Mountain Light:
In Search of the Dynamic Landscape

by Galen Rowell

“Galen Rowell is a notable mountaineer and a talented and well travelled photojournalist. This book is a collection of eighty of his favourite photographs shot between 1970 - two years before he turned professional -and 1985 - by which time he had become probably the world's best known, certainly highest profile, adventure and wilderness photographer. (…)
Galen compares photography to music. 'Ordering a performance of light waves for the public eye is much like ordering a performance of sound waves for the public ear,' he writes, explaining that the definition of music in Webster's (American!) dictionary- barring the word sound- perfectly fits photography too. A neat simile. Much is useful and informative. Absolute mastery of his chosen film stock, painstaking experiment and methodical attention to detail are lessons every aspirant photographer should learn. I read with particular interest the final two chapters, the one discussing optical phenomena -Brocken Spectres, glories, alpenglow and such things - the other an analysis of one of his National Geographic assignments in the Karakorum: I too had things to learn. (…)
'Photography, boyo, it's feeling with your eyes ..' my old professor at college was fond of saying. Galen claims that 'Fine photographers do not merely look - they see. He has surely proved both statements. This is an important work by an important and influential figure in the mountain world.”
John Cleare, „Mountain” 1988, No. 123, p. 44-46