The Pass Finders, Piegan, Montana 1913

This photograph, "The Pass Finders, Piegan, Montana," was created by Roland W. Reed. It presents us with a muted palette, all browns and tans, giving it an antique feel. This makes me think about the process of capturing a moment, a scene, transforming something real into an image, a memory. Look at the way the figures on horseback line up against the backdrop of those majestic mountains. The texture of the image, it’s grainy, almost like you could reach out and feel the individual particles of the photograph itself. The opacity, the way the light filters through the scene, it’s all part of the story. Think of the way the mountains fade into the background, how the artist uses depth to give a sense of scale. It reminds me a little of the landscapes of someone like, say, Charles Marion Russell, another artist who was drawn to the American West, although Russell's work has a painterly looseness, whereas here, we have the stillness of photography. Ultimately, art is a conversation, a constant dialogue between the past and the present, reality and how we see it.