Customer Reviews

Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone will find the pictures breathtaking. If you have an interest in the southwest rivers and canyons you will especially enjoy this book. If you are interested in seeing what they stole from us by the construction of Glen Canyon Dam then this book is required reading. Hayduke lives!

This is the best collection of photos I have seen on the now drowned Glen Canyon. Unlike some other books covering the area, this collection was clearly taken by a professional photographer. These pictures could easily be mistaken for Ansel Adams and I believe Mr. Nichols lists him as a big influence on his work. If you are like me and a lover of canyon country, it will definitely make you a little wistful thinking that this area has been lost--probably irretrievably. I just wish there were a comparable collection of color photos of Glen Canyon to supplement this wonderful work.

Many photography books about the Southwest feature oversaturated color, and show that while the photographer might have excellent technical skills, there is little to really get excited about when it comes to the actual content of the images itself. Not the case with this book. The images were taken in a precomputer era, they're a bit grainy at times, something that probably could be fixed with a newer edition and a bit more care by the Museum of New Mexico Press. A new edition would sell well. No matter, however, this book is a real beauty, instead of just pictures, there's plenty of text and items thrown in besides the images, such as the photographer's little spiral notebook. If you find one new, or a good used one, it is still a must-have. Just beautiful pictures, no color needed at all. Buy this book, and a second one for a gift. Five Stars for sure.

Tad Nichols (b. 1911, d. 2000) was a professional photographer who studied with Ansel Adams and Brett Weston and specialized in documenting remote and exotic geological features of this planet. Nichols made thirty trips into Glen Canyon between 1950 and 1963, when the gates of Glen Canyon Dam were closed and the waters of Lake Powell began to rise. In 1997, a project was begun to assemble into a book some of Nichols's photographs as well as commentary from Nichols and two others who accompanied him on many of those Glen Canyon trips. The result is GLEN CANYON: IMAGES OF A LOST WORLD.

To me, aside from extinct animals, there perhaps is no sadder legacy of modern homo sapiens than mammoth dam projects, and among those the Glen Canyon dam surely was one of the more senseless and hence tragic. This handsome book brings home that loss, powerfully, even viscerally. All of Nichols's photographs are black-and-white, which serves to intensify the elegaic quality of the book. I have one other book that photographically documents the unspoiled beauty and mystery of pre-1963 Glen Canyon -- "The Place No One Knew", by Eliot Porter. Porter's photographs are in glorious color and many of them are more abstract than Nichols's. Although it may be idiosyncratic, I prefer Nichols's photographs.

I do, however, have some minor complaints, chiefly that the lay-out of the book is a little too cluttered and that people are in, and intrude upon, too many of the photographs. Thus, my assessment is four-and-a-half stars, but I will round up to five. To a certain extent human reconfiguration of the planet undoubtedly has been and will be inevitable, but books like GLEN CANYON: IMAGES OF A LOST WORLD make one ponder whether more could and should be done to reduce the destructive impact of our species before other natural wonders also are obliterated.

I have been researching Glen Canyon and Lake Powell for years now, for a book I'm working on, and my wife had always taken a very passive interest in what I was doing. She'd listen to me talk and add a comment or two, but it wasn't until I got this book that she realized just what I'd been rambling about.
The photos are just like that.
The black-and-white photos of sinuos, twisting, sandstone places like Dungeon Canyon and the Cathedral-in-the-Desert will take your breath away; they will make you ache to see the places the photos are of, and then they will break your heart when you realize all those places are currently underwater.
Whatever your position on Lake Powell and Glen Canyon is--whether you think that Glen Canyon Dam is a giant, concrete Satan, or that it's a great source of employment, water, and electricity for the people of the West, you will have to admit these photos are beautiful, and of a beautiful place, and that something irreplaceable has been drowned and hidden away.
By all means, get this book.
And get Eleanor Inskip's full-color "The Colorado River through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell." Both books are excellent.

Tad Nichols (memory eternal!) left us a treasure: powerful images of a beautiful canyon now buried under water and mud. The art is amazing, very much in the tradition of Ansel Adams. The loss is stunning: it's difficult to imagine how even hardened landwasters could have condemned this wonder to a watery grave. Now all that's left to us are photographs and memories ... of a world most of us will never have the privilege to see. Enjoy!

A great book for amateurs of photography and fans of the American SouthWest. Although the pictures are in B&W, you get to see the grandeur of Glen Canyon. With such a book you understand why people are still fighting for Glen Canyon dam to be destroyed and Lake Powell to be drained.
For amateurs of history I would also recommend "Ghosts of Glen Canyon", which puts all pictures in their historic and geographic context.