A stunning and beautiful book featuring water photographs across the United States and its many meanings, linking outer places and inner consciousness.
For more than sixty years, artist-photographer Martha Strawn has traveled throughout the United States and the world, making unforgettable photographs about water that enrich our sense of place and consciousness. Whether standing along a lake, river, seashore, pond, or estuary, Strawn seeks the essence of what she sees and expands our notion of what water means.
The Phenomenology of Water features thirty-six of Strawn's timeless photographs, some in color and others in black-and-white. Each is a work of art. Some images are expansive, showing water within the larger landscape, whereas others are intimate if not ephemeral. No matter what the view, Strawn's photographs of water connect the outer world and the inner self, and they suggest an abiding responsibility for sustaining the quantity and quality of water. As Indigenous people everywhere have long proclaimed: "Water is life."
Strawn's photographs reflect her deep interest in the kinship between art and science, what she calls "visual ecology." Whether in her native South or in Africa, Alaska, Asia, Canada, Central America, the Middle East, or New Zealand, she personally engages with water to comprehend its elemental connection to the "soul" and our conscious existence. In her photographs the visible layers of water become metaphors for the different realms of reality that are perceived by human consciousness no matter where one lives.
Collected here for the first time in this book that also serves as a companion to an exhibition similarly entitled "The Phenomenology of Water," Strawn's photographs are enhanced by her personal introduction and coda as well as a captivating poem by award-winning writer Jeffery Beam, an insightful essay by noted art historian Lili Corbus, and suggested readings. Curators have already declared that the book will be an enduring contribution. As Jason Steuber, Director of the Appleton Museum of Art, declares: "This life-affirming book welcomes the reader to view, learn, and remember water's importance to all humanity as the life-giving force that binds us all together. It highlights Strawn's exceptional career as an artist, teacher, and mindful conservationist."
