Upstream: Fly Fishing in the American West - Hardcover

McGuane, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0893818895 ISBN 13: 9780893818890

Publisher: Aperture, 2005

Synopsis

Charles Lindsay's grandfather taught him to fly-fish when he was nine years old. Ever since, in pursuit of trout and solitude, he has immersed himself in the clear, rushing waters of the American West. Fly rod in hand, he participates in the ancient rituals between predator and prey. At times photographing beneath the surface of the water, Lindsay literally enters the world of the trout. In this close observance of the cosmos within the river, he explores the fundamental relationship of all life to water. The photographs in Upstream illuminate a primitive world of elemental beauty and fractured light--abstract and utterly in motion. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, with wilderness under siege and humanity increasingly removed from nature, Lindsay uses his camera to express the enduring vitality of the natural world. Thomas McGuane, avid fly-fisherman, author, and frequent contributor to Sports Illustrated and Riverwatch, brilliantly explores these themes in his accompanying text.

About this title

Review:

Charles Lindsay's lens points inward as well as out. In Mentawai Shaman: Keeper of the Rain Forest, he captured his time living with an Indonesian tribal leader and hunter. Closer to home, Upstream explores his latest odyssey: five years spent roaming the American West with a fly rod in one hand and a camera in the other. Here we find photographer as predator, slipping unseen into an alien world to witness the hidden lives of his quarry, to understand his own stalking. The hunter-artist returns from his extended fishing trip with some of the most striking testimonials to an ancient pursuit ever seen. As with Ansel Adams's photos, Lindsay's landscapes of arid hills, big skies, and rushing rivers can be stark and ominous, but Lindsay infuses the lonely, wide-open spaces with a sense of possibility that only a living thing can provide: A sudden swirl in an opaque pool. A taught line whipsawing across a riffle. A dense hatch of mayflies rising above the surface. And then the chance, if brief, to greet the nearly unknowable denizen of another world--a fish miraculously to hand. There's humor and futility, too: the inevitable bird's nest of tippet and fly knotted around a willow. These are images that will enthrall fly-fishers and photography enthusiasts alike, matched with the peerless prose of outdoorsman-author Thomas McGuane.

About the Author:

Charles Lindsay's work has been featured in many international publications and on NPR and CNN International. His first book of photographs was Mentawai Shaman: Keeper of the Rain Forest (Aperture).

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0893818895
• ISBN 13: 9780893818890
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96