FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:
406-449-0200
Montana
photographer specializes in Yellowstone’s winter wilderness
Tim Cahill calls the photographer “an artist of major distinction.”
Published simultaneously with a companion video by Montana Public Television
LIVINGSTON, Montana—A new book by Montana photographer Tom Murphy reveals a side of Yellowstone National Park that few people have seen, much less understood and appreciated.
Winter, the park’s longest and hardest season, is celebrated—“respected” may be a better word—in Murphy’s large format, hardcover book, Silence & Solitude: Yellowstone’s Winter Wilderness ($29.95, Riverbend Publishing). The book’s 130 photographs range from sweeping panoramas of backcountry landscapes to details of delicate ice crystals. Many of the photographs show wildlife trying to survive in near-arctic conditions: bison stoically standing in a geyser’s warm steam, hundreds of elk following one another single file through belly-deep snow, and a red fox leaping high in the air to come down hard on crusty snow and pin a mouse to the ground.
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Silence & Solitude, press
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In his foreword to the book, popular author and Outside magazine editor-at-large Tim Cahill writes, "These are photos that mirror a man’s passion, and I know of nothing like them anywhere. Tom Murphy is an artist of major distinction. More often that not, the image itself tells a story. This is because Tom, who has been a guide in the park for two decades, knows the flora and fauna and the natural rhythms of the place in the way that he knows the beating of his own heart. Consequently, his photographs are not simply stunning or striking: they are also knowledgeable and even wise.”
Murphy, 51, was the first person licensed by the National Park Service to conduct photography workshops in Yellowstone. He spends 80 to 100 days within the park each year, and once he skied solo for 125 miles across the park. That trip, made during one of the worst winter storms of the decade, took 14 days.
“I seek out the winter here because I find things that are difficult or impossible to find anywhere else,” Murphy writes in the book’s introduction. “I make these photographs because I love the quiet beauty of this wilderness. I hope others feel, through my photographs, the wondrous elegance, symmetry, surprise and power of the place.”
Murphy also provided the film for a new video by Montana Public Television on winter in Yellowstone. The video and a CD of the video’s music are companion items to the book and share the same title, Silence & Solitude: Yellowstone’s Winter Wilderness.
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Silence & Solitude: Yellowstone’s Winter Wilderness
To interview the photographer, call Tom at
406-222-2302 (Livingston, Montana)
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ABOUT TOM MURPHY—abbreviated information
Tom Murphy has traveled the world to photograph wildlife and wild places. His images have appeared in Life, Newsweek, Audubon, National Geographic World, Outdoor Photographer, and many other publications. Murphy was the first person licensed by the National Park Service to operate photography workshops in Yellowstone, where he spends 80 to 100 days each year. Winter in Yellowstone has always been one of Murphy’s specialties, and Silence and Solitude: Yellowstone’s Winter Wilderness is his first book.
ABOUT TOM MURPHY—full biography
Tom Murphy has traveled the world to photograph wildlife and wild places, but his home—and his heart—is in the Yellowstone area.
Raised on a cattle ranch in South Dakota, Murphy was drawn to the Rocky Mountains and its wildlife. He graduated from Montana State University with a degree in anthropology and spent many years combining photography with anthropological fieldwork.
In 1978 Murphy established a photography studio in Livingston, Montana, 55 miles from Yellowstone’s northern entrance. From there, Murphy has traveled to the Arctic, Antarctic, Alaska, Costa Rica, Mongolia, East Africa, and other wild locations. His images have appeared in Life, Newsweek, Audubon, National Geographic World, Outdoor Photographer, and many other magazines, newspapers, books, and calendars. In 1998 Murphy’s digital video film was used in the video Discovering Yellowstone, which won a prize for excellent photography at the prestigious International Wildlife Film Festival. Murphy has conducted photography classes in New York and Los Angeles.
In 1986 Murphy launched Wilderness Photography Expeditions with his wife, Bonnie Hyatt-Murphy. It is a unique business that teaches natural history photography in the field with Murphy as the guide and instructor. Most expeditions take place in Yellowstone, where Murphy was the first person licensed by the National Park Service to operate photography workshops in the park. One of the reasons he started the business was to give something back to wildlife and wild lands and to encourage their preservation, a purpose appreciated by clients who come from all over the world. For more information on these workshops, contact Wilderness Photography Expeditions, 402 South 5th Street, Livingston, Montana, 59047, or phone 1-800-521-7230, or visit the web site at www.tmurphywild.com.
