Sons of the Living — Bryan Schutmaat. Published by Trespasser.
Following in the footsteps of Robert Adams, although with considerably more grandeur, Sons of the Living is a book about the fragility of our world, peppered with warning signs of what we’re doing to destroy it, and each other. In many ways, it’s a classic road trip lexicon, a dictionary with many of the familiar references: the highway Bryan travels and the people he meets along the way; abandoned gas stations; motel rooms; views through a cracked windscreen; long exposures of headlights passing through vast spaces. All this might sound as if we’ve seen it before, and yes, in many ways we have. And, then again, we haven’t.
My own copy arrived just a few days before leaving for the deserts of Nevada and Utah, and once there it was hard not to feel as if I were passing through Bryan’s world, seeing that magisterial landscape through his eyes. I can think of no greater compliment.
Mark Power is a photographer and member of Magnum Photos.