Two Photographers and a Poet in Point Lobos

March 26, 2024

Point Lobos is just north of Big Sur and just south of Carmel-By-The-Sea, situated on the central coast of California in Monterey County. Filled with Monterey Cypress trees, vast kelp forests, and a diverse range of birds and animals, the area is awe inspiring for many artists. Special Collections & Archives holds two extraordinary books that allow you to see Point Lobos through an artist’s eye. Whether or not you’ve had the opportunity to travel there in person, after taking in either of these books, you can get a visceral sense of the look, sound, and feel of the place.

Point Lobos: a portfolio of fifteen poems by Robinson Jeffers is a stunning artist’s book. Only 125 copies were printed, and we have copy number 14. The book measures 19.5 by 22.75 inches, encased in a thick wood box made of native black walnut, and handcrafted by master cabinet makers. When you pull out the portfolio you find that the pages are not bound. The poems and photographs are printed on poster-size thick linen paper. The feel of materials combined with the size of the book transport you. The poems by Robinson Jeffers, an American poet known for his narrative and epic poems, appear first. They provide a view into the character of Point Lobos Jeffers learned after he and his wife moved there and built a home from granite stone called “Tor House” in 1914. After you’ve consumed stories about the place where stark cliffs meet the cold ocean you come to the photographs by Wolf Von Dem Bussche. These high contrast black and white matte prints serve to illuminate the poems that came before them. The black ink printed on linen is the blackest black and seems to suck the color out from the area around it. 

A second book that encapsulates this enchanting California land is My camera on Point Lobos by Edward Weston. Edward Weston was a highly influential American photographer, and was a contemporary of Jeffers. Weston actually made portraits of Jeffers, some of which hung in “Tor House”. Weston was first introduced to Point Lobos in 1915. His book holds an array of still lifes from Point Lobos with excerpts from Westin’s journal printed in the back. In one entry he states, “…early next morning I went down to see what the tides had done [to the kelp]: and there it lay unchanged, twisted, tangled, interwoven, a chaos of convulsed rhythms from which I selected a square foot, organized the complex maze, and presented it, a powerful integration.” His words summarize how the landscape moved him to create art. This collection of photographs is printed on high gloss paper, providing a very different view of the Point Lobos terrain compared to Wolf Von Dem Bussche’s matte prints.

Come to the Special Collections & Archives reading room to have a look at the physical books, or many others like it, which allow you to travel all along the coast of California without ever having to leave the CSUN campus!

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Post tagged as: special collections, rare books, photographs, california