Synopsis
Corn State. Prairie State. Garden of the West. Each of these nicknames for the State of Illinois has a truth to tell. But not the whole truth. The world-class lens of Willard Clay reveals secrets about his home state that justify another nickname: the State of Hidden Delights. For Wild & Scenic Illinois, Willard Clay has crisscrossed the state's byways and trails in his search for the rare, the beautiful, the seldom-seen jewels of the Illinois landscape. Wild & Scenic Illinois is the most discerning and the most rhapsodic portrait of the natural face of Illinois ever published. Clay has gleaned images from every province in Illinois, ranging across all seasons, times, and natural subjects. His photographs are systematically grouped into Illinois's various landscape provinces, described in an informative text by naturalist Robert Hutchinson. In the photographer's introduction, Willard Clay shares his tips for tackling the technical challenges of shooting the landscape of Illinois. Formerly a professor of botany, Clay traces the source of his photographic inspiration to his close and patient observation of the face of nature.
About the Authors:
Willard Clay is one of our nation's most distinguished landscape photographers. He was chosen to contribute to the Daybreak 2000 Project and to The Nature of North America: Images by North America's Premier Nature Photographers. He is the sole photographer of eleven books and a contributor to scores of books and such magazines as Time, Arizona Highways, Audubon, Readers Digest, and Sierra. Before embarking on a photographic career a quarter of a century ago, Clay was professor of botany at the University of Arizona for eleven years. He now teaches annual photography workshops at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute.
Robert Hutchinson is the author of a dozen books on natural history and editor of BrownTrout Publishers' Wild & Scenic book series. He was formerly a research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Library Journal
When is a coffee-table book not a coffee-table book? When the subject, despite hundreds of glorious full-color photographs, is the physiography of a pair of states here, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Physiography, the study of land forms in relation to one another, is a subject with applications for earth scientists, geographers, people who live on the land, and, in this instance, photographers. These handsome books, just oversized at 12" x 12", highlight the talents of two leading landscape photographers, with scenes that range from pristine waterways to bucolic farmlands. Clay and Mulligan spent eight and four years, respectively, photographing natural sanctuaries to cover every physiographic section in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and their efforts provide a nice, natural progression through each state. The text by Hutchinson (formerly an earth scientist at New York's American Museum of Natural History and editor of the "Wild & Scenic" series) offers the reader an introduction to the subject of physiography and a detailed analysis of its features, including a province map and chart for each state and a brief political history as it relates to physiography. Unfortunately, much of the text is clunky, and some of Hutchinson's claims are dubious (e.g., that Pennsylvania has the most varied scenery of all the states has he ever been to California?). Nevertheless, this is a logical purchase for large regional and academic libraries. Janet Ross, formerly with Sparks Branch Lib., NV Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.