Artist Statement
My interest in photography did not begin with a burning desire to see the world through a camera. It evolved through an intense devotion to wilderness that eventually shaped all parts of my life and brought them together. I began to express this devotion in a physical way through climbing and hiking, and in words through lectures and articles.
Photography was a means of visual expression to communicate what I had seen to people who weren't there. At first I was disturbed that 99 percent of my images didn’t look as good as what I had seen. The other one percent, however, contained some element - a beam of light, a texture, a reflection - that looked more powerful on film than to my eye. Without this I never would have been drawn toward photography as a career. I became fascinated with trying to consistently combine photographic vision and a visualization in my mind's eye to make images that exceeded the normal perception before my eyes.
Note: Galen Rowell and his wife, Barbara, were killed in a plane crash near the Bishop airport on August 11, 2002, on their way home from a photo workshop class in Alaska.