Mariana Cook

New York-based photographer Mariana Cook is known for her character studies of persons both in and out of the public eye. Among her previous bestselling photobooks are Mathematicians, Faces of Science, Mothers and Sons and Fathers and Daughters. Her latest collection introduces us to some of the women and men who are the faces of the human rights revolution, among them former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the 39th American President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Cook traveled the world to photograph and interview her subjects, and the accompanying texts--some written by the subjects themselves, others edited from interviews with them--share their insights into the nature and importance of human rights, and their reasons for devoting themselves to that cause. Through them we are reminded of the power of a single individual--one face, one voice--to transform the world. These human rights pioneers seek no personal gain: any rewards are the benefits that we all enjoy when the rule of democratic law protects us. The pictures and the words in this book show the strength of human character that has made human rights such a powerful movement across the world in our lifetime.

Photographer Mariana Cook (born 1955) is best known for her intimate character studies of persons both in and out of the public eye, as published in her much-acclaimed collections Fathers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons, Generations of Women, Couples, Faces of Science and Mathematicians. Cook departs from her portrait work with Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries, a project that was conceived one day at her home on Martha's Vineyard, when 56 cows strayed through a crumbling section of the stone wall she shares with her neighbor. From this serendipitous moment of inspiration, Cook embarked on an eight-year journey, travelling from New England to the American South, Britain, Ireland, the Mediterranean and Peru in pursuit of dry stone walls. Far from being a conventional travelogue, these beautiful black-and-white photographs portray the wall in landscape, the wall as abstract form, and the return of rocks to nature. Cook is fascinated with the juxtaposition of stones as an instance of geometric composition, as well as with the resonance between walls of different cultures. With a tribute from Wendell Berry and essays providing a context for the walls of each region, the resulting collection captures a fundamental aspect of the relationship human beings forge with the land they inhabit.