Northern Exposures from Alaska
Reflecting Our Bond with the Land and Each Other
Kathleen M.K. Menke
2005
48 pgs.
Menke’s love for Haines comes through with the clarity of her photos of mountains that step right down to the sea. Haines, just a hop away from Skagway, is a jewel by the Inside Passage of southeast Alaska. It’s a small town near to those mountains, on the sea and close to Mendenhall Glacier.
The full-color photos take us in and around Haines, and make a brief stop in Skagway, Carcross, and White Pass. You can’t miss with Alaska’s gorgeous and grand scenery, her bears, eagles, salmon, northern lights and moose. Scenic shots alternate with small-town life, where Menke has made her home since 1995. We get a nice peek at the characters who make up your typically idiosyncratic Alaska town. Alaskans will enjoy this book, perhaps even more than folks in the other 49 states.
It’s these photos of her friends and neighbors that make this book so much more than just another bunch of wildlife and mountain shots. You can buy those sanitized coffeetable books at any chain bookstore. Haines For All Seasons offers more.
Some of my favorites:
•A man in Carhartts plays the trumpet
•Older, bearded fellow at a spinning wheel
•A fellow filling his water bottles at a spring on a hillside
•A Ford Model A outside a bed-and-breakfast
•Two girls out crabbing and looking rather crabby about it
•Native young folk dancing
Menke doesn’t wait for people to look at the camera and grin, thank goodness. She’s caught them just as they are, right in the middle of stringing fish or mending nets. It’s the next best thing to being there. One only wishes that the images were larger, one or two to a page and the book a hundred pages long.
Haines For All Seasons , $24, can be ordered from Menke's Crystal Images site.
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