SAN JOSE, CA.-Terra Galleria announced that Quang-Tuan Luong, a San Francisco Bay Area resident, has been featured as one of the few living characters in Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan's latest documentary about the American National Parks. The series is scheduled to air on PBS channel this Sunday, September 27th at 8PM. The footage about Luong and his work is part of Episode 4; includes a sequence of Luong working on location in Glacier Bay National Park and a short interview.
Visiting from France, Luong fell in love with the US National Parks and decided to photograph them with a 5x7 large format camera in the most "democratic" fashion, self-financed, often alone, and with no more assistance than any ordinary visitor to the parks. From the beginning, he sought to raise awareness and respect for those treasured lands, a goal he shares with the makers of the documentary. By 2002, more than fifteen years after his first glimpse of Yosemite, he had visited each of the 58 National Parks. His website www.terragalleria.com offers a wealth and quality of Parks images not available elsewhere. Many people have used these images to help them plan their visits. Much in the same way, Ken Burns's film crew used them to help plan their production.
Subsequently, they became interested in using images to fill in missing sequences in their cinematography, as well as to illustrate the companion book. In the process of conversations, they became intrigued by the story of Luong's life, which had been touched and transformed by the US National Parks. They featured him as a new-comer who was deeply moved by American's natural beauty and has dedicated his effort to document our national heirlooms. It was his involvement with the parks that inspired him to make his home in America, and eventually leave a notable career in Artificial Intelligence to become a full time photographer.
Luong photographs have been published in many books, and have appeared in several publications from National Geographic, Time, Life, Outside, Scientific American, GEO, and many others in dozens of countries around the world.