Overview

Throughout the world, the American West has defined the character of the United States of America as no other region in America ever could. The combination of awe-inspiring topography and landscapes, from the 100th meridian to the Pacific Coast, along with the integration of Indian and Hispanic cultures into the American fabric of life have long inspired citizens of the world to travel to and explore the vast lands that define the American West, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present time. Photography helped to open up the West after the American Civil War by sharing views of nature unparalleled in any other place on Earth. And photography helped to create the beginning of a national park system that may well go down in history as America's greatest democratic ideal. It is no wonder that public lands have come to dominate the American West, from national parks to national grasslands and wildlife refuges, from national forests to national monuments and historical sites, from wild and scenic rivers to other sanctuaries of wilderness. Willy Sutton has spent much of the past thirty years getting out of his truck and into the landscape, taking his camera to places of natural wonder both well known and obscure. He has assembled one of the great photographic bodies of work dealing with the public lands of the American West, providing a glimpse of what these landscapes looked like before they were designated as national treasures. But, of course, because of their preservation, they are available to all citizens of the world today. Whether one has lived in or visited the West for an entire lifetime, or whether one is coming to the West for the very first time, all readers of this book will find in Sutton's photographs a magisterial guide to what makes the West so unique, so special. As essayists Toby Jurovics and Susan B. Moldenhauer make plain, Willy Sutton's photographs, as represented in this book, will long be held in esteem for the pioneering work they embody, even in this contemporary age dominated by urban development, social and economic inequality, and climate change. At Home in the West:The Lure of Public Land is a book for the ages.

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9781938086083

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Reviews

In the essay that kicks off his beautiful black-and-white photography book, At Home in the West: The Lure of Public Land, William S. Sutton says he began taking pictures to investigate notions about living in a place. Over the last 30 years, his rambling investigations have led him to public lands from the Nebraska Sandhills to the Pacific Coast. Sutton's images are not always the pristine nature-scapes we might imagine; he doesn't shy from documenting man's imprint on the land, from ancient stairsteps carved in rock to stacks of cut trees ready for the sawmill. He prompts readers to ask themselves: How can we use this land for the greatest good?Sutton doesn't provide an easy answer, but his photographs remind us that we are not the first to ask. With additional essays by art curators Toby Jurovics and Susan B. Moldenhauer, At Home in the West offers a sweeping, timeless look at the land that shapes us.

At Home in the West is a compelling reexamination of the landscapes of emotion found in our public lands. With this work Sutton assumes the front rank of photographers exploring the meaning of place. What a terrific book! Willy Sutton's evocative images of the American West document lands held in the public trust and explore their importance through a sensitive eye, a passion for landscape, and an interest in understanding place through photography. Sutton is not the first photographer to focus on public lands as the geographic boundary for his work, but he certainly is the only one to photograph single handedly the complexity and enormity of this region. The importance, the magic, and even the intimacy of the moment is evident throughout Sutton's work. He becomes the land present, respectful, and passionate. In ways reminiscent of other pioneer photographers Timothy O'Sullivan, Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Mark Klett, and Peter Goin among the most notable and influential Sutton's images are a reminder and a wake-up call to remember and recognize the importance of our public lands as places of refuge where encounters with nature will forever revive the human spirit. Here s a test: open this book and look at Willy Sutton s superb pictures and then try not to fall even more deeply in love with our magnificent western continent. I bet you can t. I couldn t. It made me want to grab some gear, hit the road, and see more of this magnificence first-hand. A sojourn is a passing fancy, a contemplative engagement that is in the here and now. William Sutton s lure of the land is a magical walk through public lands. At Home in the West could be the motto of the Bureau of Land Management as much as it is opportunity and challenge. Therein lay the truth, as the photographs emerge with reverence for what once was or might still be. It is all too easy, when looking at photographs of Western landscapes created in glorious Kodachrome or, more recently, digital images, to forget what this place, the West, really looks like, what it actually is. Here, in William Sutton's striking black-and-white photography, is the reality of the West, where the softening hues so evident in the generic coffee-table book are stripped away to reveal a powerful landscape region. Here is not mere surface but the geology of the place, its very bone and sinew, where thrusting peaks and steep declivities, valleys and cliffs, and meadows and rangeland are revealed in a kind of primordial way a way that helps the reader understand the meaning of what really lies beyond the 100th meridian. Surely, William Sutton deserves all the praise he will receive for giving us a most unusual book that will find a place among other classics of Western landscape photography. Sutton s resonant photographs evoke the deep silence and seemingly endless spaces of the American West as it must have been 200---or 2,000---years ago. That sense of continuity offers reassurance in an era of constant, sometimes drastic, environmental change and gives us something to stand on as we shape the future of the places that belong to every one of us. At Home in the West is an important artistic contribution to the ongoing conversation about our environmental attitudes, perceptions, and values. This remarkable visual survey of public lands by William Sutton reveals the vast and exquisite terrain across the United States that is available to anyone, citizen or visitor. Sutton's photographs---powerful, raw, and passionate though not always picturesque---emerge from a true place: the American West. The essays by Sutton and leading curators, in addition to the extensive notes on the public lands that are featured, only enhance the experience and knowledge of this artistic legacy. At Home in the West is a thoughtful, intelligent, and timely book that expresses well both the challenges and opportunities that these immense lands, entrusted to our collective care, offer to us all. Sutton surveys the vast public lands of the West as they are, showing mountain peaks, saguaro forests, pictographs, and sand dunes, as well as roads, bison, people, fences, mining, and foresting. The signs of habitation and development neither mar nor overwhelm Sutton's West but rather lend a reassuring authenticity to his depiction of the place he calls home. In the essay that kicks off his beautiful black-and-white photography book, At Home in the West: The Lure of Public Land, William S. Sutton says he began taking pictures to investigate notions about living in a place. Over the last 30 years, his rambling investigations have led him to public lands from the Nebraska Sandhills to the Pacific Coast. Sutton's images are not always the pristine nature-scapes we might imagine; he doesn't shy from documenting man's imprint on the land, from ancient stairsteps carved in rock to stacks of cut trees ready for the sawmill. He prompts readers to ask themselves: How can we use this land for the greatest good?Sutton doesn't provide an easy answer, but his photographs remind us that we are not the first to ask. With additional essays by art curators Toby Jurovics and Susan B. Moldenhauer, At Home in the West offers a sweeping, timeless look at the land that shapes us.

Author Information

William S. Sutton was born in 1956 in Toledo, Ohio, and was raised in New York State, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the western suburbs of Chicago. He began his academic journey at Arizona State University, completed his B.F.A. and M.F.A. in photography at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography in 1981. His photographs have been exhibited widely and are in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Amoco Collection, Arizona State University, Bellevue Art Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Center for the Study of Place, Chase Manhattan Bank, Colorado Historical Society, Denver Art Museum, Joslyn Art Museum, Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, Phoenix Arts Commission, Princeton University Art Museum, Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, University of Chicago, University of Colorado Special Collections, University of Wyoming Art Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery, among others. Mr. Sutton is an associate professor of art at Regis College in Denver, and he lives in the mountains west of Boulder, Colorado. His website iswww.williamsuttonphotographs.com.

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