PRESS

From Jason Landry’s article for the Huffington Post:

I had met Minnesota-based photographer Michael Crouser on a few occasions at portfolio review events throughout the United States. A few months back, he shared with me a portfolio of images that he had been working on for the past eight years of cattle ranching families in western Colorado. My first question to the artist was: “How many people still work the land like their ancestors did?” Living in Boston, Massachusetts, this isn’t something that I see every day. City dwellers don’t work the land, they just walk, bike or commute to work. Having just returned from a trip to Colorado, I saw the landscape, the mountain range and could see the ranches off in the distance, but I also noticed large developments, condos, apartments and strip malls popping up off of the interstate.

For most people who don’t live in the mid-west or south, or the big state of Texas or on the farmlands of New England, looking at these images you might think they were taken back in time. Yes, there are people who still do this. They do work the land; they do raise farm animals. It’s hard work — really hard work, and for most them, it’s how they grew up and it’s all they’ve ever known. The ranching families who have been accustomed to this lifestyle for generations, and to some think of it as “the simple life” do feel the ground being yanked away from them, little by little, as developers begin to move in.

View the original article

Browse all of Michael Crouser’s work at ClampArt