Photographer Bryan Schutmaat

Now and the I will present a photographer that is new to me, but that I find very interesting. Bryan Schutmaat is depicting the people and landscape of western USA in a great collection called Grays the Mountain Sends. Bryan has said that his pictures are not to be seen as a political statement, rather an observation; “There’s something really beautiful to me about how people get by, what people do day to day,” interviewed by Charlotte Alter in Time.

A poem by Walt Whitman came to my mind when watching Bryan's pictures. From another time, another sense of conquering a new land.

...
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,

Pioneers! O pioneers!
...

...
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,

Pioneers! O pioneers!
...
Walt Whitman (1819–1892).  Leaves of Grass.  1900.

Please visit Bryan Schutmaats website to learn more.
Mr Urbano