Wild Horses: Endangered Beauty

by Traer Scott

Following the release of her remarkable book Shelter Dogs and Street Dogs, photographer Traer Scott traveled around the United States and Puerto Rico to capture extraordinary and unforgettable images of wild horses in sanctuaries and running free. In this new book, Scott focuses on the horses' current plight and the efforts of the individuals and groups trying to pretext them. Through more than 100 stunning and evocative black-and-white portraits and location photographs, she reveals the intelligent, caring, and protective nature of these wild hoses, and also relates the stories of their daily lives, and of their rescue and rehabilitation. This collection of images will appeal to anyone interested in horses and the welfare of all wild animals.

Genres: Animals, Photography, Art, Nonfiction, Horses

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Traer Scott is an award winning fine art and commercial photographer and author of five books. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, Life, Vogue, People, O and dozens of other national and international publications. She was the recipient of the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts 2010 Photography Fellowship Grant and the 2008 Helen Woodward Humane Award for animal welfare activism. Recent exhibitions of her work have been held at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, the Shanghai Photographic Arts Festival, the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel and the Irene Carlson Gallery. Traer lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, daughter and pit bull.

Reviews

[Nic · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad a book was released that brings attention to the terrible plight of wild horses in the U.S., but it would have been so much better if the photos had been in color. Horses have a large array of colors and markings. Using black and white makes for a rather blah representation of these gorgeous animals.

[Kiki · Rating 3 out of 5]

2015-Summer-Reading-Review

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

***Actual Star Rating: 2.75***

This book has so much promise and potential that I wanted to be able to say that I really enjoyed it but in the end it actually just kind of balanced itself out thus leading to the somewhat higher rating than I originally had thought about giving it.

Traer Scott has a rather lengthy Foreword to this book, which is part of the reason I feel for the awkwardly unwieldy size of the book. But this information is much more honest and straightforward to the actual reader about the real history of abuse, mishandling and sorrows that faces today's wild horses while providing such figures that out of 2 million feral horses in the States there are only 22,000 that are actually living in the wild. This troubling theme is repeated in some of the captions throughout the book thus reinforcing the message to the reader the harrowing plight of these gorgeous animals.

Following all this information the book is then dedicated to providing the reader with photographs of these animals with full captions giving some additional information about the animal, where it is from and/or other pertinent information the author feels is important to the sharing of this book. And occasionally interspersed throughout the book are quotes from modern people who have either set-up the sanctuaries for these animals or who work on trying to save them from the ill-fated livestock auctions.

My main issue with the book, though, are the actual photographs as they are presented in black-and-white edging on sepia. This is a true shame since horses come in myriads of colors and with interesting points such as the second photograph of the main body of Braveheart who I so wanted to see in color since of the unusual look of his face. As such I feel this book will be a large letdown to those who would enjoy these animals as they are in real life.

This lack of color also unfortunately ended up running into the majority of captions and although there was occasional mention of a horse's color or the announcing of a blue-eyed horse for the reader to view it was just basically left for you to guess in many cases. Truly disheartening at least o me.

At the same time another issue with the photographs is the fact the author did choose to include two domestics in the photographs and although I could give concessions to one for being in the photograph with a mustang there was no rhyme or reason for the other besides to share her story as tragic as it was. This laissez faire attitude does continue on to also include a few photographs of some feral burros although it was normally the same group of animals and with much less limelight as well as story provided for them even though they intrigued the author enough to mention them.

In the end this would make for a great introduction story and more updated tale of the mustang than all those works that cater to removing mustangs since they have no natural predators or that the BLM has been such an outstanding group for wild horse conservation throughout history. Otherwise if you are just wanting a book of breathtaking pictures this one may or may not hit the mark depending upon exactly what you are looking for.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another photo book in which the author lets us know about endangered animals. She encourages us to help save these horses.

I re-read this book three years later, and give it the same rating!