The Soul of Vermont [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Richard W. Brown (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Brown is my favorite upcountry artist with a camera. -- Maxine Kumin, The New York Times Book Review

Product Description
Six distinct seasons are depicted in stunning color photographs by Vermont's premiere photographer. For more than thirty years Richard Brown has been taking photographs of his adopted home state of Vermont. Now he brings together his favorite images in this ode to the land and its people, to share his own deeply personal vision of this beloved and picturesque state. Richard Brown's Vermont has six seasons, not four. The familiar glory of fall foliage, when the hills are giddy with color, gives way to the austere "Off-Season," that brief November transition before the snow flies, when the bones of the landscape are revealed in fallow fields and the bare limbs of trees. In deepest winter the ubiquity of snow renders even more vivid those few colors that remain—the cobalt blue of a shadow on snow, the warm red of a barn. "Mud and Maple" celebrates both the convivial season of flowing sap and the perennial indignities of impassable dirt roads. In the spring lambs frolic in greened-up pastures, and all-too-fleeting summer months bring a burst of industry to gardens and fields before September's frost. Brown's soulful images create a distinctive photographic portrait of Vermont's landscape. He chronicles with great affection the people who still work the land, and without sentiment celebrates a rapidly disappearing way of life. 120 color photographs.

• Brown's photographs are serious works of art and bring a highly personal aesthetic to an often hackneyed genre.
• Brown is the photographer perhaps most identified with the state.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Countryman Press; 1 edition (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 088150467X
• ISBN-13: 978-0881504675
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 9.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #622,264 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #38 in	Books > History > United States > State & Local > Vermont
  #53 in	Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Travel > United States > New England
  #96 in	Books > Travel > United States > States > Vermont

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, November 5, 2001

By	"jadav" (Fletcher, NC United States) - See all my reviews

I was born and raised in Vermont, have lived out of the state for years, visiting annually. This book really did bring me home to the Soul of Vermont. The photographs are wonderful. They just take you in. If you want to spend some time in Vermont and can't make the trip, this is THE book for you.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richard W. Brown Gives Us the Treasure Of New England!, July 30, 2003

By	Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I first remember seeing one of Richard Brown's spectacular photographs on he cover of Country Journal, a magazine devoted to celebrating rural life styles that ran a span of several years in the early to late 1980s. Brown's stunning photographic style showcased the day-to-day confluence of ordinary Vermonters living their lives in the rural splendor of the Northeast Kingdom in the far reaches of the lovely "People's Republic Of Vermont". Often Country Journal would feature a number of his photos inside each issue, so one subscribing the magazine began to look for them both on the cover and inside, as well. Indeed, his work was what made me search for the latest issue at the beginning of each month.

Here he stuns us with the majesty of Vermont as it transpires through its incredibly beautiful cycle of seasons in a way that only a photographer of such obvious abilities could. Herein he shares many of his favorites, and several of these I have seen before in other venues. The problem with a book filled with such gorgeously shot, developed and produced rural photographs is that one is tempted to carefully extract them for framing on the wall. They are really that terrific! Photographs range from shots of landscapes to silhouettes of a farmhouse steaming against the winter cold, from children walking down a dirt-covered tree lined country road exploding into autumn's extravagance to an elderly gentleman leaning against a barn with his favorite cat. One sits transfixed by the sheer variety of scenes and colors so native to the rural landscapes and personal portraits. This is a wonderful travelogue into the heart of New England.

Brown shows us all of the changes that transpire in the North country, a place where the changes are so frequent and so momentous that they comprise six seasons, adding both the dreaded mud season of early springtime on the one hand, and the so-called `off-season' after the autumn glory has been swept away, leaving cold bare trees and a hauntingly spare and vacant atmosphere to settle over the region on the other. Listen a few times to folksinger Tom Rush's rendition of "Urge For Going" a few times on the CD player and you will get the idea. Brown's imaginative hand is lovingly apparent in this book, displaying both the soulful visages of local inhabitants and the unique flavor of the haunting ever-changing scenery so typically Vermont. This is a distinctive and memorable recreation of what we love so much about being native new Englanders! Enjoy!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes Words Are Wholly Inadequate...., February 26, 2003

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Reviewing a book such as this again supports the truth of that old bromide, "a picture is worth a thousand words." At least no words of mine can do full justice to Brown's talent as a photographer. He settled in Whitingham in 1968 and began to teach in a small rural school. During the years since then, he has taken thousands of photographs of Vermont in search of what is, to his own eye, that state's unique character. As he explains in the Introduction, over time he shifted his attention from Vermont's natural beauty to what he calls "the cultivated landscape." A preponderance of the photographs in this volume (many of which not previously published) were taken in the "Northeast Kingdom." He organizes his work according to the seasons which include the "Off-Season" from late-October until Thanksgiving. For at least a few of those who read this review, my comments about Brown may be of some interest but, I realize, merely suggest a context for the creation of works of art which I lack the talent to describe. If you cannot visit Vermont in person, do so by seeing it through Brown's eyes. If you cherish his book as much as I do, you will also want to have a copy of The Beauty of Vermont, edited by Tom Slayton. As both books clearly indicate, the soul of Vermont is its beauty...and beauty its soul.