The exhibit shares with visitors a photographic sampling from this "outdoor museum," including snapshots of 170 million-year-old dinosaur tracks in Utah, Navajo dwellings in New Mexico, Capt. William Clark's rock signature in Montana and a portion of the famed Route 66 in California. Ten states—Utah, Alaska, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Washington and California—are represented in this exhibit.
"America's Priceless Heritage: Snapshots in Time" will be on display from Sept. 1 through Nov. 30 in the concourse gallery of the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution. Located on the National Mall at 1100 Jefferson Drive S.W., the gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily, except Dec. 25. Admission is free.
Please note that the information provided by the photographers represents their personal views. Biographies of 16 of the exhibit photographers are included below.
About the photographers…
Rick Athearn is a retired BLM photographer based in Colorado.
John Craig is a photographer who has worked for the Communications Division in the Bureau of Land Management’s Oregon State Office for 18 years.
Adriel Heisey is an aerial photographer and professional pilot based in western Colorado.
Heisey’s aerials are published in magazines such as National Geographic, Arizona Highways, and Nature Conservancy, and his fine art prints are exhibited in galleries and museums. He is the author of three books of aerial photography. He is working on an extended project documenting the ground figures of the western deserts. The Bouse Fisherman intaglio in western Arizona, featured in his low altitude aerial photograph in the Smithsonian exhibit, is one of the finest examples of this possibly prehistoric art form.
Anne Jeffery attended the Brooks Institute of Photography and worked as a photographer for 12 years with the Bureau of Land Management before moving into the public relations arena. She recently retired and returned to her first love – photography.
Scott W. Klette, a graduate of Brooks Institute, has been working for the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nevada, for the past 19 years, and has photographed many of the State’s treasured locations and icons. From the bristlecone pines in Great Basin National Park to the governor’s mansion in Carson City; from Spirit Cave, to the baskets of Dat-So-La-Lee; and from the last remaining remnants of ancient Lake Lahonton, to the feathered tule decoy you see in the exhibition.
Mike Kunz, a BLM archaeologist, was born in Texas and raised in New York. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Archaeology at Eastern New Mexico University, and did graduate work at Washington State University. While working toward his own advanced degree, a fellow Archaeology doctoral candidate asked him to lend a hand for a summer with field work. Kunz spent a rewarding season near Alaska's Healy Lake, helping to excavate an archaeological site, and has been working in Alaska almost continuously since then. Mike discovered what is now known as “the Mesa site” while doing environmental compliance work north of the Arctic Circle for BLM.
Larry Mayer has been a photographer with The Billings Gazette in Billings, Montana, since 1977. A commercial pilot, his aerial work has been published in more than 25 books and many other publications.
Lorran Meares: The fine-art photographs of Lorran Meares have been seen in many publications and selected for numerous exhibitions across the country. Retired college instructor, lecturer, workshop presenter and a frequent recipient of fellowships, grants and awards, Meares has worked for the last 15 years in cooperation with the Department of the Interior, state parks, the Bureau of Land Management, the Sierra Club, and Native American tribal groups on special projects documenting endangered sites.
Bill Proud served in the U.S. Navy from 1964 to 1968 and then spent 20 years as an engineer before embarking on a career as a photographer. A fortuitous relocation to Cortez, Colorado, placed him in the prime landscapes of the Four Corners area, where he has pursued his landscape and wildlife photography since 1994.
Rolla L. Queen currently serves as the District Archaeologist for the California Desert District Office of the Bureau of Land Management in Moreno Valley, California. An historical archaeologist and historian, he joined the BLM in 1994, having previously worked for its Department of the Interior sister agencies - the Bureau of Reclamation and the National Park Service.
Stephen Razo, currently External Affairs Director for the BLM California Desert District Office, has more than 24 years of government public affairs service, which has provided numerous world-wide photographic opportunities. His images have been displayed in the Pentagon, in numerous military and civilian publications, and on the web.
Jon Reis: For the past 30 years Jon Reis has worked as a documentary photographer concentrating on American natural and social landscapes. His photographs of the Hanging Flume, a 13-mile long historic wooden structure built over three years in the 1880’s along the walls of Colorado’s Dolores River Canyon were made for Vertical Access, a team of technical rope access climbers. This team, along with archaeologists and historic preservation specialists, visited Uravan, Colorado, to generate a condition report on the flume and gather information about the method of construction. Reis resides with his wife, also a professional photographer, in Ithaca, New York, in the heart of the Finger Lakes region.
Don Rommes is a neonatologist by profession. When not caring for critically ill newborn babies, he has pursued photography as his creative expression. For the past 20 years, Rommes has photographed the landscape of southern Utah, where he and his wife have a home. Special areas of photographic interest include prehistoric structures and rock art, and the canyons and high desert of the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument.
Jerry Sintz grew up on a farm in Indiana. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Hanover College in southern Indiana and a master’s degree in wildlife management from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. His 33-year career in the natural resources field began with the State of Indiana in 1968 and the last 29 years were with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in New Mexico and Utah. He and his family have lived in Utah since 1979. Retiring from the BLM in 2001 enabled him to devote more time to his photography. He is primarily self-taught.
Nathan Thomas began his career with the Bureau of Land Management as a student intern while studying Anthropology at Utah State University. As part of his Masters degree program from the University of Leicester, Thomas wrote his thesis on pinyon pine and juniper woodland depletion around Ward Charcoal Ovens and Ward, Nevada, from 1872 to 1888. Nathan is now a staff archaeologist at BLM’s Ely (NV) Field Office, the largest BLM district outside of Alaska.
David Valentine is a Bureau of Land Management archaeologist assigned to the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area in Nevada. David has a M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and about 21 years of experience, including 12 years with the government.
