Description

Mary Randlett Landscapes

Photographs by Mary Randlett
With Contributions by Barry Herem, Joanne Ridley, and Joyce Thompson
Introduction by Ted D'Arms with an essay and poems by Denise Levertov

  • Published: 2007. Paperback August 2014
  • Subject Listing: Art / Photography; Pacific Northwest
  • Bibliographic information: 128 pp., 80 duotone photos, 9 x 10 in.
  • Territorial rights: World Rights
  • Published with: Tacoma Art Museum
  • Series: McLellan Endowed Series
  • Contents

Mary Randlett's photographic vision of the Northwest is big-hearted, intricate, and tender and fully inhabited by the animals, tides, forests, mountains, and spirits that dwell there. What others may take for granted, Randlett sees as quintessential: overcast days with endless and often exquisite variations of gray clouds, raindrops on puddles, dripping branches, and distant shafts of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover. She is steeped in the history of the Northwest and its many art forms.

Mary Randlett Landscapes presents a visual record of the Northwest at its most pristine and poetic. During her many years of finely tuned observation, Randlett has learned to take the time to ponder the essences of what she sees-the curl of a bird's drifting feather, a water strider not quite breaking the surface of the water, fog ascending a hillside, the moment a pond's surface turns to ice. Her photography brings this corner of the Northwest to the world.
Mary Randlett has been photographing the Northwest for more than fifty-five years. Her works are held in at least forty permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution.
"The book offers up the Northwest's moss and rain, sun and shade and its quicksilver light, as if the freeways and tall buildings - the cash nexus - weren't out there somewhere. But we know they are."
-Mike Dillon, Pacific Publishing
Contents
Introduction: Lifting the Veil / Ted D'Arms

Mary Randlett, Friend and Photographer / Barry Herem

The Art of Mary Randlett / Denise Levertov

7 Poems by Denise Levertov

Afterword / Joyce Thompson

Chronology / Jo Ann Ridley

Acknowledgments

Technical Notes
Reviews

"In this superb collection Randlett, who knows her subject well, majestically captures the physical qualities of the Pacific Northwest. Her work represents splendid environmental perfection: one knows these definitive photographs could have been taken nowhere else. This beautifully presented collection should be made available to everyone interested in the art form."
-Choice

"This quiet, reflective collection is filled with photos that work like poems. It invites repeat visits because of the subtlety of Randlett's art-much of it focused on light, clouds, and mist-and also because it stands as a stern rebuke of what growth and development are doing to a bounteous natural world that once seemed immutable."
-John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Like all the great landscape photographers, Randlett avoids excess studio manipulation and instead lets her subject do the talking. And oh, how Mother Nature talks-or rather sings-in front of her lens."
-Seattle Magazine

"Randlett's interest isn't in place as much as mood and composition. And of course, the main ingredient in these introspective studies is light, its endless variations, its absence."
-Sheila Farr, Seattle Times