"Few things have defined the American experience as fully as the open prairie. In this volume, some of our very finest modern writers and photographers provide perhaps the most rounded view we’ve ever had of this great landscape and the enduring culture it gave rise to. A true gift, for people of every region."
- Bill McKibben
The high, cold plains of the American West are vast and harsh and demanding. Prairies challenge the imaginative mind and the adventurous heart, some say they are hard to love.
Now one book brings together words and photographs to capture the deceptively “empty” landscapes of the high plains of Montana. Through Jan. 10, 2009, the Missoula Art Museum has an exhibition featuring the three photographers from the collection—an added bonus to the wrtings and images in the book.
The Wide Open reveals how some of the most interesting and accomplished writers and photographers in the country have met that challenge and given the genius of the prairie a vision and a voice.
Their stories are as diverse as the tellers, ranging from fiction by Barry Lopez, Richard Ford, and William Kittredge, to the childhood histories of Mary Clearman Blew and Judy Blunt and the nonfiction narratives of Jim Harrison, Gretel Ehrlich, and Rick Bass.
There are works by Native American prairie dwellers such as M. L. Smoker and James Welch. Personal or poetic, journalistic or scientific, these works eloquently attest to the prairie’s abundance in all its human and natural variety, offering descriptions as wide open and rich as the land they depict
Three contemporary photographers added their interpretations to the prairie’s abundance, Lee Friedlander, Lois Conner, and Geoffrey James.
For more than twenty years Lee Freidlander has been coming to the West to capture images of the landscape. His ability to focus on objects often overlooked or hurried-by results in photographs that reward long and careful scrutiny.
Added to Friedlander’s focus on the near, the close and the particular are two photographers with years of experience in picturing landscapes, Geoffrey James and Lois Conner.
Canadian Geoffrey James, shows unpeopled landscapes with layers of built and abandoned artifacts. The sweeping vistas of the prairie are an ideal subject for the panoramic photos of Lois Connor.
This paragraph from the introduction best describes why the people involved put their time and talents into this collection:
The Wide Open is a gift from its writers, photographers and editors to all of its readers---freely given because we believe the cacophony of words and images collected here might help to educate readers about the life of the shortgrass prairies. Beyond education, we hope our collection of stories, poems and photographs will stimulate a diverse audience into taking action to protect the lands that inspired these artists, so that our remote high plains will become a haven once more for people and animals, birds and fish, grasses and rivers.
"The Wide Open" is edited by Annick Smith and Susan O'Connor. Annick Smith is the author of several books, most recently In This We Are Native: On Going Away and Coming Home and Homestead. She is coeditor of the Montana anthology The Last Best Place and an award-winning story writer.
Susan O’Connor, a philanthropist and arts advocate, is on the board of the American Prairie Foundation and is involved with other literary, environmental, and social justice nonprofit organizations. She lives in Missoula, Mont.
Barbara Theroux is the manager of Fact & Fiction, now part of the Bookstore at the University of Montana.
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