When he and his wife and business partner, Barbara Cushman Rowell, perished in a small-plane crash in 2002, he had just completed a landmark assignment for National Geographic and had begun making stunning new images of his favorite old haunts in the Sierra Nevada.Fortunately for us, his productivity was immense and his photographs eticulously archived, making possible this first and only comprehensive retrospective of his work. It includes more than 175 images representing all phases and dimensions of Rowell’s singular career, chosen by the editors with whom he worked most closely, overseen by his family and studio colleagues, and reproduced to the highest standards of lithography from digital masters of his 35mm frames. Complementing and illuminating the pictures are essays and commentaries by Rowell’s friends and associates from the worlds of mountaineering, conservation, photography, and publishing, along with an in-depth biographical introduction by Robert Roper and an appreciation of his work by photography critic Andy Grundberg.

    Commenting on artists such as Avedon, Clifford, Mapplethorpe, and Nadar, Roland Barthes presents photography as being outside the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind, and rendering death and loss more acutely than any other medium. This groundbreaking approach established Camera Lucida as one of the most important books of theory on this subject, along with Susan Sontag's On Photography.