PEAK OF PHOTOGRAPHY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 788, 27 August 1954, Page 13

PEAK OF PHOTOGRAPHY

OUR EVEREST ADVENTURE, by John Hunt; Brockhampton Press, English price 12 ‘4. EW ZEALANDERS have’ some cause to feel a close association with Mount Everest. Many of them haye heard Sir Edmund Hillary and George Lowe give vivid lectures on the work of the successful 1953 British Expedi+ tion and have seen the fine film. The modest and stirring book by John Hunt, The Ascent of Mount Everest, has been read widely here, as elsewhere. Now there is a further treat available. Sir

John has written a short account fn / straightforward prose to which the em-. phasis is given by numerous striking | photographs, some of which have never | been published before. He has sub-titled his new book "The pictorial history from Kathmandu to the summit." It is a valuable companion to. the earlier work, and produced with similar dignity and taste. Hillary has contributed some of the text. The crisp reproductions by photogravure enabled the illustrations to be printed on the same paper as the text. The layout is exciting and fits the mood of the advefture. The photographs are of uniform excellence and no aspect of the expedition is neglected. The whole is a delightful and human commentary. Here are panoramas of gaunt mountain majesty, friendly close-ups of Sherpas and their children, fascinating jungle, terror by telephoto, chaotic icefalls, a relief model as convincing as an aerial view, storm-bound high camps, sunsets and stores dumps, men dnd ridges. This most evocative collection will have admirers wherever it is seen. The book is a triumph for British printing and book production, as the climb was for British mountaineering. The cover is a relief map drawn with skill and imagination. Seldom have such memorable experiences been so generously shared.

John

Pascoe