Terry Evans: Prairie Stories

$50.00

She renders each person and scene with knowing respect. Evans' affection is clear, but she regards her subjects well enough to avoid romanticizing them.

— Michael Zajakowski, The Chicago Tribune


The small Kansas town of Matfield Green and the surrounding prairie hills are the focus of this extended project by photographer Terry Evans. A small town in Chase County with a population of just dozens and only one commercial establishment, a bar-cafe, the community continues to thrive. While Evans remains faithful to the people and place, this is less of a documentary book and more like a set of short stories inspired by Matfield Green and the surrounding prairie.

Evans first began visiting Matfield Green in 1990 and photographed there often over the next eight years. She returned ten years later, in 2008, and photographed the residents and their land through 2010. Eloquent yet resolutely unsentimental, her images span twenty years in the life of the town, and capture the beauty and endurance of the prairie and its dedicated inhabitants.

She renders each person and scene with knowing respect. Evans' affection is clear, but she regards her subjects well enough to avoid romanticizing them.

— Michael Zajakowski, The Chicago Tribune


The small Kansas town of Matfield Green and the surrounding prairie hills are the focus of this extended project by photographer Terry Evans. A small town in Chase County with a population of just dozens and only one commercial establishment, a bar-cafe, the community continues to thrive. While Evans remains faithful to the people and place, this is less of a documentary book and more like a set of short stories inspired by Matfield Green and the surrounding prairie.

Evans first began visiting Matfield Green in 1990 and photographed there often over the next eight years. She returned ten years later, in 2008, and photographed the residents and their land through 2010. Eloquent yet resolutely unsentimental, her images span twenty years in the life of the town, and capture the beauty and endurance of the prairie and its dedicated inhabitants.

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  • Photographs by Terry Evans

    Hardbound
    9.5 x 9.5 inches
    176 pages / 69 color images / 31 duotone images
    ISBN: 9781934435489

  • Terry Evans (b. 1944, Kansas City) is known for her photographs of the people, landscapes, and artifacts of the American Midwest. She grew up in the heart of the American prairie, inspiring her lifelong passion for the Great Plains, which she has photographed since the mid-1970s. Evans’ work provides us with an insight into the complexities and contradictions of this environment, particularly in her native Kansas.

    Evans was made an Honorary Doctor of Arts at the University of Kansas, where she received her BFA, in 2016. She is a Guggenheim Fellow (1996) and a recipient of an Anonymous Was a Woman award (2006). Several books have been published on her work.

    Evans has exhibited widely, including at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; and The Field Museum of Natural History, Notre Dame, Indiana. Her work is in major museum collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among many others.