Open Country: Text and Photographs

The words "open country" often give the illusion of a visual frontier without limits. But much has changed in the American West in the nearly 200 years since Lewis and Clark traversed Eden.
The land that was once strictly the domain of teeming populations of wild creatures and appropriately small numbers of Native American peoples has become interlaced with railroads, power lines, highways, towns, cities, suburbs, irrigated farmlands, open-pit and strip mines, artificial lakes, military bases, and recreational sites. Yet much about this muscular, sculptural landscape remains to be celebrated, and photographer Jay Dusard has been doing so for almost three decades.
From Alberta to Sonora, Dusard has photographed the North American West, at times in the parks and monuments, but more often in the rangelands and desert country between the national shrines. Jay works in black-and-white with 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras and, since 1991, with a 4x10-inch superwide panoramic camera of his own design and construction.