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Silent in the Land
SILENT IN THE LAND is a unique depiction of the major styles and periods of Southern architecture. With photographs by artist Chip Cooper and essays by Harry Knopke and Robert Gamble, the book's visual and written images provide impressionistic comments on the 19th century southern landscape viewed through the prism of time.
Featuring 60 houses in more than 150 full, four-color photographs, SILENT IN THE LAND is an artistic and historical guide to houses as diverse as simple dogtrots and elegant Palladian mansions, it captures each house as it resides in its setting, sometimes calling the eye to a small detail that delights because of its idiosyncrasy.
Essays accompanying the photographs provide new insights through interviews with descendants, owners, or neighbors of each house, as well as through archival research. The historical context for the artistic treatment is established in the introduction and is completed in the descriptive, black-and-white pictorial appendix. This is a book with an urgent message: there are elegant homes, lovingly maintained, some painstakingly restored; there are wasting structures that face slow disintegration through neglect and indifference.
SILENT IN THE LAND bridges both worlds, showing the grandeur of one and fragility of the other. By compelling us to look anew at old, familiar structures it gives a vivid call to action for preserving a proud architectural heritage.
Featuring 60 houses in more than 150 full, four-color photographs, SILENT IN THE LAND is an artistic and historical guide to houses as diverse as simple dogtrots and elegant Palladian mansions, it captures each house as it resides in its setting, sometimes calling the eye to a small detail that delights because of its idiosyncrasy.
Essays accompanying the photographs provide new insights through interviews with descendants, owners, or neighbors of each house, as well as through archival research. The historical context for the artistic treatment is established in the introduction and is completed in the descriptive, black-and-white pictorial appendix. This is a book with an urgent message: there are elegant homes, lovingly maintained, some painstakingly restored; there are wasting structures that face slow disintegration through neglect and indifference.
SILENT IN THE LAND bridges both worlds, showing the grandeur of one and fragility of the other. By compelling us to look anew at old, familiar structures it gives a vivid call to action for preserving a proud architectural heritage.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1993
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 21, 2012
beautiful photos of old, rural Southern houses, and not all the stereotypical plantation houses either. There are also slave quarters, shotgun houses, and just to remind us it wasn't all luxury in the early days, old homes owned by planters, doctors, etc. that are actually very small and simple by today's standards. I wish the architectural info in the back was the main text rather than info on the owners and what they'd done to the houses. Convinced me I should never try to renovate a place like this. However, it also made me look around me and appreciate the interesting differences and the 'green' construction they had then (e.g. ways to stay cool w/o AC.
December 16, 2012
A wonderful tour of Alabama history in pictures and articles. Well written and the pictures are outstanding.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews