|
|
 |
 |
| |
Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands
"In yesterday's
newspapers and milk cartons, we throw away the broken hearts of trees
every day," Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver's prose and Annie Griffiths Belt's photography
offer a heart-wrenching glimpse of what are becoming far too few precious
jewels of America's landscape in their joint work, "Last
Stand, America's Virgin Lands".
Their effort celebrates natural beauty, while warning of the threats
that imperil it. Kingsolver, a skilled essayist finds a way to sprinkle
dry statistics (...prairie grass roots can survive temperatures
from minus 40 F to 400 F) within vibrant text (Waves of incoming
settlers battled and ultimately beat the tough prairie sod, reinventing
the tool that could cut through it, tapping eagerly into a vein of
soil as black as coal and richer than any dirt yet known.).
In five main chapters Kingsolver covers the wetlands, woodlands, coasts, grasslands and drylands of America, telling the story of their importance and decimation. Her writing offers the poignancy of a little girl who grew up playing barefoot in streams and grasses and lived to see that youth denied a new generation.
Griffiths Belt's photography is equally moving. The National Geographic photographer eschews the marvel of digital photography to glory in the techniques of the past, such as infrared film and hand color tinting of black and white images. Her photographs wander the gamut from illustration to documentation to imagination.
The images are filled with texture and color. They're intimate and aloof, abstract and precise. They celebrate the glory of nature, but spare us the gory. We see foxes and wolves, but not their kills.
Last Stand, America's Virgin Lands was conceived because of the perception that the environment was being neglected, Griffiths Belt said when she proposed the book around the time of the last presidential election.
"I felt if the administration changed, it would be even more important
to speak up," she said during a presentation the pair gave at
the Philadelphia Independence Seaport Museum recently. The event was
hosted by the World Affairs Council.
|
|
|
|
