Edge of the Earth, Corner of the Sky [Hardcover]

Art Wolfe (Author), Art Davidson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2003

Photographed on seven continents, and nine years in the making, this lush sequel to Art Wolfe's Light on the Land features 150 gorgeous and compelling color images exploring the extraordinary beauty of nature. "I really don't want to dazzle people with detail," Wolfe says "I want to move them by the moment." These "moments" come from the book's five geographic regions — Desert, Ocean, Mountain, Forest, and Polar — and will indeed captivate the reader with their clarity and range. Remarkable for its artistic vision, atmospheric presentation, and powerful but understated environmental message, the book includes an essay by Art Davidson with each section.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wildlands Press (August 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0641998082
• ISBN-13: 978-0641998089
• ASIN: 0967591821
• Product Dimensions: 14 x 11.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #499,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Art Wolfe's photographs are a superb evocation of some of the most breathtaking spectacles in the world." -- Sir David Attenborough

Over the course of his nearly 40-year career, photographer Art Wolfe has worked on every continent and in hundreds of locations. His stunning images interpret and record the world's fast-disappearing wildlife, landscapes and native cultures, and are a lasting inspiration to those who seek to preserve them all. Wolfe's photographs are recognized throughout the world for their mastery of color, composition and perspective.

"Art Wolfe's work tells a story that is overwhelming, breathtaking, and vast."
- Robert Redford

Wolfe's photographic mission is multi-faceted. His vision and passionate wildlife advocacy affirm his dedication to his work. By employing artistic and journalistic styles, he documents his subjects and educates the viewer. His unique approach to nature photography is based on his training in the arts and his love of the environment. His goal is to win support for conservation issues by "focusing on what's beautiful on the Earth." Hailed by William Conway, former president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, as "the most prolific and sensitive recorder of a rapidly vanishing natural world," Wolfe has taken an estimated one million images in his lifetime and has released over sixty books, including the award-winning "Vanishing Act", "The High Himalaya", "Water: Worlds between Heaven & Earth, Tribes", "Rainforests of the World", "The Art of Photographing Nature", as well as numerous children's titles. Graphis included his books "Light on the Land" and the controversial "Migrations" on its list of the 100 best books published in the 1990s.

"There's a stunning clarity and vibrancy in Art Wolfe's wildlife portraits, which are careful, often haunting, compositions." - The New York Times Book Review

In 2000 he published his signature work "The Living Wild", which has more than 70,000 copies in print worldwide and garnered awards from the National Outdoor Book Awards, Independent Publisher, Applied Arts and Graphis. In 2001 WP published the award-winning "Africa", and in 2003 "Edge of the Earth,Corner of the Sky", which captured significant publishing awards, including IPPY (Independent Publishers), Benjamin Franklin (Publishers Marketing Association), and National Outdoor Book Award. Wolfe's latest books are "Travels to the Edge: A Photo Odyssey" (2009), "Alaska, 10th Anniversary Edition" (2010), and "Dogs Make Us Human" (2011).

"Art has the broadest range of excellence of any nature photographer I know."
- Galen Rowell


Art Wolfe is the proud recipient of the Photographic Society of America's Progress Medal for his contribution to the advancement of the art and science of photography; he has been awarded with a coveted Alfred Eisenstaedt Magazine Photography Award as well as named Outstanding Nature Photographer of the Year by the North American Nature Photography Association. The National Audubon Society recognized Wolfe's work in support of the national wildlife refuge system with its first-ever Rachel Carson Award. He is a member of Canon's elite list of renowned photographers "Explorers of Light" and Microsoft's Icons of Imaging. Magazines all over the world publish his photographs and stories, and his work is licensed for monograph retail products as well as advertising. Numerous North American and international venues have featured his traveling exhibits.

"The intensity, texture, and strange density of Art Wolfe's photographs are truly astonishing." -- Peter Matthiessen

Wolfe has ventured into the world of television production with "On Location with Art Wolfe," "Techniques of the Masters" and as host of "American Photo's Safari", which aired on ESPN 1993-1995. In May 2007 Art made his public television debut with the high definition series "Art Wolfe's Travels to the Edge," an intimate and upbeat series that offers unique insights on nature, culture, and the new realm of digital photography. The thirteen-episode first season garnered American Public Television's 2007 Programming Excellence Award--unprecedented for a first season show. The thirteen-episode second season garnered five Silver Telly Awards, their highest honor, for outstanding achievement. It has been broadcast more than 180,000 times in the United States alone and is seen in Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East.

"It is in the wild places, where the edge of the earth meets the corners of the sky, the human spirit is fed." -- Art Wolfe

The son of commercial artists, Wolfe was born on September 13, 1951 in Seattle and still calls the city home. He graduated from the University of Washington with Bachelor's degrees in fine arts and art education; in 1999 he was named to the UW Alumni Association's magazine list of 100 "most famous, fascinating and influential" alumni of the 20th century. Wolfe spends nearly nine months a year traveling, carefully researching the locations as well as pre-visualizing the photographs he wants to take. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and serves on the advisory boards for the Nature's Best Foundation and Bridges to Understanding. He donates performances and work to environmental and educational groups every year; his lecture series is also in demand for corporate conventions and trade shows. Wolfe maintains his gallery, stock agency, production company and digital photography school in the SODO district of Seattle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing!, September 18, 2003

