The Adirondack Council

News Release

For more information: John F. Sheehan - 518-432-1770

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Wednesday, July 24, 2002

BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE, NY -- Johns Hopkins University Press and the Adirondack Museum will host a launch party and book signing from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday to celebrate the release of Gary Randorf’s new photo/history book on the Adirondack Park.

The party will be followed by a 7:30 p.m. lecture by the author in the Museum’s Conference Building. The museum is located on State Route 30, in Blue Mountain Lake.

The Adirondacks: Wild Island of Hope is now available in book stores throughout the Northeast, through the Adirondack Council and internet book sellers, such as Amazon.com. Those who attend the museum event will get a special treat in addition to meeting the author. Randorf’s work is also part of a two-artist show at the Adirondack Museum in which a collection of his photos are displayed alongside those of the late Dr. Eliot Porter (1901-1990), showcasing the color landscape photography of the first and second halves of the 20th Century. It will remain on display at the Museum through October 14.

Adirondack Photographer, author and Adirondack Council staff member, Gary Randorf

"Gary’s new book is much more than just a photo essay on the beauty of the Adirondack Park," said Brian Houseal, Executive Director of the Adirondack Council. "Aside from his astounding images of the Park, he shows how people’s love for this place resulted in inevitable conflicts, and eventually, to the conservation of vast areas of the world’s largest, intact deciduous forest.

"Like Seneca Ray Stoddard or Ansel Adams, his work is always aimed at exposing the Park’s natural wonders to those who might never see them otherwise, hoping they will join the fight to protect the Adirondacks from harm," Houseal said. Stoddard was a 19th Century Adirondack photographer. Adams was famous for his work at Yosemite National Park in northern California.

"Gary’s photos give you the sensation of being able to step right into the image on the page. You really get a feeling for how deeply he cares for the Adirondacks," Houseal said. "That’s what made him a successful environmental leader here at the Adirondack Council, and that’s what makes this book such a treasure."

Bill McKibben, Adirondacker and author of The End of Nature, agrees. As he wrote in the book’s foreword: "...a glory carefully revealed in the words and pictures of this book, is that it represents a second-chance wilderness, and, as such, a hope that the damage caused by human beings is not irreversible. It is a metaphor as much as a place."

His influence on the Park is hard to miss. Randorf was the first staff member of the Adirondack Council in 1977. He later became executive director as the staff and membership grew into one of the most effective and influential environmental organizations in New York. Randorf was also responsible for charting most of the Park’s river systems for the Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers System, along with his close friends and colleagues, Clarence Petty and the late Greenleaf Chase. Randorf also designed and oversaw the construction of the Park’s two official Visitor Interpretive Centers at Paul Smiths and Newcomb.

In 1992, Eastman Kodak celebrated the Adirondack Park’s 100th birthday by commissioning "Forever Wild" large-format traveling exhibit of Randorf’s work that toured the state for more than a year. He has been an instructor at the Autumn Weekend Photographic Workshops sponsored by Adirondack Life magazine and Kodak. He has taught photography at North Country Community College, Sagamore Great Camp and the National Audubon Society’s Summer Ecology Camp. In 1994, he was honored with a retrospective exhibit of 75 of his photographs at the Myers Fine Art Gallery in Plattsburgh.

Many members of the press know Randorf’s work well. His images of the Adirondack backcountry have decorated the covers and illustrated the inside pages of the Adirondack Council’s newsletters, its annual State of the Park reports and its special publications for more than 20 years. But Randorf began his career with lens and shutter long before his work with the Council started.

"For the last 30 years, then, I have spent the vast majority of my weekends and a significant portion of my working life exploring the Adirondack Park from one end to the other. It feels like all of this Adirondack country is my community, my backyard. And yet, the Park is so large, there is much of it I will never get to see," Randorf wrote in chapter 3.

"The story of his book is one of people seeking peace and hope in a place of unequaled beauty and variety," Houseal said. "It is a forward-looking history that not only recounts the milestones and accomplishments of the past, but points ahead, to a future in which the rest of the Northeast continues to be tamed and paved over, while the Adirondacks, this island of green, remains a Wild Island of Hope."

To purchase a copy through the Adirondack Council, which will receive a portion of the proceeds at no additional cost to the purchaser, call 1-877-873-2240.

Interviews with Gary Randorf may be scheduled by calling John Sheehan at 518-432-1770. Reviewers copies of the book and a CD of selected digital images from the book are available for free through Mr. Sheehan as well.