Evelyn Cameron: Montana's Frontier Photographer

Born in 1868 to a wealthy British family, Evelyn Cameron traded privilege for adventure, the lush English countryside for the austere eastern Montana badlands, a lavish estate for a tiny homestead shack.

In 1894, at the age of 26, Evelyn turned to the burgeoning art of glass-plate photography as a way to support the Camerons' struggling horse ranch, producing some of the most remarkable images of pioneer life ever seen.

Often riding twenty to thirty miles roundtrip, carrying her nine-pound camera around her waist and her wooden tripod in a gun scabbard, she spent thirty-four years documenting eastern Montana. Cameron captured western landscapes: the ruggedly beautiful badlands, vast expanses of unfenced prairie, and otherwordly sandstone formations. And she photographed western characters: sodbusters, cowpunchers, and sheep shearers, stern-faced ranch families, and hopeful, dreamy-eyed immigrants. Cameron also produced some of the first photographs of North American birds.

Evelyn Cameron: Montana's Frontier Photographer showcases 117 of the finest and most fascinating images by this adventurer, homesteader, ranchwoman, and great American photographer.

AWARDS: Honor Book, Montana Book Awards, 2007