Sightings: A Maine Coast Odyssey [Hardcover]

Peter Ralston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1991

When he was a young man finding his way in the world, award-winning photographer Peter Ralston was introduced to the beautiful and austere coast of Maine by his friends Andrew and Betsy Wyeth. It was an introduction that was to change his life forever. In Maine's coastal communities, and especially on its islands, Ralston found what every artist is looking for: a place to spend a creative lifetime, a subject that embodies every element of human experience. Includes an afterword by Betsy and Andrew Wyeth. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Peter Ralston has amassed a ... treasury of the magical scenes that visitors to Maine invariably seek and too rarely find." -- Daniel E. O'Leary, director, Portland Museum of Art

"This is the best book I've seen capturing the character of Maine's working coast. It gave me goose bumps." -- David Cousens, president, Maine Lobsterman's Assoc.

"What an absolutely exquisite book!" -- William F. Buckley Jr.

About the Author

Peter Ralston’s photography has appeared in 34 books and more than 50 magazines, including American Artist, Architectural Digest, Art and Antiques, Connoisseur, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, People, Smithsonian, and Time, as well as on NBC’s Today Show. Galleries in this country and abroad have also exhibited his images. Instrumental in forming Maine's Island Institute, Peter serves today as its executive vice president. He lives in Camden, Maine.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Down East Books (January 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892724080
• ISBN-13: 978-0892724086
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 9.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,163,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A long term investment in pleasure, September 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Sightings: A Maine Coast Odyssey (Hardcover)

Although the islands off the Maine coast have been photographed many times, no one has captured the islands and their people like Peter Ralston in Sightings: A Maine Coast Odyssey. There is a fundamental honesty and integrity to these photographs unavailable anywhere else. The beauty of the photographs comes from the tension between an unforgiving environment and the rugged individualism of the remaining year-round island residents' struggle to survive a declining fish population and a growing, homogenizing second-home tourist population. Sightings reflects Peter Ralston's unique perspective as both an observer and a participant in attempts to maintain the islander's unique way of life.

Peter's humility and willingness to let the islands and their residents to speak for themselves results in deceptively-simple photographs which gain impact with each repeated viewing. The simplest photographs involve the viewer by inviting speculation about both past and the future. Sightings also chronicles with brief, unobtrusive text Peter Ralston's role as co-founder of the Island Institute and an artistic eye fined-tuned by his personal friendship with the Wyeth family.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Slice of Maine for Your Coffee Table, April 7, 2007

By 

Scarlet Harlot "Scarlet Harlot" (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sightings: A Maine Coast Odyssey (Hardcover)

I'm not big on coffee table books, nor am I really big on photo coffee table books, but when we saw this book in Camden, Maine, we had to pick it up. The pictures in this book are stunning, and they reveal Maine in a way that most tourists never get to see.

This book is not a collection of the same 30 pictures you see on postcards and prints whenever you go to Costal Maine. Instead, it reveals seldom-visited islands off the coast, pictures of fishermen and lobstermen doing their daily rounds, and popular tourist destinations (Boothbay, Camden, Rockland) in the dead of winter. The Maine nobody but the locals get to see. This photographer has got quite an eye, and an uncanny way of catching feeling in even the most seemingly benign photos. He beautifully captures the feel of Monhegan in a picture that simply shows dozens of sheets blowing on clotheslines. He even manages to turn what would be seen as grotesque by the average tourist, such as the skull of a cormorant, or the mass of feathers from a dead seagull, into surprisingly beautiful captures of the Maine coast. This is a book of few words, mainly letting the pictures do all the talking (which is good, because what words there are in the book are sort of... Schmaltzy).

This book captures the beauty of the Maine coast with photos of the coast at sunrise, the sea during a storm, and lobster traps submerged underwater, but also carries with it at times a mournful feel, as he also captures the longing for a time long departed from the coast. Abandoned schoolhouses, fallen barns, and desolate tourist attractions in the dead of winter provide a somber glimpse of the life experienced by the locals, but never seen by the average visitor. You get the definite impression that if the real coast of Maine, which reflects the lives of its residents and the true identity of the coast away from heavily walked tourist Mecca, were put into a book, it'd be this book.

I'm truly glad that we plopped down the money to get this book, in spite of its rather high price. This book represents the Maine my husband and I know from our trips, and is a refreshing break from standard tourist takes on an area we personally know and love.