The photobooks on my desk have piled up, giving my cubicle a fortress-like quality. Between the turrets topped by Chris Lamarca's Forest Defenders and the new edition of Robert Frank's The Americans I have a small window through which I can lob carrot sticks, gummy bears and paper clips at Young, our web producer. Time to start dismantling my defenses and make good on my promises to write about some of these photobooks.

With that, I bring you the first installment of Photobook Friday!

Let's kick things off with above-mentioned book by Chris Lamarca, Forest Defenders: The Confrontational American Landscape (PowerHouse). Lamarca's name might be familiar to you; he shot the "Mulch Madness" story in the March/April 2008 issue of Mother Jones.

As the title suggests, this book takes a frontline view of the war being waged between loggers and activists. Lamarca spent five years documenting the lives of the Forest Defenders, those who responded with action against the Bush administrations policy of opening National Forests to logging.

With a well choreographed mix of 35mm black & white images and rich, color medium format shots, Lamarca takes us deep into the woods, camping out with the activists, eating, sleeping, fighting with them.

If it's not clear from the title alone, the book shows a real sympathy for the (mostly) young people with dirt-caked hands and feet, bandanas sometimes hiding their faces, who fight and work as hard as the loggers to keep the forest standing as is. Not just in the number of images on that side of the battle lines, but the in the intimacy and closeness of the photos.

Less frequently and with less attachment, Lamarca also gives us a somewhat sympathetic look in the working lives of the loggers. With a handful of dignified, if not timeless, portraits and brief interviews, Lamarca humanizes the loggers, men who are often portrayed as heartless monsters, or at the very least, calloused men who carelessly sacrifice our natural resources for a paycheck.

What's more, some of the most beautiful shots in the book are of the loggers at work, including the fourth photo of the book in which a worker stands with his back to the camera at the base of a freshly cut tree, drowning in a Midas-like pool of sunlight. It's a knockout.

Like any well-done, long-form, documentary project that's able to stretch its legs over the course of a book, Lamarca gets across many of the complexities of the issue at hand, brings you into the lives of the subjects, gives you a few nice eye candy photos along with more workman-like documentary shots and excellent environmental portraits.

Powerhouse Books, New York, 2008. 144 pp., 101⁄2" x 101⁄2"

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