New Photography Book by Mariana Cook

NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A new photography book Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries (Damiani, $50, 192 pages, ISBN 978-88-6208-169-6) by artist Mariana Cook examines in stunning detail one of man's earliest and most enduring methods of defining territories – the stone wall. Sculptural and practical, majestic and humble, the dry stone walls showcased in the book capture a fundamental relationship between human beings and the landscape. The book will be published October 1, 2011.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110921/NY71782 )

Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries was conceived by Mariana Cook, the last protege of Ansel Adams, at her home on Martha's Vineyard on the day before Thanksgiving in 2002. After 56 cows strayed through a crumbling section of the stone wall she shares with her neighbor, Cook studied the tumbled wall and was struck by its beauty. With that inspiration, Cook spent eight years traveling to farms, towns, and temples in Peru, Great Britain, Ireland, the Mediterranean, New England, and Kentucky in pursuit of dry stone walls.

The striking black-and-white photographs portray the wall in landscape, the wall in abstract form, and the return of rocks to nature. Cook is fascinated with the juxtaposition of stones and geometric composition, as well as with the resonance among walls of different cultures. The walls were photographed by Cook between 2002 and 2010 and were built as early as 3600 B.C.

Dry stone walls – those constructed without the use of mortar with stones skillfully selected and placed to ensure strength and durability – are slowly falling into disrepair or being removed from the landscape. A portion of the proceeds from the book will benefit The Dry Stone Conservancy in Lexington, Kentucky, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving historic dry stone structures in Kentucky's world-famous Bluegrass landscape and to developing a national center for training and expertise.

Work by Mariana Cook is included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others. Her previous publications include the acclaimed portrait books: Fathers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons, Generations of Women, Couples, Faces of Science, and Mathematicians.

Press contacts:
Nicole Straus 631-369-2188, [email protected]
Margery Newman 212-475-0252, [email protected]

SOURCE Mariana Cook