This is Sandy Brown Jensen, and you’re listening to Viz City, KLCC’s Arts Review program.
Once upon a time, when I was a young girl back in the 1960s, my family lived in the foothills of the mountain range called The Enchantments... Every weekend, my father packed all of us four kids into his International Travel-All and drove deep into what is now the North Cascades National Park.
I have a photograph of our small, colorful camp on the shore of Image Lake with Glacier Peak seen twice–once taking up the entire horizon and once reflected back in that pristine, high mountain lake. We kids rose to the smell of fish and bacon frying over the campfire.
The reason I’m going down Memory Lane is because I’m on photographer Ed Pabor’s website looking at a strong black and white Glacier Peak reflected in Image Lake from the exact point where my father stood.
My dad was a hard-core mountaineer inspired by the remarkable landscape photography being produced by early National Geographic explorers. Ed Pabor is very much one of that tribe. He has climbed all his life to bring back those tack sharp, edge to edge focused landscapes on a grand scale. You can see his work now at a really extensive show of his work at The University of Oregon Law School.
Ed has traveled to Tierra del Fuego and shows dramatic vistas of Mt. Fitz Roy and the still enormous glaciers of the area. My favorite image is a nose-on panorama of Argentina’s Moreno Glacier, which looks like it’s coming right at you out of the frame. You'll find photographs of the Great Southwest, Hells Canyon and the Wallowas, cityscapes, and, as well, surprising intimate portraits. I loved a herd of guanacos in a green field.
My dad would have loved this exhibit. Ed Pabor is showcasing everything he loved best about mid-twentieth century photography–the awe, the grandeur, the passion for the grand landscape, the eye for detail.
