The King's English Bookshop

Description

For over a decade, photographer Rosalie Winard has traveled the country by foot, canoe, airboat, and ATV, taking pictures of large birds of the wetlands from Florida to California, Louisiana to North Dakota. Her intimate portraits--tethered to an ethereal palette of white, gray, and black--are alight with Winard's passion for the avian world and its endangered terrain. Alternately meditative and exhilerating, abstract and literal, they capture the birds' remarkable habits and prehistoric forms, as well as their ineffable elegance and humor.

Wild Birds of the American Wetlands is a monumental and breathtaking study of some of the country's most beautiful birds--Great Blue Heron, White Ibis, Snoey Egret, Whooping Crane, Roseate Spoonbill, American White Pelican Wood Stork, and many more--and of their vanishing habitats. From the Ballona Wetlands in California to the prairies of Nebraska, Winard uses her thirty years of experience observing these winged creatures along with her mastery of photography to illuminate the importance of avian and wetland conservation.

Windard's camera lens has replaced her binoculars as she searches for images that depict the birds' elusive aspects and paradoxes: their simultaneous fragility and power, tranquility and action, stillness and momentum. At once a documentary photogrpaher, artist, and student of natural history, Winard, in each of her photographs, slips soundlessly into a vivid and detaled realism.

About the Author

Rosalee Winard has spent the last thirty years enamored with wetland birds. She received a bachelor's degree in natural history, with a specialization in ornithology and ethology. Winard worked for the National Science Foundation censusing bird populations in Florida before being led to documentary film, video art, and finally photography. Winard's award winning images have appeared in numerous publications including Artforum, The New York Times, Forbes, and Le Monde and are in the permanent collections of The Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Library of Congress.

Praise for Wild Birds of the American Wetlands…

"For more than a decade, Winard traveled the United States taking pictures of large birds from Florida to California and Louisiana to North Dakota. The hardcover includes more than 80 stunning black-and-white photographs."
--Outdoor Photographer magazine

"[An] amazing book...100 stunning black and white tritone images of birds in the wetlands of North Dakota, Florida, Louisiana, and California. This is an exciting adventure you're sure to enjoy."
--Shutterbug magazine

"Each photograph translates and transforms an avian image into a work of conceptual art. Enhanced with an informed foreword by Temple Grandin and an informative essay by Terry Tempest Williams, Wild Birds is a welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library Photography and Wildlife reference collections."
--Midwest Book Review

"In the newly released book, Wild Birds of the American Wetlands, Rosalie Winard captures the ethereal beauty of wading birds with the flair of a painter and the passion of an activist." —Audubon magazine (May/June 2008 feature story)

"A poetic reminder of how ancient and essential the wetlands and waterways are to our communities. Her stunning photographs tap something deep, almost primal…Let these graceful birds inspire us to preserve our wetlands, not only as a source of rich habitat and clean water, but also as a reflection of our values and commitment to future generations." —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., environmental activist

"Winard's bird images are haunting—a deep combination of art and nature photography…Her dedication, passion, and unique access to these large wetland birds (some of which are in danger of extinction) have enabled her to capture her subjects very intimately and obtain images unlike any others." —Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

"Rosalie Winard cares about what she photographs. She understands the relationship between habitat and human encroachment and what we stand to lose if we don't stop and marvel at these avian primitives. They have lived an uniterrupted rhythm since the beginning of time. She is in love with the wildness, the splendor, the dignity of these incredible creatures and she wants us to see this too. She has captured something ancient and time-sensitive in her stunning black-and-white photography."
--Sebastio and Lelia Salgado, Founders, Instituto Terra