Plateau Light

by James Lawrence, David Muench (Photographs)

The Colorado Plateau is a land rich in red sands, chocolate crags, eternally translucent skies, and stunning canyons. The region inscribes the deserts, mountains, rivers, and high mesas of the four corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. David Muench has walked this land---the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Canyon de Chelly, Bryce Canyon National Park, Mesa Verde, Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness, Grand Staircase / Escalanate National Monument  --- and has retruend wit the unforgetable images that are presented in this book.   PLATEAU LIGHT focuses on the heart and soul of America's Redrock Country, expressing the beauty and wilderness of areas ranging from the Grand Canyon to Paria. These landscapes once inspired the Anasazi, Fremont and Archaic peoples and serve as the perfect background for the petroglyphs and ruins they left behind. For the first time in softbound edition, these spectacular photos will inspire, delight and amaze, both readers and photographers alike.

Each plate has a thumbnail image with David Muench's photo notes in the back of the book.    Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award, Travel Category, 1999

115 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

Reviews

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of Colorado Plateau photos is about rock, color and captions. Red rock and color, in varying shades, dominate these pictures. If you love this country, the pictures are terrific. The unusual part of this collection are the captions. While a few struck me as forced or I didn’t understand, these too are great-got the essence of each picture, in a nutshell.

Here and there are pertinent, simple one-liners on what draws Muench to this country. After looking at the pictures, reading the captions and his reflections, I opted not to read the accompanying essay by James Lawrence. Words, thoughts, didn’t fit the mood.

While looking at this book I had listened to an essay on PBS, a travel writer (Russell Banks) who “left his camera at home” thirty years ago because, he felt, “visually recording an experience would effectively remove him from it.” The tone seemed disdainful of picture taking in general. This stood in contrast to Muench’s statement that “Any photograph is a journey in perception, an exploration in seeing.”