Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment surveys the long history of photography’s role in environmental issues. Author Katherine Ware (curator of photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art) leads the reader on an illustrated journey starting with the literal work of the survey photographers of the 1860s and the romantic idealism of Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, and moving on to include other well-known landscape photographers such as Robert Adams, Richard Misrach, and Mark Klett. But the most interesting insights and examinations Earth Now offers surround the eclectic mix of contemporary artists who apply everything from documentary to conceptual art in their efforts to deal with topics like water and land use, food, waste, pollution, energy, industry, animals, and humans’ place in the landscape. Earth Now is being published to coincide with an exhibition opening at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, in April 2011.