travel

Short and simple will be enough here:

128 pages of mystical beauty that can be found in the Hymalayas and in this book. There is some use of symbolic metaphors of early morning mysts, people, homes, genuine symbols of culture and nature. Movements captured for an eternity. A window to peer through for most of the people that will never be able to experience and see these places and its' people in their lives. There is good in this, for too many people would destroy such beauty and equanimity....

First a disclaimer: I am a friend, and working peer of David's albeit my caim to fame is in an entirely different genre, though my recent work is now following in David's footsteps, metaphorically speaking.

This work is heady. Makes you a bit short of breath at times. Jealous. Beautiful. Not only the subject matter (fifty years of footprints!) but also, for me, it's the formalist quality of the actual photography. He gives us an unwavering horizontal rectangle and fills it with stunning, buzzing, mature compositons and color, whether it be in a blinding whiteout or an early morning smoke with sherpas. His photographs bring us an inherently exotic world (and thus terribly misused) in a style relative to that of Eggleston, Singh, and Misrach. Important work, that overshadows the mostly sad, mediocre books done on this region by well placed trekkers.

This is about the people, and their art of living in such a grand and harsh place. David's own art brings it all home. I congratulate him for bringing this legacy to the world.

It is clear that David Robbins reveals artistic intellegence surpassed only by the beauty of his subject matter. As I turn through the pages I see metaphore after metaphore expressed by horses as mountains, a mother and child as a great wind, a man bearing a burden to the elevations as great slices of frozen rock jutt upward toward the sky. These metaphores call to us and serve as reminders of endurance, of simplicity, and all that is precious. In the pages of this book, your imagination can be unlocked and your thirst for understanding and compassion unbridled. It is important, especially in this time, to remember the beauty of the human spirit, the beauty of the earth and how they can fit together.