Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

~ Antony Decaneas (Editor), (Author), Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Corporate Author), Clifford S. Ackley (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...With striking clarity, he captures the uniqueness of individual peaks, as well as the grandeur of alpine ranges." -- Audubon

"An astonishing look at a lifetime of rugged landscapes." -- Concord Sunday Monitor

Bradford Washburns mountain photographs just may change the way you look at mountains, and at yourself. -- Outdoor Explorer

Offers a spectacular glimpse of the high places of the world through the eyes of a most remarkable man. -- (Worcester, MA Sunday Telegram)

Some of the best photographs from Washburns career... -- Rock & Ice magazine

Product Description

Traveling the world for eight decades, mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and aerial photographer Bradford Washburn has documented the landscape from the Grand Canyon to the Alps, from Mount McKinley to Mount Everest. Genius has inspired him to pioneer photographic techniques that capture the most remote and inaccessible points on earth under conditions worthy of a stunt man. Genius has also transformed his photos-conceived for a purely functional purpose-into works of expressive art. Now the career of America's most celebrated mountain photographer is presented for the first time in book form.

In Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography, one hundred large-format mountain photographs, selected from more than 10,000 images, take the reader through Washburn's lifetime of accomplishments. Aerial images of high mountains, looking more like bold relief maps, are captured in extreme raking light. There are picture essays of early Alaskan expeditions-striking modern still lifes of supply caches and camp conditions-plus portraits of team members and colorful characters and situations encountered along the way. Additional aerial photographs reveal, in breathtaking clarity, the workings of the earth, continuously transformed by upheavals and erosions, and the slow march and retreat of glaciers.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 142 pages
• Publisher: Mountaineers Books; illustrated edition edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898866898
• ISBN-13: 978-0898866896
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 9.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,014,168 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning beyond belief, February 17, 2000

By	Frank Paris (Beaverton, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography (Paperback)

You will not believe your eyes when you see this book! For the most part, these are large-format, black and white, aerial photographs taken mainly in Alaska, but also some from the Swiss Alps and the American Southwest. Apparently, they originally had the practical purpose of surveying the land, but they have astonishing artistic value, and the reproductions are stunning. Many of the pictures were apparently taken with the sun low in the sky, and so the shadows sharply etch the relief, and these pictures almost spring out of the page. We live on a gloriously beautiful planet, and these photographs capture that beauty from a unique perspective and show it off as seldom seen before.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Picture the mountains in all their glory..., January 14, 2003

By	searagen (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography (Paperback)

This book is a marvelous record of mountain exploration and photography with photos that span a period of almost 70 years. This small collection representing much less than 1% of Washburn's photographs is a remarkable record of photography rivaling Ansel Adams or Vittorio Sella. Although the photos were originally taken to support his geological or surveying research or to provide guide shots for climbers, Washburn soon realized that he had a knack for taking photographs as art that were as good as any being produced by other photographers.

This book may be a disappointment for those who want expedition photographs as few of the photographs include people. Indeed, having a few more pictures of people would have warranted five stars. Yet, many of the pictures are aerial photographs so the lack of people in many is not surprising. What makes it ultimately worthwhile is the crispness of the pictures, the attention to details on the ridges and valleys of the mountains, the patterns revealed in the flow of glaciers, and so on.

One other point of interest is that this book was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2000 Banff Mountain Book Festival -- the only pure photography book to win that award.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Museum quality visual images, March 15, 2001

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography (Paperback)

Bradford Washburn roamed the globe for eighty years as a mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and aerial photographer. In Bradford Washington: Mountain Photography, Tony Decaneas as assembled one hundred full-size landscape mountain photographs from the more than ten thousand images that Bradford made during his lifetime of photographic accomplishments. From the Grand Canyon to the Alps, from Mount McKinley to Mount Everest, these black and white landscape photos of mountain peaks and picture portraits of team members and colorful characters that are each of them museum quality visual images showcasing Bradford's photography as having risen to the level of fine art.