|
Celestial Nights:
Visions of An Ancient Land
Photographs by Neil Folberg
Introduction by Timothy Ferris
In this new series of compelling night images, the land and skies of
Israel and the Sinai are offered to the viewer as mystical points of
entry and departure. The world depicted in Celestial Nights is composed
of a delicately constructed order where earthly elements and the heavens
mirror each other. Folberg sets an ancient land resonant with meaning
against the awesome and eternal spectacle of the night sky.
Folberg writes, "In landscape I see a revelation of how pure spirituality
has descended into physical existence. . . These are the scenes, on
the human edge of the cosmos, that I am showing in these photographs."
Indeed, Folberg's night landscapes carry an aura that is both earthly
and divine, emphasizing the singular and poignant presence of objects
against the backdrop of the infinite. His photographs describe places
where the spiritual is at once near, imprinted in the forms of the arid
landscapes, and far away in the dark, starlit recesses of space.
"In these images the night sky looks the way we really see it,
or would like to. The earth retains its magical, almost spooky air of
both belonging to the cosmos and yet standing apart from it somehow.
And the mind, included for once with earth and stars as part of an integrated
whole, feels at home at last."
"These photographs, with their mingled sense of the distance and
the intimacy of stars and stones by night, evince the vitality of art
and science alike, as a pair of sturdy legs to carry us outside where
we can take in the wider scheme of things."
Timothy Ferris,
from the Introduction
"The deserts of Israel… seem never to have sat for a lens
quite as magical as Neil Folberg‚s. Folberg has been capturing
not only their dramatic contours and colors but the dazzling light shows
produced at night by the skies above them. . . . Spectacular is not
too effusive a word!"
Grace Glueck,
The New York Times
Neil Folberg, a former student and colleague of the late Ansel
Adams, is widely known for his landscapes and images of "built
environments." Born in San Francisco and raised in the mid-west,
Folberg has lived with his family in Jerusalem since 1976. Timothy Ferris
is the bestselling author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way.
9 1/2 x 13"
64 pages
40 tritone images
Hardcover
|
