Anne Whiston Spirn

This volume presents never-before-published photos and captions from American documentary photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange's (1895-1965) fieldwork in California, the Pacific Northwest, and North Carolina during 1939. Best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. Lange's images of squatter camps, benighted farmers, and stark landscapes are stunning, and her captions -- which range from simple explanations of settings to historical notes and biographical sketches -- add unexpected depth, bringing her subjects and their struggles unforgettably to life, often in their own words.

This book combines poetry and pragmatism to teach the language of landscape. Anne Whiston Spirn argues that the language of landscape exists with its own grammar and metaphors, and that we imperil ourselves by failing to learn to read and speak this language. To understand the meanings of landscape, our habitat, is to see the world differently and to enable ourselves to avoid profound environmental and aesthetic mistakes. Offering examples that range across thousands of years and five continents, Spirn examines urban, rural, and natural landscapes. She discusses the thought of renowned landscape authors - Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lawrence Halprin - and of less well known pioneers, including the Australian architect Glenn Murcutt and the Danish landscape architect C.Th. Sorensen.

This volume offers a unique perspective on sixteen of Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest and most adventurous works. Each eight-page gatefold -- opening out to almost three feet -- presents the author's original rendering in full size, allowing readers to appreciate in detail Wright's original conception of the building.