Looking For Remains Of The Mythic West

Spencer Beckwith On The Arts

In each photograph, Joan Myers shows us the West both as we want it to be and as we fear it's become: a plywood buffalo stands before a piñon-dotted mesa, a neon saguaro glows against a starry night, a mountain worthy of photographer Ansel Adams rises over tourists and their lime-green cooler. In her striking new book, Where The Buffalo Roamed: Images of the New West, the Santa Fe-based photographer asks us how the myth of the West can survive the realities of modern life.