By 

Jeni McDonald (Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Edge of the Earth, Corner of the Sky (Hardcover)

I just received this book 15 minutes ago and I am so amazed that I'm going to write this review right now. The photographer has taken photographs of things that you may not even notice with the naked eye. He has taken nature photography to a whole new level.
While in Death Valley last year I was so overwhelmed at the beauty of the desert I was unable to capture any of that on film. I knew that I would never achieve a fair representation of how that view looked to me at the time. I could only hope to use my snapshot as a reminder of what I felt at that moment while looking over the desert and dunes. Art Wolfe focuses on the dried earth, one rock, and a rock I never would have seen. His photography reminds us to focus on one part at a time or you'll miss everything. The nook of a mountain, the reflection of the canyon within a pool of water, from within an ice cave looking out. To see these views through the eyes of this photographer is surely a gift.

Wolfe's use of slow shutter speed and timed exposures lends a magical feel to many of his photographs. The path of the moon throughout one night displays as an arch. The result is an added movement to an otherwise still scene of a mountain in Australia. His winter beech trees literally make my mouth water (for some reason, I don't know!).

Let us look at these amazing landscapes and use the power that we have to preserve such beauty.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mountain Light Plus, January 16, 2004

By 

Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Edge of the Earth, Corner of the Sky (Hardcover)

Ansel Adams, who is probably the world's most famous landscape photographer, worked in black and white. According to Eliot Porter, a color photographer, Adams maintained that color photography had no legitimate place in the art of photography because it was too literal to be an art form and that it was not possible to practice it interpretively. In this book, Art Wolfe once again proves that Adams was wrong.

Wolfe presents us with landscapes from all over the world, from places where few us will ever travel, that are spectacular. Many of the pictures, particularly those of rugged mountains, will leave the reader in awe of the natural landscape.

But Wolfe is not just concerned with the subject matter. He never forgets the qualities of light and color. Most of his shots are from the "magic hours" of sunrise and sunset when the sky is diffused with the range of colors from intense blues to bright reds. Yet,while the mountains that form the backdrop for the lighting effects bask in the red glow, the foregrounds are frequently plunged into darkness, creating feelings of both repose and mystery.

The pictures are arranged into five chapters called Desert, Ocean, Mountain, Forest and Polar, but these subjects often creep from one chapter into another. What is more interesting is when Wolfe presents a series of pictures, often on facing pages, that look at the same subject in different light, or different subjects in the same light. This allows us to explore the subtle differences between the pictures and come to a deeper understanding of Wolfe?s art and the subject.

Technical data and Wolfe's commentary on the circumstances of the taking of each picture are in the back of the book, where they do not detract from the optical feast, but are available to those who may be interested in these details.

Beginning each chapter is a short essay by Art Davidson that is well written and has some relationship to the subsequent photographs. Such essays have become mandatory but, like the ones in this book, they often seem to have a life of their own that does not really illuminate the pictures. Perhaps I?m asking too much, but I have the example of photographer Galen Rowell?s book "Alaska: Images of the Country" in which Rowell quoted selected passages from author John McPhee?s book "Coming into the Country" to give us a strong but intimate view of that place.

Speaking of Rowell, one of his most famous books was "Mountain Light" where he showed photographers how to capture mountains in their distinctive illunination. I don?t know if Wolfe studied Rowell, but if he did, he has surpassed his teacher.

One of the book's strong points may also be its weakness for some readers. Wolfe often shows a photograph of a mountain backdrop bathed in magic-hours light, with a body of water in the foreground reflecting the mountains and concealed in shadow. While some viewers will take the opportunity to compare these similar pictures to explore Wolfe's style and subject, others will find them too repetitious.

I also have to say a word about environmentalism, and here I know some people may react to my criticism apart from the book. Wolfe has said that he put this book together to underscore the importance of preserving the wild places he has photographed. Introductions by Robert Redford and John Adams, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, reemphasize the point. Then Davidson's strident essays speak almost exclusively of man's efforts to dismember the landscape. These photographs are so eloquent that I see no necessity for adding a stream of text to distract us from the pictures, each of which is truly worth 10,000 words.

Despite these criticisms I do not believe anyone who looks into the book will be unmoved or feel that they could better have spent their time.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best landscape photos I have seen, November 29, 2003

By 

windriver12 (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Edge of the Earth, Corner of the Sky (Hardcover)

This book is the best series of landscape photos I have seen. I almost thought I heard angels singing arias in the background while looking at these images. Such is their profound and moving beauty.

Besides Steve McCurry's South Southeast, this is the only book I have seen where the publisher did not skimp on the paper and the printing. The colors and the sharpness are perfect. The book is divided into five sections based on the climate. The Arctic and the Rainforest were two of them. Some of the images are surreal (salt flats) while others were poetic (the curves in dunes). All of them made me stare in wonder, and I have made a resolution to see some of these places before they are lost to development.

The best part about this book for aspiring photographers is in the back. Here there is a thumbnail of each picture in the book with a note from Art Wolfe explaining the environment and the methods he used to photograph the scene. Included are details such as the camera, lens, film, shutter speed, and aperture settings that were used. I sat mesmerized staring at the photos and then reading the technical details on how he captured the image.

If you are an budding landscape photographer, this book is fuel for your aspiration. Or if you just plain love nature scenes, this book will make your love for nature deeper.