Wildlands Press : Edge of the Earth / Corner of the Sky : Photographer Message

EDGE OF THE EARTH / CORNER OF THE SKY
A Message from the Photographer

Moonset, Fairy Chimneys, Cappadocia, Turkey

In 1984 I was part of the Ultima Thule Expedition to Mount Everest. A team of American climbers, we would be the first Western Group permitted by China to attempt the famed but mysterious Northeast Ridge route through Tibet since British climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared on the ridge in 1924. Translated from the Greek, ultima thule means "the farthest land." For ancient Greek explorers, "the world's end" at that time was Greenland, which they called Ultima Thule. As if looking over the edge of the Earth, they also imagines an unreachable frontier where the land, sea, and air blended together like another dimension as viewed from a corner of the sky. Such evocative ideas stayed with me through the years, inspiring the concept of this book.

Despite the fact that I am best known as a wildlife photographer, landscapes have always been my first love, going back to my days as a university student pursuing a fine arts degree in painting. Everything I know about painting-- form, color, light, texture, compositiong-- I have applied to my photography. Nothing allows me to do this more than photography landscape.

Lava Flow, Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii, United States

This collection of landscape images was photographed on seven continents and was nine years in the making. The photographs are arranged in five categories-- desert, ocean, mountain, forest and polar-- and range from Turkey's rocky Cappadocia to the icebound Arctic, from the transluscent waters of Great Bahamas Bank to the austere Bolivian Altiplano. Often rising before dawn to capture a fleeting movement of light and waiting for a vanishing shadow past dusk, my mission carried me forward. Because most people will never stand on the vast Patagonian Ice Field or climb the high Pakistani Himalaya, I wanted to render not only such views but also the powerful experience of being in those places.

With the truly awesome beauty I've encountered have also come sights of diminishing wild places and wrenching dismemberment of the land. As a citizen of the Earth, I fear what the horrific environmental impact of our excesses will cost the human spirit. Humans can no longer deny that when our Earth is harmed in any way, we are diminished as well. As habitats and species are decimated, our future is also threatened. The entire planet is a linked system: Dust storms in Mongolia reach Seattle within days; a forest logged in Brazil affects farmers in the Mediterranean. It is my deepest desire that this message resouncs within each image presented in this collection.

Over three decades, I've sadly witnessed a variety of landscapes that I though would never be touched come under assault by development and exploitation. Even the edges of the Earth are not safe, and in this volume I want to strongly underscore the importance of protecting these lands for future generations. Joining me in this environmental quest with their forewords to this book are John H. Adams and Robert Redford. Adams, attorney and governmental advisor, has served as director and president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) since 1970, the longest leadership tenure in any environmental organization. Robert Redford has been an NRDC trustee for 28 years and a fierce supporter of our natural heritage.

There are no more moving words than those of writer Art Davidson, who wrote the essays in this volume. Through countless books, Art has spoken eloquently of the human connection to the land and of mankind's primal need for wild places. In offering the human stories he has gathered in his global travels, Art provides the perfect complement to my landscape photographs.

With rare exception, there are no traces of people or wildlife in these photographs. I wanted no visual distraction of animal species or human purpose in the images. This way, the viewer is allowed to focus completely on the environment. Within this body of work, no photographs contain composite landscape imagery. A few pictures include mulitiple exposures, and the process is discussed in the photo notes at the back of the book.

Edge of the Earth, Corner of the Sky is my strongest environmental statement about the land. May we all be better stewards of our miraculous Earth, a place that mirrors our human condition in its beauty, drama, and fragility.

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