What is it? More accurately, what WAS it? Because right now it is UNAVAILABLE and I’m not sure if that will change, and if so, when. Still, read about it here, and if enough interest develops I may reprint a revised, updated version.
Refuge uses a photo book format to impart philosophical lessons distilled from a career of climbing mountains, training military personnel, professional athletes and Hollywood actors, my own participation in sport, and international travel. The lessons are presented as text juxtaposed against an image whereby each influences the effect of the other.
Every climber has to come down. And every climber who has been up on the mountains for long enough wants to get back there because the valley suffocates. The loud voices of its residents urge the climber to stay, to relax, to perhaps become more like them. But he can’t so the climber goes back up, over and over until it’s time to descend once and for all. What then? What in the valley could possibly hold a mountaineer’s attention? What could compare with the experiences, and the relationships born and tested in the high places? The answer is important because if there is nothing satisfying in the valley that climber who came down will not survive. REFUGE is the story of this journey, written in shorthand, as lessons learned, as a photographic record of a difficult transition from high altitude to low, from the harsh and bright and obvious to the gray and hidden and unclear. It is a journey of self-discovery, of softening, and ultimately of acceptance, and love.
Human experience — regardless of its distance from the norm — teaches human lessons. Succinctly presented, these ideas may be effectively transmitted when piggybacked on beautiful, compelling imagery.
The story begins in the mountains, descends to the valley in search of similar challenge and beauty, takes the viewer through cities and highways, starlight and storm, into the music halls, the bedroom and ultimately back to the natural environment where peace may eventually be discovered. Story structure is loose. Each page may be its own chapter. The viewer may open the book to any page and experience something that makes him or her think, something to trigger imagination, to change the state of mind they were in when they picked up the book.
This style of storytelling is more consistent with the way information and imagery are consumed these days. It answers Diana Vreeland’s question, “Does anyone read a picture book from the beginning?”
Quality was the guiding principle for production of the 200-page book, which is a decidedly ANALOG ideal.
What is it? More accurately, what WAS it? Because right now it is UNAVAILABLE and I’m not sure if that will change, and if so, when. Still, read about it here, and if enough interest develops I may reprint a revised, updated version.
Refuge uses a photo book format to impart philosophical lessons distilled from a career of climbing mountains, training military personnel, professional athletes and Hollywood actors, my own participation in sport, and international travel. The lessons are presented as text juxtaposed against an image whereby each influences the effect of the other.
Every climber has to come down. And every climber who has been up on the mountains for long enough wants to get back there because the valley suffocates. The loud voices of its residents urge the climber to stay, to relax, to perhaps become more like them. But he can’t so the climber goes back up, over and over until it’s time to descend once and for all. What then? What in the valley could possibly hold a mountaineer’s attention? What could compare with the experiences, and the relationships born and tested in the high places? The answer is important because if there is nothing satisfying in the valley that climber who came down will not survive. REFUGE is the story of this journey, written in shorthand, as lessons learned, as a photographic record of a difficult transition from high altitude to low, from the harsh and bright and obvious to the gray and hidden and unclear. It is a journey of self-discovery, of softening, and ultimately of acceptance, and love.
Human experience — regardless of its distance from the norm — teaches human lessons. Succinctly presented, these ideas may be effectively transmitted when piggybacked on beautiful, compelling imagery.
The story begins in the mountains, descends to the valley in search of similar challenge and beauty, takes the viewer through cities and highways, starlight and storm, into the music halls, the bedroom and ultimately back to the natural environment where peace may eventually be discovered. Story structure is loose. Each page may be its own chapter. The viewer may open the book to any page and experience something that makes him or her think, something to trigger imagination, to change the state of mind they were in when they picked up the book.
This style of storytelling is more consistent with the way information and imagery are consumed these days. It answers Diana Vreeland’s question, “Does anyone read a picture book from the beginning?”
Quality was the guiding principle for production of the 200-page book, which is a decidedly ANALOG ideal.
