Our February book selection is Evelyn Cameron: Montana’s Frontier Photographer 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 roundtrip, 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 otherwordly 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.
This is a virtual meeting via Zoom. The Zoom details will be sent to registrants the day before the meeting, so please sign up by February 1st, 11:59pm.