From Library Journal
No region is better suited to the long, seemingly recumbent format of panoramic photographs than the sprawling prairies, mountains, and deserts of the American West. The format not only emphasizes the strength of the horizon but also encompasses what might otherwise be considered minor parts of a landscape trees, rocks, and other natural features at the margins of the frame. This book draws on a major exhibition held recently at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, offering a fine sampling of panoramic photographs of place and people in the West. It includes exquisitely reproduced works in both color and black and white from the 1850s to the present, embracing an impressive array of photographers, among them Eadweard Muybridge, E.O. Goldbeck, and Catherine Opie. This beautifully designed book provides an excellent critique of the panoramic photograph as an art form within its appropriate historical context. Highly recommended. Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, IL Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Great Wide Open: Panoramic Photographs of the American West FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Throughout the nineteenth century, the drive to explore and conquer the American West was evocatively captured in lush photographic imagery. The convergence of photography's invention with western expansion has left a rich legacy of visual materials that document and comment upon the vast spaces, mysterious features, and "exotic" peoples of the trans-Mississippi territory. The Great Wide Open focuses on concepts of the "panoramic", or the wide-angle view, tracing how this specific form of visual representation amplified the idea of the American West as a supposedly virgin and sparsely populated land of endless resources, and an ideal landscape for American enterprise." "Covering topics ranging from settlement to tourism and environmental change, The Great Wide Open examines myths of transition from uncivilized vastness to civilized order, the ongoing dialogue between the past and the present, and the creation of new narratives as well as the substantiation of old ones. Forty plates of panoramic photographs of the American West, dating from the 1850s to the present day - including work by Eadweard Muybridge, E.O. Goldbeck, Carleton E. Watkins, and, among contemporary photographers, Mark Klett, Catherine Opie, Karen Halverson, and Gus Foster - chart the mythologization of the American Dream."--BOOK JACKET.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
No region is better suited to the long, seemingly recumbent format of panoramic photographs than the sprawling prairies, mountains, and deserts of the American West. The format not only emphasizes the strength of the horizon but also encompasses what might otherwise be considered minor parts of a landscape trees, rocks, and other natural features at the margins of the frame. This book draws on a major exhibition held recently at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, offering a fine sampling of panoramic photographs of place and people in the West. It includes exquisitely reproduced works in both color and black and white from the 1850s to the present, embracing an impressive array of photographers, among them Eadweard Muybridge, E.O. Goldbeck, and Catherine Opie. This beautifully designed book provides an excellent critique of the panoramic photograph as an art form within its appropriate historical context. Highly recommended. Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Art & Photography
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