Award-winning photographer Dorothy Monnelly captures the yet-unspoiled beauty of one of the last natural ecosystems in the Northeast. In this collection of 57 large-format, black and white photographs, the salt marsh is a solemn force rendered dramatically with crisp reproductions of Monnelly’s original gelatin silver prints. As a native of Ipswich, MA, Monnelly executes her work with a familiarity and grace evocative of Ansel Adams. Her work is described in the foreword by Jeanne Adams, manager of The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite National Park, as capturing the marsh’s “amazing sculptural quality.”

The Great Marsh is grounded with an essay by journalist Doug Stewart, a regular contributor to Smithsonian and other magazines. Stewart's words provide a rich context for the images, as well as a strong case for preserving the marshlands. “Could any landscape be as timeless as the vast prairie of a salt marsh? Even the Grand Canyon is eroding, after all, but a healthy salt marsh is renewed with each rising tide. Or so it seems…” Monnelly’s book is indispensable to those who are conscious of the threat to our planet’s sustainability.

Dorothy Kerper Monnelly is a fine art photographer living in Ipswich, MA. Her work is in the National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C., and has been exhibited at the Edward Carter Gallery in New York, The Ralls Collection in D.C., Arden Gallery in Boston as well as in Maine, California, and Hawaii.

April 2007
12 3/4 x 10 in., hardback
160 pages, 57 duotone images
ISBN: 978-0-8076-1578-2
$50