Wyoming Grasslands Photography Exhibition, Reception and Program

Photographers Capture the Subtle Beauty of this Wyoming Landscape

“There’s nothing out here!” That’s what some visitors hurrying along I-80 say about our state’s wide-open spaces. But photographers Michael P. Berman and William S. Sutton know better. They are sharing their love of this beautiful and vast Wyoming landscape in Wyoming Grasslands, a photographic collaboration among the artists, The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming, and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Draper Natural History Museum.

The exhibition will visit the Niobrara County Library February 16 through March 15. An Open House will be held on Wednesday evening, February 24 from 5-7 p.m. Brent Lathrop, of The Nature Conservancy will be on hand to discuss the importance of grasslands to people and wildlife and will present a brief program at 5:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Berman and Sutton spent three years traversing Wyoming, logging many miles in an old pickup truck and on foot. Their travels took them to public and private lands, including several properties with conservation easements held by The Nature Conservancy.

These grasslands of Wyoming are places whose biological wealth is as subtle as the views are vast. The images offer a raw and dramatic glimpse of a landscape – from prairie grasslands and meadows to sagebrush-steppe and foothill grasslands – that is disappearing faster than the Amazon rainforests.

“We either learn to see these landscapes, or we lose them,” says Michael Berman.

Frank Goodyear, a writer, curator and Conservancy trustee who helped spearhead the photography project, comments, “The reality of this viewing experience can be transformative; their photographs activate our senses and leave no emotions, or sensations, untouched.”

Among the many locations featured in the exhibition are the Thunder Basin National Grasslands, Tom Thorne/Beth Williams Wildlife Habitat Management Area, and the Shirley Basin. In addition to the photography exhibition, a companion book of the major exhibition has been published by Oklahoma University Press, featuring the work of Sutton and Berman, along with essays by conservation biologist Dr. Charles Preston, the Willis McDonald IV Senior Curator of Natural Science at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Draper Natural History Museum, and Frank Goodyear Jr.

The stop is part of a tour of 14 public libraries in the state, as well as the Wyoming State Museum and the Ucross Foundation during 2015-16.

For more information call (307) 334-3490 or stop by. Regular hours are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Wednesday, Noon to 7 p.m.

Information about other stops on the Wyoming Grasslands exhibition tour may be found at The Nature Conservacy.