Of Water and Mountain Light

The Catskill Mountains of New York were carved out of an uplifted shale plateau by the ancient glacier that once covered New York and New England. What these mountains lack in grandeur, compared to the Rockies or the Sierras, they make up in their quiet, rolling green beauty. Before the Dutch settled here in the 17th century, tribes of the Algonquin Indian nation made these mountains home — the Esopus, the Lenape and the Mohican, now long gone. But they left their names on the land — Ohayo Mountain, Ashokan and Esopus Creek. The Dutch settlers called these mountains "Catskill," originally spelled "Kaatskill," meaning cat creek ("kill" for stream) after the bobcats they observed. In the dramatic Kaaterskill Clove the legend of Rip Van Winkle was born. Later in the 19th century the torrent of Kaaterskill Falls and the broad view of the Hudson Valley from the Catskill escarpment inspired the artist Thomas Cole, who founded the Hudson River school of American landscape painting. Steven Mancinelli has been photographing these mountains for several years. The images in this book roughly cover a year of sequential seasons in the Catskills, from summer to summer.



The photography of Steven Mancinelli can also be viewed at www.PenumbraLight.com.