Prairie: Images of Ground and Sky

by Terry Evans

Excellent Book

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1986

About the author

Terry Evans has photographed the prairies and plains of North America and the urban prairie of Chicago. Combining both aerial and ground photography, she delves into the intricate and complex relationships between land and people. Her work explores the virgin prairie, working steel mills, Greenland ice sheets, a small town in the Kansas Flint Hills, the oil boom in North Dakota, and Ft. Worth’s Trinity River and the people who use it, and now petcoke in Southeast Chicago.

Explorations of the effects of land use on local people have led her to use her work as a means of advocacy for local people’s rights and for climate change awareness. She joins the people of Southeast Chicago who are fighting petcoke effects from Koch brothers owned petcoke storage on the banks of the Calumet River in the midst of a residential neighborhood.

Evans has exhibited widely including one-person shows at the Chicago Art Institute, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History ,The Field Museum of Natural History, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Amon Carter Museum of Art

Evans is a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of an Anonymous Was a Woman award. Her work is in museum collections including the Chicago Art Institute, Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of Art and many other museum collections.

Reviews

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bigger book that focuses on various photographs of the prairie in portrait view.

The book starts off with an Introduction that has three written parts, each by a different person, including the author. As a result the first fifteen pages are just written information for the reader about living nets, seeing the prairie as a whole and the author connecting herself with the natives by viewing the patterns in the grass give or take.

From there the book is made up of various quotes and almost full page photographs with captions that provide a little bit of information to the reader as well as where the location was. Unfortunately some of these photos were in black-and-white, which was a disappointment, especially as I would have loved to have seen the feathers in comparison to the grass in which they rested.

Although some of the photographs did cover various plant species they weren't differentiated so unless you know the vegetation that the author is discussing or willing to look it up you may not be able to tell the difference yourself. There is a partial list in the back of prairie species, though, for those who may be curious about looking up some of these species.

And although some of the photos were wonderfully done there weren't enough to actually make me want to keep the book for my own collection.

[Ken A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing photography of the Great Plains and the Flint Hills of central USA. You’d be forgiven for not ‘getting it’ if you’ve never been to these places... it’s a beauty that only shows when a person steps out of the car and onto the prairie.