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Matinee: 'Capturing the Modern Prairie'
22 February 2025
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 592nd in our series of Saturday matinees today: Capturing the Modern Prairie.
This 4:12 piece from Rocky Mountain PBS follows Alex Burke around in his GMC Explorer as he chases beauty in the prarie he calls home.
"I love the solitude of the prairie," he says. "It's not a travel destination. You're not going to find wanderlust articles about it. It's forgotten by a lot of people."
But wherever you find yourself, he points out, there is beauty. And if it's somewhere you live, it helps you appreciate home even more.
He tells us he got his start shooting photographs when his father sent him a one-megapixel digital camera he was no longer using.
He'd moved away from home at 18 to Phoenix to attend an automative school. To escape the city and return to nature, he'd walk out into the desert. And with his father's camera, he started taking photos.
We see him now with a view camera, loading a sheet of film in the back, pulling the dark slide and exposing an image. Then we see him in his studio, showing us both slide film and color negative film he's shot with the camera.
His images of the prarie evolved to include human-made things like windmills and oil derricks, farmhouses and factories.
But, as he says, film is not inexpensive, so he's cautious about making an exposure.
And he's willing to wait for the location's beauty to reveal itself. "If the sun pokes through, it could be a nice bit of color," he says of one spot. And a little while later, the sun pokes through.