Our Beautiful, Fragile World: The Nature and Environmental Photographs of Peter Essick

by Peter Essick

Our Beautiful, Fragile World features a career-spanning look at the images of photojournalist Peter Essick taken while on assignment for National Geographic magazine. In this book, Essick showcases a diverse series of photographs from some of the most beautiful natural areas in the world and documents major contemporary environmental issues, such as climate change and nuclear waste.

Each photograph is accompanied by commentary on the design process of the image, Essick's personal photographic experiences, and informative highlights from the research he completed for each story. Our Beautiful, Fragile World takes the reader on a journey around the globe, from the Oulanka National Park near the Arctic Circle in Finland to the Adelie penguin breeding grounds in Antarctica.

Our Beautiful, Fragile World will interest photographers of all skill levels. It carries an important message about conservation, and the photographs provide a compelling look at our environment that will resonate with people of all ages who care about the state of the natural world.

Foreword by Jean-Michel Cousteau.

Genres: Photography, Environment, Nature

124 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Peter Essick is a photographer, author, speaker, instructor, and drone pilot who specializes in nature and environmental themes. Named one of the 40 most influential nature photographers in the world by Outdoor Photography Magazine UK, Essick has been influenced by many noted American landscape photographers from Carleton Watkins to Robert Adams. His goal is to make photographs that move beyond mere documentation to reveal in careful compositions the human impact of development as well as the enduring power of the land.

Essick is the author of three books of his photographs, The Ansel Adams Wilderness, Our Beautiful, Fragile World and Fernbank Forest. He has photographed stories for National Geographic on many environmental issues including climate change, high-tech trash, nuclear waste and freshwater. Essick's photographs are in permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and the Booth Western Art Museum. He is represented by Spalding Nix Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews

[specious_reasons]

Pictures and related essays. I actually picked this up because I am working on a personal project with a similar structure. I wish I had a body of work half as impressive as Peter Essick's.

This book's cover suggests that this is going to be nature photos, but this is is more about pictures across a photojournalist's body of work with a focus on nature and especially environmentalism. I'm not complaining (maybe?), but this isn't what I was looking for when I picked it up.

[Nqachri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is at the confluent of three kind of books: a bibliography, a photograph book and a testimonial about the ecology and our precious world. Petter Essick traces his career and thoughts through the different pictures made from the coverage that he made for the "National Geographic Magazine". For each picture, the context and the history are explained to the reader, and, for the photography lovers, the technical details are provided at the end of the book. The book exists in ebook format and in a beautiful paperback edition.

Each picture is a short story that brings us, with ease, a complex and fragile world. The author does not try to convince us by eluding the difficult reality of each environmental choice that we make everyday. As a "National Geographic" photographer, the pictures are always beautiful and accurate for the subject. The stories behind make us travelling around the world and share with us its feelings and concerns about the environmental issues. I have loved to travel through the pages with the pictures. We become the witnesses where its pictures will become the remaining testimony of a world and its damages before its (irreversible?) change. The only weak point of the book is that I would have preferred that the technical notes was more embedded in the stories, but also that some stories focus on the explanation of the issue, and not enough on the travel that lead him to the picture.

I love to take photographs and to travel, and each picture is an inspiration. Finally, this book reminds me why I love to take pictures of what really count: the beauty of the fragile instants and the lives that everyone shares.

[Bobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous photography paired with a brief (~1 page) essay about each picture. There are about 50 pics so overall a small book in size. But it is profound in its scope: to highlight the damage that we human beings have done, and are still doing, to our planet. It made me feel a bit sad at times thinking about all the environmental damage but overall the book is a beautiful reminder of the beauty of our world.

[Adam Bricker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book as part of an Amazon Books giveaway.

I wanted to like, but the photos ranged from jr highish to breathtaking and the writing from preachy commentary to drawn out nostalgia. For me this was very blah.