Overview

In Glen Canyon waters rose, inundating petroglyphs and creating Lake Powell. Now the Colorado River basin is experiencing the longest dry spell in modern history—one that shows alarming signs of becoming the new normal. In A New Form of Beauty photographer Peter Goin and writer Peter Friederici tackle science from the viewpoint of art, creating a lyrical exploration in words and photographs, setting Glen Canyon and Lake Powell as the quintessential example of the challenges of perceiving place in a new era of radical change. Through evocative photography and extensive reporting, the two document their visits to the canyon country over a span of many years. By motorboat and kayak, they have ventured into remote corners of the once-huge reservoir to pursue profound questions: What is this place?How do we see it? What will it become? Goin’s full-color photographs are organized in three galleries—Flora and Fauna, Artifacts, and Low Water—interspersed with three essays by Friederici, and an epilogue gallery on Fire. The book includes two foldout photographs, which allow readers to fully see Lake Powell at high water and low water points Contemplating humanity’s role in the world it is creating, Goin and Friederici ask if the uncertainties inherent in Glen Canyon herald an unpredictable new future for every place. They challenge us to question how we look at the world, how we live in it, and what the future will be.

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9780816531929

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Reviews

Few have been more dedicated to tracing the past, present, and future of the American West than Peter Goin, whose photographs reveal our place in the landscape with a concerned and knowing eye. Yet never has his work felt more apocalyptic Lake Powell, where we water-skied while Rome burned, offers a most fitting backdrop for our dire future. This is a sobering volume, and more than ever I feel I am looking at an elegy for the West. Toby Jurovics, Chief Curator and Holland Curator of American Western Art, Joslyn Art Museum The desert Southwest is a land of consummate paradox, and Lake Powell is, in a sense, the epicenter of paradox, disturbing and beautiful, inhumanly vast and yet vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts.<i>A New Form of Beauty</i>is an act of both grieving and celebration. Like the place it explores, this work is sublimely unsettling. Scott Slovic, coeditor of<i>Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data</i>

Few have been more dedicated to tracing the past, present, and future of the American West than Peter Goin, whose photographs reveal our place in the landscape with a concerned and knowing eye. Yet never has his work felt more apocalyptic Lake Powell, where we water-skied while Rome burned, offers a most fitting backdrop for our dire future. This is a sobering volume, and more than ever I feel I am looking at an elegy for the West. Toby Jurovics, Chief Curator and Holland Curator of American Western Art, Joslyn Art Museum The desert Southwest is a land of consummate paradox, and Lake Powell is, in a sense, the epicenter of paradox, disturbing and beautiful, inhumanly vast and yet vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts. A New Form of Beauty is an act of both grieving and celebration. Like the place it explores, this work is sublimely unsettling. Scott Slovic, coeditor of Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data

Author Information

Peter Goin is the author or co-author of more than fifteen books of photography focusing on western American landscapes, including Time and Time Again: History, Rephotography, and Preservation in the Chaco World with R. Lucy Lippard. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and is Foundation Professor of Art at the University of Nevada, Reno. Peter Friederici is editor of What Has Passed and What Remains: Oral Histories of Northern Arizona's Changing Landscapes and author of Nature's Restoration: People and Places on the Front Lines of Conservation, among other books. He directs the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.

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