Murphy, 51, spends 80 to 100 days in Yellowstone each year. He once skied alone 125 miles across the breadth of Yellowstone during one of the worst winter storms of the decade. In fact, winter in Yellowstone has always been one of Murphy’s specialties.
Appropriately, Silence and Solitude: Yellowstone’s Winter Wilderness is Murphy’s first book.
Silence & Solitude: Yellowstone Winter Wilderness
TWO EXCERPTS FROM THE FOREWORD BY TIM CAHILL,
Outside Magazine editor-at-large
“Don’t you think this idea is,” I asked gently, “oh, vaguely suicidal.”
My thrifty photographer friend, Tom Murphy, wanted to ski across Yellowstone National Park: a two-week backcountry ski expedition where there would be little or no possibility of rescue in case of an accident or an unforeseen emergency. He wanted to slog through a country noted for 50 degree below zero temperatures and blinding blizzards and snow twenty feet deep in order to take pictures. Tom is not a high tech guy and owns none of the latest warmest gear. It seemed to me that his cameras would freeze up, along with his fingers, and hands and perhaps his entire body, and that it was possible he might very well die in the name of photography, which sounds noble enough from a distance, but moronic when the potential victim is a friend. It was an impossible trip. In order to navigate the country, for instance, one would be obliged to cross rivers fed by hot springs, rivers that consequently did not freeze and ran waist deep in the shallow sections so that it is necessary for a traveler to strip from the waist down, shoulder pack and skis, then ford the river, half naked, in the freezing cold, through the near-frozen water. Tom had just asked if I wanted to come with him—this was in back in 1985—I said, “uh, no.”
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For the record, I need to say that Tom is also the world’s most “frugal” outdoorsman: his pack is 20 years old, as are his skis, and he wears thin red dress socks under his old leather boots, socks that, he is proud to say, cost him 50 cents a pair. But his gear does the job. He gets across the park in the winter, something few of us could accomplish. In the same way, his cameras are simple: he is concerned with composition and light and information that tell a story. That’s all. And that’s more than enough. Tom Murphy goes out in the winter in his silly red dress socks and he brings back these wondrous, these stupendous images. This book is the closest most of us will get to a backcountry ski trip through Yellowstone. It is a fine thing to have Tom Murphy as our guide. He a passionate naturalist, an artist of major distinction…and, as it turns out—red dress socks not withstanding—a man not nearly as suicidal as I once imagined. Sartorially challenged maybe, but not suicidal.
The book, Silence & Solitude: Yellowstone’s Winter Wilderness, can be used as a springboard for news articles and features. Some suggested topics are:
Snowmobiles are not the only way, or even the best way, to experience Yellowstone’s winter. Tom Murphy skies and snowshoes deep into the park’s backcountry every winter and sees a wilderness few people have seen. How does he do it, what precautions must be taken, what does he see, and how is his experience different than snowmobiling.
Taking care of camera gear—and getting it to work—when the temperature is 50 degrees below zero requires special attention to lenses, batteries, film—and cold fingers. Then there is the question of how to properly expose film for snow, and how to photograph winter wildlife without adding to their stress. Tom Murphy has it all figured out and has tips for anyone who takes photographs in the winter.
Tom Murphy takes multi-day cross-country ski trips in Yellowstone National Park every winter, but one winter he skied alone across the entire park. The 125-mile trip took place in one of the worst storms of the decade. It took 14 days and Tom lost 10 percent of his body weight, but he experienced a wilderness unlike any other place else on earth. Tom can describe his trip, the hardships and the joys, and how that trip confirmed his love for Yellowstone’s winter wilderness.
To interview the photographer, call Tom Murphy at
406-222-2302
(Livingston, Montana)
BOOK SPECIFICATIONS AND INFORMATION
Silence & Solitude:
Yellowstone’s Winter Wilderness
By Tom Murphy
9 ½ inches x 12 inches, hardcover with dust jacket, 128 pages, 130 color photographs
$29.95, ISBN 1-931832-00-5, Riverbend Publishing, Helena, Montana
Author available for in-store Yellowstone photography slide shows and book signings.