Philip J. Hyde, whose evocative wilderness photographs, taken over five decades, became a potent weapon in the battle against environmental degradation, has died in Reno. He was 84.
The cause of his March 30 death was complications of a stroke, his son, David, said.
The primary conservation photographer for the Sierra Club, Mr. Hyde became known for his color images of Western deserts, canyons, forests and mountains, which evoked in ways words could not what would be lost if they were not protected from development.
"His photographs were much more than beautiful landscapes," said Tom Turner, senior editor at Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law firm that is a spinoff of the Sierra Club. "They were polemical, they were political, they were battle tracts."
Mr. Hyde helped fend off government plans to install two dams in the Grand Canyon. In collaboration with David Brower, the executive director of the Sierra Club, he completed a book called "Time and the River Flowing: Grand Canyon," published in 1964, which turned the canyon into a symbol of imperiled wilderness and focused attention on the Colorado River.
"It was published explicitly to stop the federal government from allowing dams to be built in the Grand Canyon, mostly for power generation and a little for irrigation," Turner said. "The text was hard-hitting, and it succeeded. No one had done books like that before and they had more impact than they would today."
Mr. Hyde did 15 books, most of them for the Sierra Club, and contributed to 70 others. Among his books were "This Is Dinosaur," about the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah; "As Long as the Rivers Shall Run," about Navajo tribal lands in the Southwest; "Island in Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula," and "Drylands: The Deserts Of North America."
His last book, "The Range of Light," published in 1992, included passages by John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club.
Mr. Hyde learned he had macular degeneration in the summer of 2000, and was completely blind by October 2001, a grievous loss, his son said, "because he was trained to see more than anyone else."