Grasslands
It is difficult to imagine scenes more politically relevant at this very moment than these photos from America's great grasslands. The pivotal period for most of these places occurred in a time that is a close parallel to our own, so grasslands stand as living, breathing records of an age of upheaval, economic depression and well-meant policy gone wrong. That they persist is testimony to a unique American strength: an evolved and evolving commitment to conservation. Yet they are at the same time not so much a recollection of the past, as they are an exhortation of what we must do to honor this legacy.
—From the Introduction by Richard Manning.
Eight years ago, Nazraeli Press published Don Kirby's first book, Wheatcountry, to wide critical acclaim. We are pleased to announce Kirby's second monograph, Grasslands, which serves both as a companion book to Wheatcountry, and as stand-alone monograph of this important and timely series of photographs. In 2005, Kirby began a major study of the National Grasslands in the United States. The resulting monograph comprises 47 duotone plates, sequenced geographically from America's heartland of Nebraska, the Dakotas, Kansas and Oklahoma through Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho, to the Oregon and California coastlines. Printed in a first edition of 1,000 casebound copies, Grasslands opens with an introductory essay by Richard Manning, and concludes with Jay Dusard's insightful and feisty afterword. Hardcover, 12 x 12, 82 pages, 47 duotone plates.
A special edition of 25 signed copies, presented with a signed gelatin silver print in a handmade clamshell box, is also available, as is a new special edition of Kirby's first book, "Wheatcountry." Special edition copies should be ordered from Nazraeli: www.nazraeli.com
Hardcover, 12 x 12, 72 pages, 47 duotone plates.
978-1-59005-264-8 $50.00
Signed copies available, contact Don.
Wheatcountry books (Published by Nazraeli Press)
The land wears its furrows the way a lion wears the bars of a cage. The picture is the record of a hard lesson taught by an unforgiving landscape. Properly considered, such scenes can teach us our place in the creation. What could be more beautiful than a landscape larger than our ideas? What is more beautiful than a brutally honest face?
—From the Introduction by Richard Manning
Don Kirby grew up turning the surface of the earth upside down, the son of a sharecropper in northwestern Missouri. A half century later, he has emerged as the preeminent photographer of wheat country, a master of both his medium and chosen subject matter. Kirby's sweeping, geometric photographs of wheatfields in the American Northwest manage to convey both a sense of wonder and a deep understanding of the land - our dependence on it for our survival, and its own survival of the uses and abuses we impose upon it. The artist's first monograph, Wheatcountry is printed in a first edition of 2,000 casebound copies. The forty plates are beautifully printed in duotone on matt art paper, accompanied by essays from Richard Manning and Jay Dusard. Don Kirby's photographs have been exhibited and collected throughout the United States.
Hardcover, 12 x 12, 72 pages, 40 duotone plates.
ISBN 1-59005-001-0 $50.00
Signed copies available, contact Don.
You're Not Really Initiated Until Your Eyes are Redder than Your Lips
While Don Kirby was working on his Wheatcountry images (see page 23) he photographed a now-deserted schoolhouse and became fascinated by the generations of graffiti scrawled upon its walls. As is so often the case, some of the most meaningful comments in - and on - life are to found in places where they are not expected. Kirby's black-and-white photographs immortalize pearls of profundity that would more usually inspire removal than recording: the book's title, for example, or the equally delicious "There have been no dragons in my life, only spiders and girls...I could have coped with dragons." Wheatcountry, Don Kirby's first monograph, was published to wide international acclaim, and documented a subject close to the artist's heart since childhood. Of his follow-up One Picture Book, the artist writes: "Printing the graffiti, I became much more aware of the significance this place has for me and the importance I attach to saying something about it. The Wheatcountry book was completed by the essays, which were needed to convey aspects the photographs miss. This statement is complete in the photographs."
Hardcover, 5 1/2 x 7 1/4, 16 pages, 7 duotone plates, 1 original print.
ISBN 1-59005-047-9 $150.00
Limited to 500 numbered and signed copies.