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"Dogs by nature take indiscriminate interest. We cannot as their companions fully share in this, for reasons of social propriety and intellect and conscience, but their openness reignites by example the potential in us to feel affection for the world. Chuck Forsman's dog ranges enthusiastically through the often seedy little landscapes of a compromised America, but as we watch we escape a measure of our boredom and embarrassment with the country. Saved by a nose." "Between the wild and the domestic, there is the dog. Chuck Forsman's mutt, Magpie, lets us enter that betweenness where people and the environment cooperate and collide, a raggedy border where only a four-legged guide could walk unselfconsciously and an unmarked territory where only an artist could catch the complex scent." |
| "Walking Magpie is a magnificent book in which renowned artist/photographer Chuck Forsman and his cool companion-dog, Magpie, take us on a wonderful and beautifully illustrated journey into a wide variety of landscapes, with which many readers will be unfamiliar or surprised by, from parking lots, construction sites, and the spaces between dumpsters to spectacular wilderness, urban parks, and city streets. Far too many people today are alienated from nature, and this remarkable book, which could easily be subtitled 'Travels With a Man and His Dog,' will help us all to 'rewild' our hearts and reconnect with our incredibly interesting and breathtaking world. I love this book and find myself constantly going back to the superlative pictures and taking off on my own imagined journeys." —Marc Bekoff, co-founder (with Jane Goodall) of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, author of Nature's Life Lessons (with Jim Carrier), The Emotional Lives of Animals, and Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals (with Jessica Pierce), and editor of Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation |
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Walking Magpie: On and Off the Leash is a 136-page compendium showcasing the black-and-white photography of Chuck Forsman. Enhanced with an informative introduction by Eric Paddock, Walking Magpie: On and Off the Leash presents visual imagery focused on what a dog sees, smells, and is drawn by canine curiosity to investigate. The premise of the project was quite simple, take a camera along when Chuck Forsman walked his dog in the neighborhood and surrounding hills near where they live, along with adventures in other parts of the country ranging from Alaska and the Northwest Territories of Canada, to Florida, Ohio, and New York City. The result is a compilation of truly impressive and occasionally meditative images. Walking Magpie: On and Off the Leash is a highly recommended photographic study.
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FROM THE INTRODUCTION "For more than forty years, Chuck Forsman has been a pioneering landscape artist whose paintings and photographs have engaged us and helped us to focus on environmental and land-use issues. Here, in Walking Magpie, Forsman shows us a layered continental landscape that is banal and beautiful, gentle and terrifying by turns. His eye for form, detail, and the occasional quiet joke―combined with Magpie's canine exploration and acceptance of the world as he finds it―challenge ordinary perceptions of 'landscape' and of 'community' and awaken in us a new sense of where and how we live." |
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