Reed has created a unique book that successfully and powerfully evokes some of the world's most spectacular and awe-inspiring sights. Reed's large format black and white art photographs, powerfully composed, provide the focal point for the book, drawing the reader in with their breathtaking power. The text appears on facing pages with small color photographs inset, allowing the reader to be further drawn into the book by the splashes of color and the clear large font text that displays Reed's personable reminiscences of his explorations and the multitude of thoughts they arose.
Reed's book crosses many genres, appealing to a wide range of people, from world-class climbers, avid explorers, world-trekkers and backpackers to fans of art and photography, ecotheologians and folks who just love nature. The book has a cross-cultural, Pacific rim quality thanks to its South American subject matter, a strong Japanese influence in Reed's photographic composition and book design, and his history exploring extensively in both Alaska and California. Reed uses a red stamp, or 'chop,' not only to identify the artist, but as a finishing touch to the composition in the tradition of Asian black ink painting. All these factors combine to make a gorgeous book that anyone, or any store, should be glad to share.
“Despite its borderline pantheism Tom Reed's The Granite Avatars of Patagonia offers a powerful and moving description of one of the world's most awesome sights: the granite towers of Patagonia, notably Cerro Torre and El Chaltén. Mindful of global warming, deforestation, species extinction, and pollution, the narrative nevertheless manages, in inimitably beautiful English, to focus on the awesomeness, beauty, intimacy, and sacredness of nature in one of its most dramatic moments.”-Thomas Berry, ecotheologian, geologian and cultural historian
“Tom Reed uses his experience in both Japanese calligraphy and sumi-e for the creative energy in his photographic images. With patience and sharp awareness of the subject matter, he has stepped beyond ordinary landscape photographs, and created extraordinary ones.”-Dr. Shozo Sato, professor emeritus in Japanese aesthetics; University of Illinois, Urbana
“I have often gone to Tom's website for inspiration and enjoyment. His work is powerful and clean. This book reveals his intimate relationship with the granite spires of Patagonia, and his choice of black and white capture provides a unique perspective. I hope one day I can be shooting at his side in places of such awesome beauty.”- G. Brad Lewis, internationally known nature photographer.
“Patagonia has a keen, close observer in Tom Reed. His feeling for the landscape and its wild power comes through in his photos and writing and in the questions he raises about ourselves as natural beings acting in a natural world.”- Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc.
