Hard Rain: Our Headlong Collision with Nature - Softcover

Mark Edwards; Bob Dylan (Lyric)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1905588011 ISBN 13: 9781905588015

Publisher: Still Pictures Moving Words Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

July 20, 1969. As Neil Armstrong takes man's first steps on the moon, Mark Edwards is lost in a lunar landscape on the edge of the Sahara desert. He is rescued by a Tuareg nomad, who takes him to his people, makes a fire and produces a cassette player. Bob Dylan sings "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall". As Dylan piles image upon image, the idea comes to Edwards of illustrating each line of the song. In the years that follow, he travels to over 150 countries to photograph our headlong collision with nature. Hard Rain is the result - an unforgettable collection of photographs illustrating Dylan's prophetic lyric.

Images from Edwards' personal archive, plus contributions by Sebastião Salgado, Chris Steele-Perkins and others, combine with the words of rock music's great, poetic writer to form the centrepiece of Hard Rain.

The book and touring exhibition will inspire readers to participate in the debate about how we can best address the pressing issues of climate change, habitat loss, and poverty.

This revised, expanded edition includes essays by Robert May, John Elkington & Geoff Lye, Jonathon Porritt and David Bohm, and over 50 new photographs.

"A masterpiece that summons up the ghosts of our past and a vision of a future that is ours to change."
Tim Smit, Chief Executive and co-founder, The Eden Project

"We need to give a damn, and here we can see, if we take a few minutes, why we should. This is the power of art."
Colin Tudge

"Your book is a piece of sustained beauty. I treasure it."
Arundhati Roy

About this title

Review

"So why is Hard Rain so stunning and so moving, and why does it feel so right? Part of the answer, of course, lies in the quality of the visual images. But the thematic bundling of these images with Dylan's song could still seem gauche or exploitative were it not for two factors. The most important of these is the sheer brilliance of the dialogue Edwards has created between the words and the images, the way they synthesise into some third form that combines the stillness of a picture with the urgency of a ballad. Edwards's conjunctions are so carefully and thoughtfully constructed that they enforce on the viewer a kind of tact that wards off mere voyeurism." -- Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times, 10 May 2008

From the Publisher

The Hard Rain exhibition, first launched at the Eden Project in Cornwall in May 2006, has been displayed at over 30 venues in principal cities around the world, and been seen by over 10 million people.

Recent venues include the UN Building in New York, the botanical gardens of Tasmania, Cape Town and Dublin, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh and Chester Zoo.

About this edition

• Publisher: Still Pictures Moving Words Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1905588011
• ISBN 13: 9781905588015
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184