For more than two decades, Craig Varjabedian photographed Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre landscape of red cliffs and open plains in northern New Mexico. Published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2009, *Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby* brings together more than one hundred black-and-white photographs shaped by that sustained attention. The changing light is not merely an atmospheric effect: it becomes a means of describing how a familiar place can remain elusive.

Ghost Ranch carries associations that precede any single photographer. It has been regarded as a place of renewal and transformation and is closely connected with Georgia O’Keeffe, who made it her longtime home. Varjabedian acknowledges this cultural inheritance without reducing the land to established imagery. His photographs instead consider the ranch through questions of identity, place, and perception, attending to the relationship between monumental terrain and individual experience.

The book’s written contributions broaden that inquiry. An appreciation by O’Keeffe places her own voice within the volume, while Marin Sardy examines the ranch’s natural characteristics and social history. An introduction by photographer Jay Packer and essays by Belden C. Lane, Douglas A. Fairfield, and Rob Craig offer theological, artistic, and institutional perspectives; forewords by Cathy L. Wright and Debra Hepler further locate the project within the cultural life of New Mexico. Photography and text thus operate as parallel forms of looking rather than as illustration and explanation.

For collectors of landscape photography and books on the American West, the volume deserves attention for the depth of its engagement with one site. Its value lies in the convergence of a long photographic study, a disciplined black-and-white approach, and a deliberately plural account of a historically resonant landscape. The hardcover book’s 144 pages preserve not only Varjabedian’s vision but also the layered meanings that have gathered around Ghost Ranch.