This Land Is Your Land: Across America By Air

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This Land Is Your Land offers a unique perspective on the American landscape, making the familiar fantastic, as well as an aesthetic experience of dizzying proportions. Marilyn Bridges takes us on an inspiring journey, as we look down together on the fleeting moments and lasting signatures of the United States that are etched on our continent. An aerial photographer who has explored ancient cultures around the world for more than a decade, Bridges has now focused her attention on a subject no less intriguing: the grandeur of America.By flying and photographing at low altitudes, and by maintaining a sensuous closeness with her subject, Bridges avoids the simplistic representation of landscape as mere design. Divided regionally, This Land Is Your Land accents the variety of America, but follows civilization's uneasy interaction with the environment as a common thread. We see the earth shaped and reshaped to service humanity. Monuments rise to celebrate our achievements even as nature wards off intrusion. Fledgling communities spring up among lava and sand. Scars left by clear-cutting, mining, and nuclear waste raise concerns for the future. Yet here, too, there is ironic wit. The towering presidential portraits at Mount Rushmore appear dwarfed by surrounding mountains. The Statue of Liberty hides in plain sight, completely swathed in scaffolding. From the intimacy of a farmhouse to the majesty of the Grand Canyon, Bridges's original vision provides an unequaled perspective on the land in which we live.In the Book's Essay by acclaimed writer William Least Heat-Moon, and the Afterword by Bridges, we are given insight into the photographer's working process and the inspiration behind her images. Certainly, This Land Is Your Land contains an urgent environmental message; in every photograph we sense a longing for a purer time, before humanity dismissed the land's indigenous curves and flow in favor of the urban grid. Still, Bridges offers no facile solutions or sentimental appeals. Faced with the jumble of American progress, we look for a vision of nature as idyllic--only to be awed by the savage forces unleashed by Mount St. Helens and the Kilauea volcano. Never what you expect, This Land Is Your Land provides page after page of visual surprises. The book inspires in us a haunting and profound admiration for a vibrant land which will prevail long after our civilization has gone.

Hardcover: 108 pages

Publisher: Aperture; 1st edition (April 30, 1997)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0893816043

ISBN-13: 978-0893816049

Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 11.5 x 0.8 inches

Shipping Weight: 3 pounds

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Best Sellers Rank: #3,152,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #105 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography & Video > Architectural > Bridges #475 in Books > Travel > Food, Lodging & Transportation > Air Travel #2643 in Books > Science & Math > Earth Sciences > Geography > Regional

Aerial photos in black and white are past their prime these days, especially when photographers like Jim Wark and Alex MacLean have delivered remarkable color work. MacLean's book Over: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point is probably the gold standard for this aerial creativity but I've always had a soft spot for Marilyn Bridges book because of her different approach to earth photography. This kind of photography is usually done on bright sunny days to get the maximum clarity between the photographer and the ground. Ms Bridges gives her images a unique edge by going for shadows and this produces some quite remarkable photos of industry and the landscape.The seventy-seven photos are split into four sections: Northeast; South; Midwest; West. They are a mixture of industrial, rural, agricultural, military and natural. There are plenty of aerial photo books of cities so there are few here, the Chrysler Building, Jefferson Memorial for example. Mostly the pictures show man-made America from a few hundred feet, people and their shadows are clearly visible.The book's large page size, excellent semi-matt gloss and three hundred screen make the photos sparkle. An additional mark of quality is the duotone separation work from Thomas Palmer. Well worth getting if you want to see a different take on the surface from above.

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