Book: Traces – The photography of Chris Bell
‘It is crucial we re-establish our links with the natural world if there is to be any future for humans. The enormous loss of our natural areas – and the wondrous life they support – should be a deep concern to anyone who understands how natural systems work; their loss is our loss and there will be a day of reckoning for the destruction we have wrought’. Chris Bell.
Traces is celebrated Tasmanian photographer Chris Bell’s sixth book. Outside The Box / Earth Arts Rights has partnered with Chris to publish and distribute Traces under our imprint ‘An Artist’s Own Book’.
A passionate naturalist, Chris has been photographing wild places and wild things for over 40 years. Born in Singleton, New South Wales, he moved to Tasmania in 1972 to join the campaign to save Lake Pedder. He is a deeply committed conservationist and was a founding member of both The Wilderness Society and the Tasmanian National Parks Association.
He has had five books published of his photography and writing: A Time to Care: Tasmania’s Endangered Wilderness (1980); Beyond The Reach: Cradle Mountain–Lake St Clair National Park (1990); The Noblest Stone: Carnarvon National Park (1995); Primal Places – Tasmania (2002) and The Tarkine (2012). Chris has previously worked largely with a Linhof Technikardan 4×5 camera and now also uses more modern digital systems.
Traces – The Photography of Chris Bell can be pre ordered here.
This short-run, bespoke publication is by celebrated Tasmanian photographer Chris Bell. It features 50 of Chris’s finest images. Written texts include a foreword by Jon Addison, curator at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, an essay by Emeritus Professor Tim Bonyhady, one of Australia’s foremost environmental lawyers and cultural historians, and an afterword from Chris that reflects on his love of the natural world.
Size: 282mm × 320mm [landscape]
Binding: Linen-bound hard case, debossed colour image inlay, foil titling, section sewn.
Printing: Full colour throughout, plus special PMS 5th colour. Matt silver gilding on all exposed edges protects the pages from light, dust and moisture.
Extent: 116 pages on two beautiful papers: 170gsm Mori Silk a fully certified FSC coated paper stock to reproduce the images with great detail and clarity, and a delightfully tactile uncoated paper stock for the text.
Profits from the book will support the protection of Tasmania’s wild and endangered environments.
The release of Traces will coincide with a major exhibition of the same name of Chris Bell’s photographs at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania in September 2025, curated by Jon Addison.
