Atomic Island — Ben Huff. Published by Fw: Books.
Atomic Island is one of those unusual books that enlightens the reader about a relatively unknown subject by infusing it with a beautiful design aesthetic. It smartly provides illuminating documentation of a little-known outpost in our fight against the Japanese during World War II and subsequently, Russia during the Cold War. Adak Island is closer to Japan than to mainland Alaska (it’s at the end of the Aleutian Island chain) and during the war, was our westernmost front in our fight against the Japanese. It was largely deserted once the Cold War ended. Ben Huff interweaves historical documentary stills with his own work to create a quiet masterpiece of a land and encampment that is an abandoned casualty of war.
Rixon Reed is the founder and director of photo-eye. He was seduced by the power of photobooks upon first seeing Larry Clark's Tulsa in 1973 while visiting a tiny Cooper Union bookstore in New York City. He later managed the Witkin Gallery book department before founding photo-eye in 1979 in Austin, Texas, as a mail order photography book business. He moved photo-eye to Santa Fe in 1991 where it remains today as a bricks and mortar bookstore, gallery and internet business.