Reviews

Legacy in Time: Three Generations of Mountain Photography in the Canadian West by Henry Vaux Jr

thebacklistborrower's review

informative

5.0

One of my favourite things are glaciers. Part of me thinks this is a bit of a morbid fascination, since all but the biggest glaciers are supposed to melt within the next century, but it is what it is. Glaciers are just really, really cool. They shape mountains, cool our atmosphere in more ways than one, are heavy enough to score rock and crush it into flour, and just look really gorgeous.

So I bought this coffee table book on a holiday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Mary Vaux was a woman who, in the early 1900s, explored the Canadian rockies with her husband, capturing photos year after year of glaciers. This book mirrors her photos with photos taken 100 years later by her great-grand-nephew. 

A lot of these are depressing. But still so gorgeous. Some of my favourite pages are at the end, which aren’t photos of mountains but people: photos that Mary Vaux took of engineers with their engines, railway workers, mountain guides, and tourists compared to people in the same roles today.