Bi-Polar
Photographs from an Unquiet Mind
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The debut photography collection from the internationally renowned photographer, filmmaker, speaker, and mental health advocate, featuring 300 curated images from his global adventure features, climbing expeditions, portraiture, and early fashion and fine art work.
An artist and storyteller who passionately explores the human experience, Cory Richards began working for National Geographic shooting adventure features in the most remote corners of the globe. As a professional climber, he spent his early career on high-risk expeditions that tested his unique ability to capture stories that were largely out of reach to others.
Bi-Polar, a title that refers to Richards’s own diagnosis with Bipolar 2 at age fourteen and the career that has literally taken him to both ends of the earth, presents 300 of the most compelling images of Richards’s career. Organized by the emotional polarities that exist in his life and work, including hope and fear, pride and shame, awe and contempt, and finally, the singular, love, this stunning visual collection is a celebration of the tempests of the mind and how our greatest hurdles, when seen through a different lens, can become our greatest strengths.
Spotlighting jaw-dropping landscapes, disappearing ways of life, the intersection of humans and animals, and more, Bi-Polar invites us to consider how art can connect us to ourselves, others, and the beautiful world we live in.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Provocative juxtapositions animate this exquisite collection from National Geographic photographer Richards (The Color of Everything). Using his bipolar disorder as a lens through which to see the world, Richards organizes the photographs according to the "emotional polarities" they evoke. For example, he finds a dichotomy of hope and fear in Franz Joseph Land, a Russian archipelago damaged by climate change, arranging images of a landscape cluttered with human detritus alongside photos of thriving wildlife (including a surreal underwater picture of a family of walruses). Exploring the contrast between awe and hope, Richards intersperses shots of rock climber Alex Honnold, fresh off a ropeless ascent, with portraits of Richards's emaciated father wasting away from liver cancer ("One body reminds me of infinite potential," he writes, and the other of "inescapable finitude"). The impact of Richards's photos is amplified by the devastating clarity of his prose, as when he writes about the latter set of images, "Alex appears superhuman. Cancer seems inhumane. I didn't know it at the time, but I look at the pictures now and see that all I really wanted to do was make them both human again." The results are fascinating and unforgettable.
