"Change is endemic to the West," writes Eric Paddock. "We cannot return, either as a culture or as individuals, to the landscapes of our youth." But images of a vanished or mythic land persist, filled either with buckskinned riders and untouched terrain, or the boisterous, unlimited opportunities of mining towns. Molding our ideas about beauty and scenery, these images continue to be alluring symbols of what the American West is like, or should be. And these ideas, Paddock says, reflect a place that no longer exists. "Even the West's most powerful remaining symbols of naturethe national parksoften seem shopworn and more urban than wild in the height of tourist season,"notes Paddock." We are increasingly disconnected from the solace of nature, and have to walk farther and farther to find it." Celebrating the West means understanding what makes it the West today.
In 69 full-color photographs, Paddock offers a view of his own West: the landscape of Colorado. From an old school bus in Naturita, to a farmyard near Gem Village, to a cement warehouse in Penrose, Paddock shows us the places most of us overlook because they are either too familiar or oppose conventional notions of beauty. Reflected gently, without sentimentality or casual criticism, the images capture not only the aspects of Western landscape and culture that have been lost, but also those that remain, and why they might be respected and preserved.
"My pictures concentrate on landscapes that lie between the extremes of wilderness and metropolis... Natural beauty and human intervention sometime seem to balance in landscapes such as these, if only briefly." -- from the Introduction
