The beauty of the plains is not just in themselves but in the sky, in what you think when you look at them, and in what they are not.
— Ian Frazier, Great Plains
These pictures represent trips made between 2006 and 2016 to Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming. I went because I wanted to see the westward migration routes: the Oregon and Mormon Trails and the three great rivers—the Missouri, Platte and Yellowstone. The big rivers made me want to look at some smaller ones, so I stopped at, among others, the Heart, the Bad, the Musselshell, the Tongue, the Dismal and the Little Bighorn.
It wasn’t all history and lyrical names, which is good, because ideas or words rarely photograph well. I spent time and attention on interstate highways, which most travelers think of as roads but which seem to me more like places. And of course there were towns and cities and suburbs to photograph. Looking at almost any landscape is a good way to look at the people who live there.
Light on the Great Plains is something special. When we look for beauty or meaning, the easiest mistake we can make is to drive right past it. I’m a believer in the uncommon promise of the commonplace.
— Peter Latner, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
