Badlands
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
Badlands Details
Review "Each picture in the book tells a story; each essay draws the reader in to experience the unique moments Delgarno has captured in image and word. The reader is left with a yearning to experience the landscape and the affects of nature's magic. . . Badlands is for anyone appreciating awe inspiring landscapes."— Moose Jaw Express"Dalgarno's stunning photographs and descriptive writing capture the surreal and magical terrain of the Badlands of the Northern Great Plains."— Prairie Books NOW Read more Book Description Saskatchewan Book Awards, First Book Award winner 2015 Read more About the Author Ken Dalgarno is a visual artist and photographer from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. His artwork has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows across western Canada and the United States. Dalgarno has received support for his work from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Saskatchewan Arts Board. His paintings are in private and public collections across Canada, Italy, South Africa, and the United States. Dalgarno has been profiled in numerous magazines and print media including: GalleriesWest, Prairies North, Our Canada, Western Art Collector and the Edmonton Journal. He is represented by the Assiniboia Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. FOREWORD Ross KingThe badlands of southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northern Great Plains emphatically defy the clichés of the prairie landscape as unrelievedly flat, featureless, and everywhere sown with wheat. For six years I rode the school bus along Highway 39, past some of those endless vistas of wheat and sky. But a dozen miles southeast of Estevan, the highway dipped into the Souris Valley and the landscape dramatically changed. Not only did we pass through the man-made spill piles—the leftovers from the 1930s and 1940s, when electric shovels strip-mined coal and left these little sugarloafs behind—but a few miles to the west, and even more remarkable, were the hoodoos of Roche Percee. Slabs of wizened rock, spindly ochre archways, wonky pulpits of stone—they looked like the ruins of a lost civilization, or the efforts of a whimsical giant run amok with modelling clay. It was, and still is, a truly magical landscape. With his sensitivity to the haunting and sometimes uncanny qualities of the prairies, Ken Dalgarno is the perfect photographer for these badlands. He captures what might be called "prairie baroque"—the ornate and sometimes fantastic geological and arboreal forms found in tucked-away corners of the plains. I first came to know him through his paintings and photographs of the Crooked Trees of Alticane, those looping trunks and writhing branches that seem to flout all botanical logic, and that he caught beautifully in their arrestingly improbable poses. His badlands series is the perfect continuation of these pictorial meditations on the eerie grace of this landscape. Though relatively new to photography, Dalgarno uses sophisticated techniques to great effect. As a painter, he is a colourist with a vivid palette and boldly charged brush. Here, in his photographs, he prints on an aluminum substrate and blends several exposures to achieve a greater spectrum of colour. The result is an enhanced luminosity: the soaring blue skies, tawny flanks of cliff, and fiery sunsets leap out of the frames. The impact of the landscape—and of Dalgarno's photographic capture of it—is unde¬niable. His photograph "The Stone Angel," showing a boulder in the Big Muddy magnificently poised as if for take-off, recently won the Viewers? Choice Award at the Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. We owe the name "badlands" to the French fur traders who supposedly called these entrancing moonscapes "mauvaises terres à traverser" (bad lands to cross). Regarded by the early settlers as economically unfeasible, some of them even became a "Devil's Playground" (as Butch Cassidy called the Big Muddy) for fugitive outlaws. But in a fitting turnabout, this other-worldly topography is now, as Dalgarno shows, a beautiful and important part of the visual heritage of the prairies. Read more
Reviews
Really enjoying this book! The photography is just wonderful and the discussion of the geography, geology and history of the areas is most interesting. I particularly appreciated the discussion about sacred sites in Badlands regions. While we might wish to visit Badlands because of their stark beauty, it is important to respect and honor sites held sacred by those who first populated these lands. Too often this important rule is either forgotten or not mentioned. One curious omission, however, is any discussion about The Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Because we are planning a trip this summer to South Dakota I wanted to learn more about this national park and just assumed that it would be included in the book. Not so. There is good coverage of Badlands areas in North Dakota but not in South Dakota which seems to me to be a pity - South Dakota's wonderful region should be included as well. In any case, this book opened my eyes to many more destinations for future vacations including Badland parks in Montana, North Dakota and, of course, Canada.Thank you Ken Dalgarno for a very nice addition to our library.
