Editor/typesetter/printer: Robert Dickeover
Book Designer, head bookbinder: L.J. Dillon
Illustrator/assistant bookbinder: Rachel Stonecipher
The Book
The Stones of Mani, Views of the Southern Peloponnese, is an artist book published in Sacramento, Clifornia by the Stalwart Press.  It consists of a book with a separate portfolio of twelve platinum-palladium prints by writer-photographer Mary Swisher, housed in a slipcase. Swisher begins her book, "I go to a village in Greece at the foot of the Sagias Mountains.  The Gulf of Messenia stretches below.  Beyond, the barren Inner Mani Peninsula unrolls to the southernmost tip of continental Europe."  From 1984 to the present, Swisher has returned often to the Peloponnese province of Laconia, the stomping ground of ancient Sparta, to photograph a landscape of war towers, threshing rings and Byzantine churches.  Her straightforward and austere photographs present a contemplation of the stark beauty of the countryside, where classical Greek, Roman, Frankish and Turkish fragments of earlier ages survive.  The 1820's Greek War for Independence was spawned in the remote region, and Maniats are still considered fierce fighters in defense of their country.  Swisher's poetic journals bring an absorbing narrative of daily life in and around the small village of Knelianika; her account is both a celebration and a lament for a passing era of cultural richness.
Swisher's meditative studies of fleeting light and enduring stone were made with a 4 x 5 field camera.  Each negative was then contact printed on rag paper witch was handcoated with platinum-palladium and then exposed to ultraviolet light.  Platinum prints were perfected in the late 19th century, and Frederick H. Evans' photographs of English cathedrals are well-known examples of this technique.  During World War I platinum became unavailable temporarily ending its use in photography.  Recently, the increased availability of this noble metal as well as the research of Mike Ware in England and Pradip Malde in the United States have led to a revival of platinum printing.  This time-consuming process gives a photograph of lustrous deph and archival endurance.
© 2000 Mary Swisher

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