Land for Sale Montana

I spent several years driving back and forth on State Highway 2 across the Montana Hi-Line, a vast stretch of mountains and prairie running east-west across northern Montana just below the Canadian border. The Hi-Line is part of the original US railway corridor that today continues to move freight across the state and country. It is a place where Native Americans once hunted buffalo but now live on reservations, where big agribusiness is replacing family farming and ranching, and where small towns are disappearing. Each generation builds upon the land only to be changed again by future generations.

These photographs are inspired by a body of work called New Topographics by photographers Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, John Schott, and others who documented the human geography of the Western American landscape in the early 1970s. People alter the land with a design and purpose in mind. Structures are built, some to last (the railroad) while others decay along with their usefulness. The human geography reflects societal values and economic purpose. These 21st century images of Montana mark the remains of an earlier era in rural America that is rapidly moving into history. (2012-2017)