mean that egotistically. Wallace Stegner once wrote "The Westerner is less a person than a continuing adaptation. The West is less a place than a process." Inadvertently, I had captured a bit of this adaptation on film. In 1990, the 'New West' was in its heyday, but already seeds of its inevitable transition were visible, though I didn't recognize them at the time. The West is usually depicted as a place – mountains, deserts, forests, and rivers – not a process. But as Stegner himself demonstrated, the region's placeness is merely a stage for the saga of continuing adaptation that the West requires of its inhabitants. This idea didn't strike home until I looked at my photographs again. The process Stegner described was ongoing then and now, and a name for it is the frontier – where westerners continue to adapt to the West's abiding dryness, sparseness, and timeless beauty.
The West as a place and a process has created indelible impacts emotionally, economically, and culturally on our nation's people and history for centuries. They continue to change us to this day, and will never stop doing so. These impacts are ineradicable and unforgettable – a permanent mark on America, as Prof. Turner hypothesized a century ago. But Turner was wrong about the frontier – it never closed. It is still very much alive. That's because the meeting-line between nature and culture, visible on the land and in its people, is constantly evolving, expanding, and renewing itself. The photographs in this book are a snapshot of one moment in the frontier's evolution, the intersection of a time and place now gone. I hope you will find them interesting and pleasing. Thanks for taking the time to look.
- Courtney White
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2012
Copyright ©2012 Courtney White, A West That Works, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
