The Memory of Stone
The Memory of Stone
Meditations on the Canyons of the West
This intimate portrait of the Colorado Plateau celebrates the landscape in photographs and writing. Erv Schroeder’s photographs bear witness to the primordial forces of the earth—the raw power that moved and shifted huge hunks of rock to form natural stone sculptures. Schroeder’s prints engage the viewer on an intimate level, acting as portals to contemplative worlds, inviting the viewer on an inner journey. As further guides to the landscape and its significance, he has invited indigenous writers—Natanya Ann Pulley, Rainy Dawn, Esther G. Belin, Orlando White, and Tacey M. Atsitty—to contribute poems that speak about these places. Celebrated Acoma storyteller Simon J. Ortiz introduces the photography and poetry with his musings on stone. In addition, an essay by geologist Marcia Bjornerud explores the geology of the region.
Stunning.…The Memory of Stone: Meditations on the Canyons of the West is one of those compendiums that will linger in the mind long after the book has been closed and set back upon the shelf.
The Memory of Stone takes readers on a visual tour of the Colorado Plateau’s ‘sonic landscapes’—from Utah’s Monument Valley to the Petrified Forest. …Schroeder’s black-and-white photographs offer a surprisingly intimate portrait of these otherworldly places.
Erv Schroeder’s captivating images of undomesticated lands, coupled with poetry by native authors, lead you on an expedition through history and humanity. By viewing these mesmeric rock formations, the reader gains a more transcendent idea of time and nature. These intimate black-and-white photographs resonate on a profound philosophical level.
The Memory of Stone is a volume to be savored slowly and to be revisited frequently. The photographs are at once intimate and grand. The accompanying texts deserve multiple readings as they reflect upon the complexity of time and identity, human and geologic.
This amazing book will repay long exposure and repeated return. There are some suggestions in the text about how to read these rocks, but there’s also an openness that will invite you in.
In Erv Schroeder’s recent photographs the viewer is treated to a meditation on the mysteries of the West through an intensive gaze into its rock formations. The diminutive prints are nothing less than gemlike in their rich tonalities and truly unique perspectives on what makes this landscape such a potent subject for photographers.
Erv Schroeder is a photographer who also works as a user-interface analyst and graphic and web designer. He lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. His work has been widely exhibited in galleries all over the United States. He has been an artist in residence at the Petrified Forest National Park and a featured artist in F-Stop magazine.
