Palouse

by Paul Butzi

 

The Palouse region of Washington state has become one of the more photographed areas recently, thanks largely to Don Kirby's book and the relative accessibility.  I'd resisted going there to photograph (it's a 5-6 hour drive from my home) but recently friends have managed to drag me out there, and to my surprise, I found that it kindled much of the same landscape reactions that I've been having in the Snoqualmie Valley. 

 

These photos are from that first trip.  I'm suspecting that there are more trips in the near future, particularly during different seasons.

Many photographers working in the Palouse seem to be focusing on the landscape as abstractions, divorced from the farming process that produces the patterns that paint the Palouse landscape.  For me, there's a natural rhythm to the place that includes the man made, rather than excluding it.
Although the hills mean that unless you're up on one of the buttes in the area (Steptoe Butte, for instance) the horizon is always close, there's still a sense of spaciousness to the Palouse landscape.
There's a simplicity of line to the hills that begs to photograph.  No matter where you stop the car, there are photographs there.
I'm addicted to the patterns made by crops growing rows.  They impose a peculiar order on the landscape that I find hard to explain verbally
For me the sense of place in the Palouse is largely tied to a visual rhythm.  It's a lot easier to arrange that into a longer frame.  I've heard panoramic photographers talking about images which seem 'melodic' and now I think I know what they're talking about.
Like crop patterns, I'm finding myself struggling with farm buildings in rural areas.  I'm not sure how I feel about them, how I feel they relate to the space and landscape.  In turns I love them and hate them, find them ugly or find them endowed with a strange beauty.  The only way to sort this stuff out is by exploring it through art.
Someone once asked Robert Frost to explain one of his poems.  In response, he said "What, you want me to say it worse?" Photographs can be like that, even landscape photographs.  For me, this photograph sums the sense of place I felt in the Palouse far better than words might.