From The Wyoming Grasslands Photographic Project by Frank H. Goodyear.

There are inherent difficulties in confronting grasslands with a camera. The first of these is the sheer enormity of their scale…. the unwelcoming, some say intimidating, nature of the grasslands’ apparent infinity. “You just are not particularly well received there when you show up,” the argument goes. As William deBuys, writing about Michael Berman, has so forcefully stated in “Grasslands,” “They demand strength and persistence and loyalty. They turn away the insincere.” And finally, it is difficult to understand all that is in front of you. Grasslands are complex ecosystems; they are slow to unveil their mysteries. It takes time to appreciate them. It takes time to tell their stories….

The Wyoming Grasslands Photographic Project, in partnership with the Wyoming Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, commenced in 2012 as a project to photograph the grasslands of Wyoming. The idea behind the project is to draw attention to these grasslands, among the most threatened ecologies in the world, through photography. During the past three years, Michael Berman and William Sutton have crisscrossed Wyoming, at all seasons of the year, spending countless days and unknown numbers of hours in the field, in order to capture images of power, beauty and uniqueness of these less heralded but hauntingly beautiful places. Their photographs are testimony to their own endurance, commitment, and love of these, to them, newly discovered spaces.