![]() ![]() chemically activate the photographic materials, while they expose via the residual sunlight that exists even in the heaviest storm. Ecotone also engages dynamic photographic materials in the landscape, but collaborates with precipitation rather than ocean waves or running water in the landscape. The elements employed in the process-waves, rain, wind, and sediment-leave physical inscriptions through direct contact with photographic materials. Littoral Drift, a geologic term describing the action of wind-driven waves transporting sand and gravel, consists of camera-less cyanotypes made in collaboration with the landscape and the ocean, at the edge of both. Both series consist of cyanotypes made directly in the landscape, where elements like precipitation, waves, wind, and sediment physically etch into the photo chemistry the prints simultaneously expose in sunlight and wash in the water around them. Also noteworthy is a lovely lyric essay by Brad Land, as well as a tribute to the work of “nature-writer” John Hay, to use an appellation that Peter Matthiessen, in his response to Hay’s work, quite rightly calls “insipid and obsolete.” No such complaint can be made about Ecotone, whose travels to the “lands in-between” will no doubt continue to result in a journal well-worth reading.This work stems from the artist’s fascination with the nature of our relationships to the landscape, the sublime, time, and impermanence. That said, the journal still has much to offer, including an interview with Mark Doty as well as several excellent poems Doty is, I think, physically incapable of producing so-so work. My only complaint about volume one is that at times it seems quality has taken a second seat to star-power for instance, the piece here by Reg Saner–author of many very, very fine essays–was a disappointment. The remaining pages are chock full of biggies such as Reg Saner, Philip Levine, Bill Roorbach, Gerald Stern, Wendell Berry, and Peter Matthiessen, to name only a few. As editor David Gessner explains, it’s the edges, “between genres, between science and literature, between land and sea, between the civilized and wild, between earnest and comic, between the personal and biological, between urban and rural, between animal and spiritual” that Ecotone feels are “not only more alive, but more interesting and worthy of our exploration.” Worthy of exploration as well is this first issue, a nicely produced perfect-bound volume weighing in at over 150 pages, with a center section of art devoted to gorgeous collages by Pamela Wallace Toll. Ready to stand at indistinct edges or walk vertiginous margins, the aptly named Ecotone is a brave new offering out of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. ![]()
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