The story of water in the West, climate change, and the birth of modern environmentalism told through the history of Glen Canyon on the Colorado River.
ABOUT THE BOOK: 1963 construction of the Glen Canyon Dam and the resulting flooding and destruction of the red-rock canyon along the Arizona Utah border became a catalysis for the modern environmentalist movement.Using as their starting point photographer Eliot Porter's ode to the lost River The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado, the authors use archival images & documents and contemporary photographs & text to show "the madness of the past and the terror of the future"¯.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Writer & Activist REBECCA SOLNIT is the author of 17 books, including Men Explain Things to Me and The Mother of All Questions. She lives in San Francisco.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS: Photographer Mark Klett lives in Tempe, Arizona, teaches at Arizona State University. Prior books include Mark Klett: Saguaros and Mark Klett: Camino del Diablo. Photographer Byron Wolfe teaches at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia.
The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado
Photographs by Mark Klett, Byron Wolfe. Text by Rebecca Solnit.
In 1963 the waters began rising behind Glen Canyon Dam and 170 miles of the Colorado River slowly disappeared as the riverbed and surrounding canyons filled with water. Environmentalists considered it a disaster and mourned Glen Canyon as gone forever. The Sierra Club joined forces with photographer Eliot Porter to document what would be lost under the dam’s waters, resulting in the publication of the landmark 1963 photobook The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado.
But in an unexpected victory that speaks to the pervasive disaster of climate change, the reservoir is now declining and the Colorado River is coming back. Photographers Byron Wolfe (born 1967) and Mark Klett (born 1952), along with writer Rebecca Solnit (born 1961), spent five years exploring the place as expectations and possibilities changed, and the river reemerged at the upper end of the reservoir.
In dialogue with Porter’s book, Klett and Wolfe retraced the physical locations where Porter made his photographs, now often submerged by the reservoir’s waters. Solnit’s accompanying text meditates on the meanings and histories of the place, drawing from both the trio’s explorations and archival research.
Drowned River is a book about climate change, about “the madness of the past and the terror of the future” (as Solnit puts it). But it is also a book about how photography can describe beauty and trouble simultaneously, and what it takes to understand a place and to come to terms with the changes we have set in motion.
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Porter’s images brought attention to the place, and galvanized the Sierra Club and the growing environmental movement’s opposition to similar projects in the future.
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FORMAT: Hbk, 11.25 x 13 in. / 212 pgs / 80 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $65.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $87 GBP £57.00 ISBN: 9781942185253 PUBLISHER: Radius Books AVAILABLE: 4/24/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Drowned River The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado
Published by Radius Books. Photographs by Mark Klett, Byron Wolfe. Text by Rebecca Solnit.
In 1963 the waters began rising behind Glen Canyon Dam and 170 miles of the Colorado River slowly disappeared as the riverbed and surrounding canyons filled with water. Environmentalists considered it a disaster and mourned Glen Canyon as gone forever. The Sierra Club joined forces with photographer Eliot Porter to document what would be lost under the dam’s waters, resulting in the publication of the landmark 1963 photobook The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado.
But in an unexpected victory that speaks to the pervasive disaster of climate change, the reservoir is now declining and the Colorado River is coming back. Photographers Byron Wolfe (born 1967) and Mark Klett (born 1952), along with writer Rebecca Solnit (born 1961), spent five years exploring the place as expectations and possibilities changed, and the river reemerged at the upper end of the reservoir.
In dialogue with Porter’s book, Klett and Wolfe retraced the physical locations where Porter made his photographs, now often submerged by the reservoir’s waters. Solnit’s accompanying text meditates on the meanings and histories of the place, drawing from both the trio’s explorations and archival research.
Drowned River is a book about climate change, about “the madness of the past and the terror of the future” (as Solnit puts it). But it is also a book about how photography can describe beauty and trouble simultaneously, and what it takes to understand a place and to come to terms with the changes we have set in motion.
