Crazy From the Heat: A Photographer's Chronicle of Twenty Years in the Big Bend

James Evans has become the foremost interpreter of the state's iconic Big Bend region, which has been his life's passion and photographic subject since 1988. Approaching the rugged land and its people as an artist, documentarian, and historian, Evans has produced a body of work that rejects clichés in favor of honest, deeply observed photographs that show a profound understanding of light, the people of the desert, and the desert itself.

Crazy from the Heat presents Evans's most fully realized portrait of the Big Bend. Going well beyond his highly regarded black-and-white work in Big Bend Pictures, this book displays magnificent landscapes in full color, including panoramas that fold out to reveal the immensity of the desert. It contains dramatic time-lapse night photography and sensuous nudes that exhibit the striking similarities between the contours of the human form and of the land. Several portraits of Big Bend residents that reflect Evans's long acquaintance with and affection for people who are at home in this remote place complete the collection.