Robert Irwin Getty Garden

Rating:
Summary: Gloriously, Richly Photographed Gardens
Review: I felt that this book is not only a beautiful book on art and gardens to own, but qualifies as an "Everyday Reference" for our Architecture office. The photographs by Becky Cohen, 2000 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award winner, were reason enough to give this gorgeous book as gifts to friends as well as other Associates in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Interior Design. The images she took relay the purposefulness and soulfulness of the design of the gardens, which in turn, connects and inspires the Designer in their own field, whatever it might be. As a reference book to Designers, the book surpasses it's own purpose to show the incredible Getty Gardens and to view the dialogue between Weschler and Irwin, which at times, I'm sorry to say, can be dull and stupid sounding. However, the compositions and textures of the photographs are just too stunning to harbor that opinion of the dialogue for very long. In the book, you feel you might realize that Cohen's immensely thoughtful compositions of the garden photographs are a better art itself than of the artistic gardens. Again and again, with every page, they follow one after the other to reveal a new thought, not just about gardens or a particular spectacular plant or flower, but about how you see them. It inspires a desire to see them for yourself, as she does, to open an intimate experience with nature. Each image impresses that the two dimensional beauty you see in front of you might be part trickery. The "real" gardens couldn't have that much beauty! But, of course, when you visit the gardens, they do. Cohen is merely brilliant at capturing it. As you find the last of the images at the end of the book, it reminds me of the wonder you feel when you see anything beautful for the first time, it sort of makes you hold your breath and makes your heart skip a bit.

Rating:
Summary: Gloriously, Richly Photographed Gardens
Review: I felt that this book is not only a beautiful book on art and gardens to own, but qualifies as an "Everyday Reference" for our Architecture office. The photographs by Becky Cohen, 2000 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award winner, were reason enough to give this gorgeous book as gifts to friends as well as other Associates in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Interior Design. The images she took relay the purposefulness and soulfulness of the design of the gardens, which in turn, connects and inspires the Designer in their own field, whatever it might be. As a reference book to Designers, the book surpasses it's own purpose to show the incredible Getty Gardens and to view the dialogue between Weschler and Irwin, which at times, I'm sorry to say, can be dull and stupid sounding. However, the compositions and textures of the photographs are just too stunning to harbor that opinion of the dialogue for very long. In the book, you feel you might realize that Cohen's immensely thoughtful compositions of the garden photographs are a better art itself than of the artistic gardens. Again and again, with every page, they follow one after the other to reveal a new thought, not just about gardens or a particular spectacular plant or flower, but about how you see them. It inspires a desire to see them for yourself, as she does, to open an intimate experience with nature. Each image impresses that the two dimensional beauty you see in front of you might be part trickery. The "real" gardens couldn't have that much beauty! But, of course, when you visit the gardens, they do. Cohen is merely brilliant at capturing it. As you find the last of the images at the end of the book, it reminds me of the wonder you feel when you see anything beautful for the first time, it sort of makes you hold your breath and makes your heart skip a bit.