Sky Country gathers Bob Kolbrener’s black-and-white photographs of the American West, with the sky as a recurring point of attention. Mountains, coastal formations, open country and shifting weather become settings for the relationship between light and land. Published by Nazraeli Press in 2025, the book presents 54 duotone plates across 72 pages and opens with an introduction by Ann Jastrab, Executive Director of the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel.

The publisher’s preview spreads reveal photographs in which clouds carry as much visual weight as the terrain below. Bright formations rise above dark ridgelines; elsewhere, a narrow horizon leaves most of the image to layered skies. Changes between dense blacks and luminous whites give the pictures their structure. Some spreads pair two photographs, encouraging comparisons of shape and atmosphere, while others leave a single image on the right-hand page. The generous surrounding paper gives each composition space to be considered before the next turn.

Kolbrener’s relationship with Ansel Adams provides a useful context for this attention to the American landscape. His photographs continue a concern with the expressive possibilities of black-and-white imagery, while the selection here invites viewers to follow his particular responses to weather and open space. Jastrab’s introduction offers another point of entry into that experience, connecting the images to an imaginative reading of the West.

The clothbound volume measures approximately ten by twelve and a half inches, with a tipped-in cover image and duotone printing on matte-coated art paper. It accompanied Kolbrener’s 2025 exhibition at the Center for Photographic Art and follows his Nazraeli monograph California. For readers and collectors, the book offers an opportunity to study how a sustained landscape practice takes shape through selection, reproduction and pacing. The interest lies in looking closely at the photographs and at the relationships the book creates between them.