Northwest Passage: Photographs and Log

Ketchum, Robert Glenn; Simon, William (Preface by), with Lopez, Barry (Commentary by)

ISBN 10: 0893816760 / ISBN 13: 9780893816766

Published by Aperture, New York, 1996

About this Item

Cloth, [96] pages, chiefly colour illustrations, map; 27 x 31 cm. SIGNED. Boldly signed by the photographer on the half-title page. A fine copy of the first printing. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. OVERSIZE! Additional shipping charges may be requested for international & priority orders. Richly illustrated with colour plates. *** "A Photographer's Account of his Twenty-Three Day Journey Through the Perilous Northwest Passage -- From Alaska, Through Canada and the Northwest Territories, to Greenland. "An exhibition of the work in 'Northwest Passage' is travelling in the United States, and will appear at the Alinder Gallery in Gualala, California in the Fall of 1996, and at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York in the summer of 1997" - Colophon. Size: Oblong.

Seller Inventory # 109152

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Northwest Passage: Photographs and Log
• Publisher: Aperture, New York
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0893816760
• ISBN 13: 9780893816766
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: SIGNED
• Book Type: Collectible
• Seller catalogs:
  • Photography::Subjects & Themes::Landscapes
  • Canadian
  • XXXL: Jumbo
  • Photography::Individual Photographer
  • XXX::COLLECTIBLES

About this title

Synopsis

Robert Glenn Ketchum - widely renowned for his breathtaking color photographs of the natural world - here presents us with views of the little-known Arctic landscape, images made during the course of an extraordinary adventure in 1994: the traverse of the Northwest Passage.
Ketchum's voyage on the 175-foot craft Itasca moves through some of the most extreme climatic conditions and astonishing vistas on the planet. During the trip, the photographer had virtually unlimited access to an on-board helicopter, an opportunity seldom before afforded to any Arctic researcher. He made daily use of this resource to investigate the terrain and make photographs.
Included in Northwest Passage are excerpts from Ketchum's daily log, which chronicles some of the challenges and wonders encountered by the Itasca over the course of the voyage - mazes of pack ice, a sudden, fierce cold front, small Inuit towns, vast schools of beluga whales....Ketchum's descriptions, together with his awe-inspiring photographs, bring to life a world many of us have never imagined.
Northwest Passage also includes an informative preface by William Simon (former United States Secretary of the Treasury, and this expedition's leader), outlining the history of the elusive Northwest Passage. Poetic excerpts from the writings of Barry Lopez, award-winning author of Arctic Dreams and Of Wolves and Men, give added resonance to Northwest Passage's depiction of the amazing Arctic.

Reviews

For a long time, European explorers sought in vain for an Arctic shortcut to the riches of the Orient. Ships and men vanished. The Franklin Expedition of 1845 is the most famous failure. The Northwest Passage was not successfully traversed until the 1903^-6 expedition of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Ketchum, a great naturalist photographer, and nine others set off on a yacht in 1994, which eventually became (with the aid, on one occasion, of an ice-breaking ship) the fifty-sixth vessel to cross the Northwest Passage. The photography (aerial, island, and yacht shots) transports its viewers to a new and strange world that causes the adventuring heart to beat erratically. In the world's quest for minerals, oil, and gas reserves, in its misuse of the Arctic as a dumping ground, this powerful and majestic region is threatened, and at the close of the book, Ketchum the environmentalist makes those facts known. Yet charting this once mystic realm, in this fashion, is ironic--a siren's song to those watchful for the next frontier to develop. Bonnie Smothers