Editorials
Library Journal
The line of a poem by Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda opens this book and inspired its title. However, a different line also seems to summarize the atmosphere Scheinbaum (photography, Coll. of Santa Fe) creates with the 114 duotones contained herein: "Silence is intensified into a stone." The scenes of monuments, be they humanmade or natural, are meditative, with few people around to disturb the focus on sublime aesthetics. And because there is no text accompanying the individual photos (except where locations are noted), interpretation is left up to the viewer. Scheinbaum shot these images from 1994 to 2005 in the American Southwest; New York City; Washington, DC; continental Europe; the British Isles; Asia; and Easter Island. In the opening essay, "Rock of Ages," Jo Anne Van Tilburg (archaeology, UCLA) insightfully puts the photos in context by discussing stone as material, stone as medium, stone carving and building, stone in the landscape, and stone as substantial witness. The vertical and horizontal photographs are all in a small rectangular format, which makes them appear slablike in themselves. Some are of closeup details; others are distance views-all are beautiful. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.
—Anne Marie Lane