This magical glimpse of the Southwest as seen by master photographer David Muench offers intriguing insights into his creative process.
Welcome to an unforgettable experience!I was fortunate enough to be asked to write the essay for this fabulous book of photography by the great landscape photographer David Muench. Before your eyebrows shoot up about my plugging the book, I should say that I don't participate in the royalties in any way. I was paid a flat fee, because the power and spotlight of this "coffee table" masterpiece quite deservedly goes to David's magnificent photography, much of which was shot specifically for the book.
The focus is on a magnificent geological region of our beautiful country called the Colorado Plateau. A few million years back, this contiguous island of rock and compressed sandstone from ancient seabeds and volcanic activity lifted up by geologic processes still not fully understood, rose up from sea level to almost 5,000 feet! In turn, the rivers that coursed through it cut down more steeply through the red and yellow sandstones to create Bryce, Zion, Monument Valley, Arches National Park and so many other breathtaking places.
David has gone back to this region, one of his favorites, for more than 40 years, making painstakingly composed and perfectly timed photographs that will take your breath away, I promise you --you won't find better photography anywhere in the world of this magical place.
In my essay, I tried to capture some of the wonder and beauty, natural history and not a little of the mystical power of the place, which covers much of southern Utah, northern Arizona and western New Mexico and Colorado. I hope it gives you some insights and a bit of the feeling I get whenever I am lucky enough to go back there.
Here's a brief excerpt from the opening pages:
This swirl of breathtaking canyons, red sand expanses, muted foliage, and translucent cloudscapes has moved me before. I have run its Green River rapids. Foot-launched from its highest peaks in my hang glider, to pas de deux with turbulent updrafts. Backpacked as a boy into the hellish, mindblasting maw of the Grand Canyon.
Traversing the region over the years, I have seen too the harsh life it imposes upon all who struggle to survive here.
Now, I feel an old excitement, not unlike the joyous terror of stepping into the void on wings of cloth. I have been away so long.
I don't really know this land, at least not the way David knows it. One look at his photography tells me this: Something happens to him out here.
I want it to happen to me.
