A magnificent collection of 206 classic duotone photographs of the Pacific Northwest taken in the first half of the century by renowned photographers Darius and Tabitha Kinsey. A stunning book of photography and a testament to the beauty of the region and the colorful life of its people. Captures the romance and rugged splendor of the Northwest--the glaciers, streams, trees, and loggers. Printed on high-quality matte art paper. Over 50,000 copies of earlier editions sold by Chronicle Books.
Darius and his wife Tabitha Kinsey ran a photography business, first from Sedro-Wooley, WA (when it was actually two towns, Sedro and Wooley) and later from Seattle, WA. He first started with portraiture but soon he was in the forests, taking pictures of loggers and the giant trees they were cutting. He used a 6 ½ x 8 ½, 11 x 14 and a giant 20 x 24 inch camera. They took glass plate negatives and latter he switched to the much lighter film. The aesthetic and technical quality of his images are excellent and document a world that no longer exists and probably will not again as long as there are human beings on our planet. The book also printed his work very well. There are scattered comments by friends, relatives and loggers he worked with. This edition has both volumes of these photographs that were originally published separately. I wish there were comments from Darious (or others) about how he viewed the loggers cutting some of the most magnificent Western Cedars in the world.
The Kinsey photographs of the logging in Washington, mountains, trains, etc are magnificent. I have looked at many books of Kinsey's photos over the years, but I have never read the books. I learned a lot and now I am even more impressed!
It contains 206 duotone photographs from the Kinseys' 4,500 extant negatives, complemented by personal documents, newspaper accounts, and interviews. The story that emerges is that of a turn of the century family business--a husband consumed with the art and trade of photography, and a wife determined to support his hard work of capturing the rugged beauty of the Pacific Northwest.
The pictures are not only beautiful, but make a clear recording of the forests in the Pacific NW's past. To often those claiming to be environmentalist have been less than truthful about old growth timber. There was even one organization selling "sponsorship" of individual trees claimed to be old growth, The trees had been planted after WW II in an area where they'd prior to to the tree planting had raised strawberries.
If you have any doubts about what an old growth tree is, this is the book for you. Awesome!
Darius Kinsey was a very talented photographer, who documented an important part of the history of logging and railroads in Washington State. I wonder if he thought back then that his photographs would be so highly valued over 100 years later. I think that at the present moment we do not fully appreciate how things we take for granted today will someday be looked at as part of history.
The production quality of the book is excellent. The photographs are meticulously reproduced, and although the text is rather sparse, it is helpful in assisting the reader in understanding what they are seeing in the photographs.
I was told by one of my relatives that Kinsey took at least two group photographs of loggers sitting on a massive tree stump that included my grandfather or great grandfather, so I have somewhat of a personal connection to Kinsey. Those two photographs are in another book, 18 Men and a Horse, which is about logging in Washington State, which I reviewed on GR.