Long after the American West was “settled” by Europeans, the myths of “frontier times” persist in the minds of Americans and foreigners alike. For many, western landscapes are the defining image of this country.

Of course, the real history of the west is one also of violence and destruction, a place where the native peoples were slaughtered and displaced, the atomic bomb was created, and nuclear waste (a subject I revisit in Riverworks) was dumped. Still, the landscape itself has an almost mystical quality and it was this, along with its history, that attracted me.

Westerns is a typology of landscapes—of prairieland, high plains and desert under the big sky.