, and as a result, this is so much more than just a fine art photography book. Eric’s writing style shares many of the same qualities as his images, and the deep reverence he feels for the desert, the solace and the healing he finds there, really shines through in his writing. This book is as much a work of art as it is a state of mind, and it’s just such a beautiful example of the ways that photography can help us form deep, transformative connections with the natural world. Highly recommend.
From the Author: This book focuses on the place I call home: the Southern Utah Desert. Featuring more than 120 never-before-seen images created over the course of six years while conversing with arid badlands, lonely trees, and winding canyons in all four seasons. Five new essays accompany this body of work to further express the deep relationship I have formed with this special landscape. In this crowded, busy, and noisy world, our lonely deserts are some of the last standing sanctuaries of true solitude. While they are indeed scarce in food, water, and shelter, their abundant space, stillness, and silence satisfy and nourish us in other essential ways. I hope you will not only appreciate the remarkable natural formations portrayed in these photographs, but the quiet emptiness of this desert landscape as well, for it is equally worth preserving.
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt'‘s New World by Andrea Wulf
From me: I’ve just started reading this, and it’s got me hooked already. Von Humboldt’s radical vision of nature and his concept of interconnectedness have become so widespread and fully accepted that he has ironically faded into obscurity. With degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography, I knew of Mr. Von Humboldt from my studies. But this book tells his story in a compelling way, presenting the breathtaking entirety of his many achievements, his exciting, adventure-filled life, and the acclaim he once received. Wulf revives the story of this fascinating man here.
From Amazon: NATIONAL BEST SELLER
One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The James Wright Award for Nature Writing, the Costa Biography Award, the Royal Geographic Society's Ness Award, the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award
Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Kirkus Prize Prize for Nonfiction, the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, Nature, Jezebel, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, New Scientist, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Evening Standard, The Spectator
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. In North America, his name still graces four counties, thirteen towns, a river, parks, bays, lakes, and mountains. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether he was climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infected Siberia or translating his research into bestselling publications that changed science and thinking. Among Humboldt’s most revolutionary ideas was a radical vision of nature, that it is a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone.
Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt’s writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden.
With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science.
George Masa: A Life Reimagined by Janet McCue & Paul Bonesteel
From me: As a photographer with a deep connection to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I have long had an interest in George Masa, a Japanese immigrant who settled here in Appalachia in 1915, became an accomplished and highly regarded photographer, eventually employing his artistry, his knowledge of the outdoors, and his networking skills to become a fierce advocate for the preservation of the Great Smoky Mountains. Together with George Kephart, he was instrumental in the formation of the national park I love so dearly. However, beyond these notable accomplishments, Masa’s history and early life circumstances had remained shrouded in mystery. My friend Janet McCue partnered with documentary filmmaker Paul Bonesteel to research Masa’s story, visiting his former homes and his country of origin in order to more substantially understand his past, his perspective, and his motivations. I am half way through the book, and am finding it fascinating. My own story contains some echoes of Masa’s - an outsider who settles in Appalachia, forming a deep and intimate bond with these mountains, eventually discovering that this place is my soul’s home. This book resonates!
From Amazon: From Cornell University librarian Janet McCue and documentary filmmaker Paul Bonesteel comes the first comprehensively researched biography of the visionary Japanese photographer whose dedication to art and conservation helped spur the national park movement in the Great Smoky Mountains and the creation of the Appalachian Trail.
What moves a person to leave all that they have known for something new, something different, something adventurous?
In this fascinating historical biography, coauthors Janet McCue and Paul Bonesteel answer fundamental questions that have swirled around the man known as George Masa ever since the young Japanese immigrant stepped off a train in the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina, one summer day in 1915. What Masa’s biographers reveal—through letters, journal entries, train tickets, and public records scattered from Japan to the Great Smoky Mountains—brings into focus for the very first time the personal struggles and triumphs of an emerging environmental hero.
Until now, little has been widely known of Masa beyond the striking images he captured of the Smokies that played a pivotal role in justifying their perpetual protection within the boundary of a national park—a park that is now the most visited in the United States. In his life, Masa shared scant details about his background with his Asheville friends and revealed nothing of the sights and sounds from the native home that shaped his upbringing.
In the years since he died penniless in 1933, many have wondered how this singular figure with a slight frame—friendly and likable yet “quiet and retiring in nature with most people”—managed to make such a dramatic impact on those within his adopted Appalachian community and far beyond.
Although attention to Masa faded for a time, Paul Bonesteel’s 2002 documentary film The Mystery of George Masa kindled renewed interest in the photographer’s life and accomplishments.
In 2009, awareness of Masa as a trailblazing conservationist increased tremendously once again through the six-part Ken Burns documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The fourth installment of the series, titled “Going Home,” focuses specifically on George Masa and Horace Kephart as charismatic collaborators and conservationists who advocated for the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
More recently, in 2019, Janet McCue co-authored the award-winning Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography along with the late George Ellison. In their thorough biography, McCue and Ellison devote a chapter, “Congenial Comrades” to the close and perhaps unlikely friendship of Horace Kephart and George Masa.
Now collaborating to tell Masa’s story in full for the first time with the benefit of years of research conducted in both the United States and Japan, McCue and Bonesteel explore how an immigrant far from home who endured more than his fair share of trials—scrutiny from the Bureau of Investigation in 1918, harassment from the Ku Klux Klan in 1921, then the collapse of the economy, his business, and his health in the early 1930s—ultimately chose to dedicate himself to conservation in Southern Appalachia.
Told with care and attention to detail, this groundbreaking biography sheds light on why Masa might have been drawn to mountainous landscapes and why, soon after his arrival in Asheville, he began a conversation with the ancient peaks of Western North Carolina. At last, we discover an ambitious artist striving for a great future, a "castle of success," but also a role serving a greater cause—a creative and energetic man who reimagined his life time and time again.