Photographer Robert Turner’s large format, color landscape photography show “Rare Places in a Rare Light” is on display at the Buffalo Bill Cody Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. It remains on display in the BBHC’s John Bunker Sand Photography Gallery through July 31.
Forty-three images make up the show, which has traveled to notable natural history museums at Harvard University and the Mumm Napa Fine Art Photography Gallery. The exhibit showcases Turner’s landscape shots of vistas in Utah, California, Maine and New Mexico…and of Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest and Yellowstone National Park.
“There are times when my camera frames a scene that sweeps 50 miles to the horizon without a trace of human life. Those times are rare and thrilling,” says Robert “Bob” Turner. “More often, I work to frame out the footprint of man on the landscape.”
I’m not familiar with any mantras saying human beings should be included in wildlife photography in order to show scale, even though Turner says one exists. If it does, he’s not a disciple of that photography sect.
” As a species, we have the capacity to respond to the essence of wildness in a place, even if that place is only an island in the larger sea of human commotion,” says Turner. “When [a photograph] works, it is often because I’ve managed to capture a
fleeting moment of light, color, motion, or stillness that gives the image a sense of heightened reality. I’m left feeling that I have witnessed something that has transcended the realm of ordinary experience.”
The historical center’s education department is working with Turner for lecture and workshop opportunities in late July. Details will be forthcoming later this spring. Monitor www.bbhc.org for more information.
An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the BBHC is open 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. daily. For general information, visit www.bbhc.org or call 307.587.4771.
Tammy Christel 
