I began making photographs in a documentary and historical tradition forty years ago. I realized that with time, and by default, all photographs would become historical artifacts. But to believe that all photographs will become useful documents of history would be a risky assumption. For in form, perhaps more than in fact, few would reliably qualify a history. With this in mind, I restructured my theory and practice of photography to make pictures that were more historically reliable. I began thinking of documentary as an aesthetic as well as a genre. That aesthetic pertained to the way my pictures would be rendered: the way the prints looked: their attractive, awakening, sometimes irritating aspects. It was also about a point of view that strived to be humanly perceivable, intelligible, and trustworthy. The pictures would need to be well crafted in shape and idea. Without the conjoining of form with idea, the photographs would be less reliable as historical documents.

I also came to understand that it was important to know, with long familiarity, what it was that I was photographing. Having lived along the Front Range of Colorado for seventy years, the details of this place are a home to me, and the foundation and ground for my understanding of the places I photograph. As result of attention and careful observation of place, the pictures that I made here accurately, and I hope eloquently, chronicle over four decades of regional culture. Over this span of time, the geographies of land and culture have been changed and recreated, a flow of transformation bringing forth new rhythms of life and meaning.

Something else needs to be acknowledged (if only to please Klio, the muse of history). As documents of history, the pictures do not necessarily proclaim to only some fact; for they are, rather, a telling-in-shapes whose truths are formal, and conceits of the imagination. The meanings of the pictures are appropriable to other interpretations. They are, after all, pictures: poetic and whimsical.

Richard Van Pelt

May 29, 2012