Desert: The Mojave and Death Valley (Hardcover)

by Janice Emily Bowers (Author), Jack W. Dykinga (Photographer)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
When rain finally comes to "the land of little rain," the results are spectacular. Desert washes run thick with water only to become, a few months later, a raging current of wildflowers. But even drought doesn't drain the desert of its stark beauty. In Desert, Jack Dykinga has assembled a stunning collection of photographs that shows the Mojave Desert in all its moods.

The images are truly remarkable, particularly those with the warm colors and long shadows of dusk and dawn, when more than half of the 80 photographs were taken. Mountains, rocks, and water are typical winning subjects, but wildflowers are particularly well served by Dykinga, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer with two other books on desert landscapes. That wildflowers should be so prominent is no surprise, since many photographs document the sensational desert bloom that followed the El Niño winter of 1997-1998.

Janice Emily Bowers, a botanist and writer, brings the desert to life with her first-person narrative of kit fox sightings, wandering boulders, and basic desert ecology. She also describes the increasing threats to the more than 100 rare plants and animals in the Mojave. Dykinga's selectivity--not one photograph shows any trace of human activities--is balanced by Bowers's portrait of a desert at risk. They succeed in their mission to make new friends for the desert and renew old ones. This elegant book is really a reminder that the Mojave and Death Valley are worth protecting, saving, and visiting. --Pete Holloran

From Library Journal
Covering large areas of Southern California and Nevada as well as portions of Arizona and Utah, the Mojave Desert (the smallest North American desert) and Death Valley remain a mystery to most Americans. This collection of large-format color photographs by Pulitzer-Prize winner Dykinga and accompanying text by nature writer/naturalist Bowers should help to demystify the area and demonstrate the stark beauty to be found there. The book's topics include mysterious moving rocks, singing sand dunes, desert flora and fauna, and the need for continued protection. Coinciding partly with an Arizona Highways traveling photography exhibition, this book is recommended for all regional and most public and academic collections. [BOMC selection.]ATim J. Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, W.
-ATim J. Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, WA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 143 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810932385
• ISBN-13: 978-0810932388
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 10.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #921,500 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular photography of a beautiful desert, December 27, 1999

By	William R. Lane (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews

The photographs are stunning of Death Valley, Red Rock Conservaiton Area, and the East Mojave National Scenic Area. This area west of my home in Las Vegas is very large and very beautiful. The photogrpahs are a delight, especially the wildflower photogrpahs taken after the El Nino rains.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mastefterful work by one of the world's best photographers, March 20, 2002

By	Ellis D Vener (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

There is a knock at my door and here is the UPS man delivering my order from Amazon.com. Among the books: Desert, The Mojave and Death Valley Photographs by Jack Dykinga, text by Janice Emily Bowers. I barely had time to read more than a page or two of the text before it made me want to go straight to the photos to see the place she was clearly, and intelligently writing about. And I was not disappointed: It was overwhelmed with joy of at being able to share the keeness of Mr. Dykinga's fine and perceptive photographic vision of that place. This is a more subtle body of work than the previous books based around his photographs.

The Sonoran Desert had a similar effect on me years ago and expanded my sense of what ilandscape photography could be. Stone Canyons did not have as great of affect on me as the first book

More than anything else, the images in this book remind me why the large format camera is such a tremendous aid to seeing something more clearly and perceptively than you can with the naked eye. even more so than a 35mm or medium format or easily portable digital gear can. Some of the photos even have a sense of humor to them and when did you last see that in a photograph of a natural landscape? The reproduction of the images appears to be first rate and the design and typography of the book match its contents in quality.

In short there are wonderful things to be found in this book.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dry, but not Arid, December 13, 2004

By	Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

As I went through this book, I kept asking myself, am I looking at the dessert or am I looking at the landscape photographs of Jack Dykinga? I've been to the Mojave and to Death Valley and I don't remember them looking so beautiful.

Dykinga's style reminded me of the work of Eliot Porter, with modern film stock. Most of his pictures have the same subtle quality, created by the use of analogous colors, that is, colors near each other on the color wheel, and varying only by tint or small changes in hue. A Dykinga picture almost always has one dominant hue like brown or tan or blue, and the hue rarely feels intense, even if it's a field of California Poppies.

It's obvious that Dykinga's work utilizes a large format camera. Everything is in sharp focus from foreground to distant mountains, thanks to small apertures and the ability to twist the light through his camera. This means that the picture is not going to immediately draw your attention to one aspect of the scene by controlled focus. More likely, the viewer will have to work his way through the picture, discovering things along the way.

The layout of the book seems to be well considered. Quite often two plates with similar subject matter will face each other and there is a synergistic effect from the comparison. For example, I delighted in examining two facing pictures of desert sunflowers. In both cases the yellow orange flowers have a hilly background, but one group of flowers is pushing up through dried-out, cracked clay, while in the other picture the flowers are growing from a small body of water collected for a brief time from rainfall. The mud and the water are both magenta in color but the textures are completely different. The thoughts that arose from the juxtaposition were not only about the variety of the desert but also about the nature of color and vision.

I suppose one reason that I never saw the dessert the photographer portrays is because most of the pictures were taken at the golden hours of sunrise and sunset. To have been that many places in the desert at just those times would have taken me months and months. At the very least, I can be a philistine and thank Dykinga for saving me a lot of time.

As to the text in the book, my feeling is that it probably has to be included for marketing purposes. Janice Bowers' essays seemed poetic and show that she loves the desert, but like most such commentaries, they do little to illuminate the photographer's work. I suppose the essays are worth reading once. The pictures on the other hand can bear many, many viewings and add something to the sense of the place each time.

I finally concluded that I was looking at the desert through Jack Dykinga's eyes when I viewed this book. I resolved to return to the actual desert again and see if I could continue to see it through his eyes.