Yosemite: Photographs - Tapa dura

When Jerry Uelsmann composes Yosemite National Park, rocks float. So do clocks and flamingos. Nudes glide through white water rapids. Acclaimed as an international master of photoimage, Ueslmann creates images of the park so wild and personal that, it can be argued, they expand the concept of nature photography. For collectors of Uelsmann's work, this is the first time his photography has been presented in a book unified by a single theme, the landscape of Yosemite. Whether it's a place that thousands of tourists visit every year, or an aesthetic in the mind, Uelsmann allows his audience to decide. Indeed, the bold eyeballs that peer off these pages - from trap door and tree trunks and stuffed owls - compel the viewer to participate in his artistic consciousness. In the early '70s, Ansel Adams invited Uelsmann to teach a workshop with him in Yosemite. In the following years, Uelsmann returned to the park on many occasions, including a stint in 1992 as artist-in-residence. This book celebrates his interior journey through Yosemite, a spiritual adventure that's both playful and poetic. (Adams is on the itinerary, stenciled in silver on the face of Half Dome). In the introduction, writer and photographer Ted Orland describes Uelsmann's mind as a universe that's "undeniably Jungian - a place where angels linger, paradox abounds, and the earth at times yields darker secrets". In Uelsmann's efforts to fathom the secrets of the park, he says he wrestles with the Yosemite gods, fighting the whole notion of the romantic landscape tradition, every time he works with his Yosemite negatives. "The strong presence of the place turns the struggle for personal vision into an event that is introspective and challenging", he writes. "Over the years, a few specific trees and rocks have become friends and I visit them whenever I go. They are an important part of this book".

Jerry N. Uelsmann has been graduate research professor of art at the University of Florida since 1974.