From the Archive is a regular column that features one image from our archive and appears every Thursday. LUCEO Images has a thorough group archive (keyword search bar, top right) and it can be at the LUCEO Image Archive.

This week we are featuring an archive image taken by Matt Slaby while on assignment in Montana for Mother Jones.

About This Photo:

“Phillips County, Montana.  It’s a beautiful, open piece of land that stretches from the Missouri River north, past the High Line, all the way to the expansive, empty Canadian border.  There are fewer people in the entire county than there are in a couple square blocks of New York City.  My assignment called for photographs of Buffalo, landscapes, and portraits of a rancher for a piece in Mother Jones on the American Prairie Foundation and their efforts to reintroduce wild-stock buffalo into the area.  

This particular portion of the state has always been defined by the relationship of an item on the landscape to the long, flat, open line that traces the horizon in every direction.  It’s one of those places where it’s possible to stand in one spot, spin around, and see in every direction until the curvature of the earth swallows itself up.  The mountains that spot Phillips County in little cluster-like ranges aren’t high by objective standards –they only really rise to three or four thousand feet in elevation –but their appearance against the horizon creates the illusion of magnitude in the same way that tourists photograph themselves holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  

This aesthetic was integral in how I conceived of the place I was being sent to photograph.  The assignment also happened to overlap with the release of Fuji’s Instax cameras, two instant film-based pieces of equipment that produced oblong, slightly-pano frames.  One frame is slightly wider than the now antiquated 600 film and highlights the horizontal composition; the other is slightly narrower than 600s and is vertically-suited by design.  I picked up one of the cameras before departing Denver and realized, by the time I had reached Casper, Wyoming, that I really wanted both formats for the shoot.  I made a quick run into Target, picked up the second camera and some film, and finished the twelve hour drive into the great northern expanse.

I wanted to base my portrait work off the buffalo images in order to connect the person with the place through the style of the photographs.  In order to really highlight the expansiveness of the land, I used the format to create linear composites of the landscape, the buffalo, and, ultimately, the rancher.  I spent two mornings searching for the buffalo, waking up in the predawn darkness, leaving from the organization’s ranch house (which is about 50 miles interior from any paved road) and walking along the open flats until I spotted the tiny dark dots of the buffalo in the distance.  After locating them, I would walk in the same direction as the herd, slowly, over the course of several hours, closing a substantial gap between myself and the animals until the distance from my camera to the herd was sufficient for photography. 

As I made the frames, I could hear a little voice in my head laughing at the ridiculousness of my potential for demise under these circumstances.  Photographer gored while trying to make Polaroid pictures of wild god damned buffalo.  It bears repeating: wild god damned buffalo.  It would be inexcusable, laughable, stupid, foolish, and wrong.  The nearest road was several miles away at this point.  The nearest paved road was well over fifty miles away.  Under those circumstances, I suppose it really wouldn’t make any difference where the nearest hospital was.  I would get my own footnote next to Grizzly Man and that would be that.  

Fortunately, this wasn’t the outcome.  My footnote in the annals of idiocy has yet to be written (or, perhaps, completed).  I quietly and slowly made frames over the course of what remained of an overcast, rainy morning, stacking the pictures in sequence in my pocket to be strung together in composite later.  The magazine used several of these composites to illustrate the story and Werner Herzog has yet to call.” -Matt Slaby

Caption:

A buffalo herd, photographed in composite, roams through the American Prairie Foundation’s preserve of privately purchased parcels of ranch-land bought with the intention of restoring biodiversity to the Montana Prairie.  Part of that mission includes returning bison and black footed ferret to the land and removing fences and structures to restore a natual cycle that better mimics a pre-settlement era.

To view the full edit from this shoot or to license this image, please visit the LUCEO Image Archive >>

From the Archive is a regular column that features one image from our archive and appears every Thursday. LUCEO Images has a thorough group archive (keyword search bar, top right) and it can be at the LUCEO Image Archive. This week we are featuring an archive image taken by Matt Slaby while on assignment in Montana ...