Four Seasons of Kansas Book

If photography is the art of writing with light, then photographer Dan Dancer has written the story of Kansas. In this beautiful volume, he has assembled a portrait of the state in its many different lights—a sunflower field at dawn, a rural Main Street in the eerie, greenish light of a summer storm, a nighttime prairie fire, and a dusty stretch of prairie in the hot light of midday. In 105 full-color photographs Dancer moves through the four seasons, capturing first the vast, spare grandeur of prairie and sky, then focusing closer, to illuminate the more intimate pieces of the Kansas landscape—the icy fur of a buffalo in winter, a solitary gravestone nearly overgrown by prairie grass. He pursues what he calls "wild space"—uncluttered landscapes that embody a quiet beauty that eludes the hurried and undiscriminating eye. Season by season, he uncovers the uncomplicated, subtle beauty of the state.