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Red Desert, Green Prairie, Blue Sky: Photographing the West unites the efforts of eight photographers working on three separate photography projects. Each project seeks to illuminate the beauty, tragedy, and strength of a different geographic region. 

The first region, Red Desert, focuses on southern Wyoming. The lens of photographer Martin Stupich documents the loss of the wilderness, the red desert, to an industrial landscape amidst the energy boom gripping this region of the American West. Stupich’s work testifies to the destruction of landscapes of stark beauty at the hands of human industry, and it acts as a record of that landscape’s power. 

Photographer George Jerkovich’s compositions encompass the second region, Central Kansas, in a very literal way. Through stunning panoramic photographs of sunflower-filled prairies and wheat-swept plains, Jerkovich explores the evolution of the landscape of Kansas. His work celebrates the beauty of the state while countering the negative stereotypes of rural Kansas and declining agricultural legacy.

The third region, the Llano Estacado (“Staked Plains”) of northwest Texas, is represented through the work of six nationally recognized photographers — Peter Brown, Rick Dingus, Steve Fitch, Miguel Gandert, Tony Gleaton, and Andrew John Liccardo. These photographers tackle a wide variety of issues facing the Llano today, including the decline of cattle ranching; the increasing difficulty of finding water in the area; and the challenges of an economy shifting from agriculture to medicine and education. 

Red Desert, Green Prairie, Blue Sky: Photographing the West features 45 color and black-and-white photographs. Separately, photographs of each place have distinctive identifying characteristics. Collectively, the exhibition compares textures of the land, its artifacts, its buildings, its current occupants, and the environment within three separate and often forgotten regions of the central United States.