"West of Last Chance" photos on display
CHADRON – A traveling exhibit of regional rural photographs on loan from the Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) in Kearney is on display in the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage center now through August 15.
“West of Last Chance” is a unique collaboration between celebrated Houston photographer Peter Brown and the late author Kent Haruf, a Colorado native and former Nebraska Wesleyan faculty member. A copy of their 2008 coffee table book by the same name is also on display in the exhibit.
The authors’ interest in rural landscapes is contemporary but also includes history and a mix of stories passed down over the years, stories that resonate with the land in interesting ways. Their work brings to life the sometimes brutal yet incredibly beautiful regions of Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.
It is evocative work concerned with "moments that describe the beauty, power, tragedy, and cultural complexity of the place itself: the way the land has been used, the way people have lived on it, and the visual record that has been left behind," according to the artists’ statement.
Brown’s work has appeared in museums on both the East Coast and West Coast as well as internationally. His photographs have been printed in Harper’s and The New Yorker, and he has been named Photographer/Educator of the year by the Houston Center for Photography. Haruf, who died in December 2014, wrote five novels including “The Tie That Binds” and “Plainsong.” His sixth, “Our Souls at Night,” was published this week.
The authors received the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for the photo project in 2005.
—CSC College Relations
Category: Campus News