Dirt Meridian

by Andrew Moore (Photographs), Toby Jurovics (Photographs), Inara Verzemnieks (Text)

In Dirt Meridian, Andrew Moore takes to the air to document the High Plains of North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska in a series of stunning, large-format photographs. The -meridian- of the title refers to the 100th meridian, the longitude that neatly bisects the US and has long been considered the dividing line between the East and West. Much of the meridian traverses America's so-called flyover country, those sparsely populated landscapes between the urban centers on either coast. Other parts of the meridian cross contentious zones such as the heavily fracked Bakken formation in North Dakota.
Dirt Meridian interweaves two stories: the myths and history of the vast, severe American High Plains alongside portraits of the people who live there today. Along the way, Moore worked with ranchers, farmers, crop dusters, game wardens, writers and historians to capture the mythology and reality of the High Plains. Many photographs in this book were taken using a specially modified camera in a low-flying plane; the resulting pictures, with their literal bird's-eye view, offer a unique perspective on this quintessential, seemingly boundless American landscape.
American photographer Andrew Moore (born 1957) is widely acclaimed for his photographic series, usually taken over many years, recording the effects of time on the natural and built landscape.

Genres: Photography

140 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2015

About the author

Andrew Lambdin Moore is an American photographer and filmmaker known for large format color photographs of Detroit, Cuba, Russia, the American High Plains, and New York’s Times Square theaters. Moore’s photographs employ the formal vocabularies of architectural and landscape photography and the narrative approaches of documentary photography and journalism to detail remnants of societies in transition. His photographic essays have been published in monographs, anthologies, and magazines including The New York Times Magazine, Time, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Fortune, Wired, and Art in America. Moore’s video work has been featured on PBS and MTV; his feature-length documentary about the artist Ray Johnson, “How to Draw a Bunny,” won the Special Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Moore teaches in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media program at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Reviews

[Lloyd Fassett]

11/21/15 WSJ best photography books of the year

[Katie]

Gorgeous aerial photos of the high plains of the Western US. Small towns, ranchers, and the energy industry. The photo captions at the end are both interesting and educational. Plus two essays worth at least skimming to see if they appeal to you. Cool project, giving some love to my second favorite part of the country.

[Kate Hornstein]

Loved, loved, loved these photos. Take a closer look at what you are flying over when you look out at "fly over" country.