Celebrating Montana photographer Richard Buswell’s new book, The Quest: A Montanan’s Photographic Journey, just out from Montana Historical Society Press and University of Montana Press. We’ll have Buswell’s new book for sale, a brief talk by John Sullivan, the usual treats, and of course the artist himself.
This is a rare opportunity to purchase photographs from one of Montana’s best.
For over five decades, Richard Buswell has trained his camera on the landscape of Montana, with its abandoned and overgrown homesteads, ghost towns and majestic never-ending skies. His black and white photographs frame cast-off, common things to reveal abstract patterns in the tradition of twentieth-century modernist photography.
As Buswell puts it, his work is “more interpretive and abstract than it is documentary. The images explore the junction where decaying artifacts become visual echoes of the past.”
The places that Buswell visits often exhibit an understated natural beauty, but they are not scenes of majestic grandeur from places like the Yellowstone Valley. Instead, Buswell has documented the out-of-the-way Montana places in which new arrivals from America, Europe, and Asia hoped to find a better, more prosperous life.
Beautifully crafted, sometimes unnerving, and always thought-provoking, Buswell’s photographs showcase his love for Montana and the American West.
