プレオーダー *2月入荷予定

アメリカ人フォトグラファー、ボブ・コルブレナー（Bob Kolbrener）の作品集。2025年2月から3月までカリフォルニア・カーメルの「センター・フォー・フォトグラフィック・アート（Center for Photographic Art）」で開催される展覧会に伴い刊行された。

「私が思うに、ボブ・コルブレナーは、アンセル・アダムス（Ansel Adams）以来最も素晴らしいカリフォルニアの風景を撮る写真家である。」－ゲイリー・F・クルツ（Gary F. Kurutz、カリフォルニア州立図書館（California State Library）特別コレクション名誉学芸員）

作者にとって2冊目の作品集となる本作は、アメリカ西部を写した大判のモノクロ写真で構成されている。2021年に同出版社から出版され、高く評価されている写真集『California』の姉妹本として刊行された本書には、作者が手がけた最も力強い作品が50点以上収められており、その多くが初公開となる。

作者は、モノクロの風景写真でその地位を確立した、巨匠アンセル・アダムス（Ansel Adams）の影響を強く受け、弟子となり、そして作家仲間となった。作者も現在、素晴らしい風景を撮影する最も著名なアメリカ人現代モノクロ写真家の一人である。偉大なるアメリカ西部のエッセンス、大聖堂のように荘厳な「ヨセミテ国立公園（Yosemite National park）」、カリフォルニアの波打つ太平洋沿岸の海の景色を写し出している。

マット紙にデュオトーンで印刷されリネン布で製本された本書は、キュレーターであり「センター・フォー・フォトグラフィック・アート」のエグゼクティブ・ディレクターであるアン・ジャストラブ（Ann Jastrab）による序文で始まる。

Available for pre-order now. *It will be shipped in February

“In my opinion, Bob Kolbrener is the most brilliant California landscape photographer since Ansel Adams.” —Gary F. Kurutz, Curator Emeritus of Special Collections, California State Library

Our second monograph on the work of Bob Kolbrener presents a selection of his large-scale black and white photographs of the American West. A companion book to his critically acclaimed monograph California published by Nazraeli Press in 2021, Sky Country comprises over 50 of Kolbrener’s most powerful works, many published here for the first time.

An established US photographic artist, Bob Kolbrener (b.1942) was inspired, then protégé, then a colleague to the great landscape maestro Ansel Adams, and is himself now one of the USA’s most distinguished contemporary black and white photographers of its incredible vistas. His work shows the essence of the Great American West, the cathedral-like Yosemite National park, and seascapes of California’s churning Pacific coastline.

Printed in duotone on special matte-coated art paper, and bound in linen with a tipped-in cover plate,Sky Country opens with an introduction by Ann Jastrab. It is published on the occasion of Kolbrener’s solo exhibition at Center for Photographic Art, Carmel opening in February, 2025.

“There’s a moment, when you have a choice, to look back or go forward, and you take a step away from the familiar, towards the edge, to the wide open space, clouds among clouds among clouds. And at first, it’s like an Alfred Steiglitz sky and then it’s something grander, like a Thomas Cole painting, but then, no, it’s not the East anymore. It’s the wide open expanse of the West. A sky that is something Larry McMurtry’s characters only dreamed of seeing when they were crossing the parched land of West Texas. Clouds of vastness, plains of dreams, hills like stories, really, like a story from Wright Morris when he put down his camera and picked up his pen and described what he saw and what couldn’t be seen. Bob Kolbrener is from a similar part of the country, Missouri, much like the canvas of Nebraska, of the plains, of the fields. It’s not just Wright Morris, but it’s Willa Cather’s voice I hear across the distance, calling. Maybe Kolbrener read their passages too, saw the weather coming from the West, grew restless waiting for its arrival while standing beneath the Gateway to the West in his hometown of St. Louis. The wind couldn’t bring him the clouds fast enough and he had to go. He was ready, his camera was ready, sublime film negatives printed as breathtaking silver prints. And though photographers before him documented the land, for him it was the sky. For Bob Kolbrener’s West is not anyone else’s West. I imagine him, miles from anyone, no lights in the distance, no light anywhere save what he is letting in through his lens.”— From the Introduction by Ann Jastrab, Executive Director, Center for Photographic Art, Carmel.