Text by: Kristi Hager
Born in 1868 to a wealthy British family, Evelyn Cameron traded privilege for adventure, the lush English countryside for the austere eastern Montana badlands, a lavish estate for a tiny homestead shack.
In 1894, at the age of 26, Evelyn turned to the burgeoning art of glass-plate photography as a way to support the Camerons' struggling horse ranch, producing some of the most remarkable images of pioneer life ever seen.
Often riding twenty to thirty miles round-trip, carrying her nine-pound camera around her waist and her wooden tripod in a gun scabbard, she spent thirty-four years documenting eastern Montana. She captured western landscapes: the ruggedly beautiful badlands, vast expanses of unfenced prairie, and otherworldly sandstone formations. And she photographed western characters: sodbusters, cowpunchers, and sheep shearers, stern-faced ranch families, and hopeful, dreamy-eyed immigrants. She also produced some of the first photographs of North American birds.
Evelyn Cameron: Montana's Frontier Photographer showcases 117 of the finest and most fascinating images by this adventurer, homesteader, ranch-woman, and great American photographer.
AWARDS: Honor Book, Montana Book Awards, 2007
120 pages, 9 1/8'' x 8 1/8'', 117 b/w photos, softcover
ISBN 10: 1-56037-465-9