Grad Research: MA student Ashlyn Davis releases book of photography of the American West

We're pleased to announce that one of our MA students, Ashlyn Davis, has edited and published a book of photography with Bryan Schutmaat. Here's what Ashlyn has to say about the book:

The 44 images in Islands of the Blest depict various places in the American West and were taken over a one hundred year period, from the 1870s to the 1970s. The photographers included range from the completely unknown to some of the most distinguished practitioners of the medium--Timothy O'Sullivan, Dorothea Lange, and Russell Lee for instance. We scoured free public archives state by state for a year, pulling thousands of photographs and spent the summer editing them down to the version presented here. While there are some of the grand landscapes one expects to find in a text about the West, there are also images of its destruction and containment. The book is clothbound, printed on a thick newsprint, and includes a poem by Michael McGriff, a former Michener fellow.

For more information about the book or to purchase a copy, see the publisher's website here.