Statement

For many years Robert Cassway has traveled to the western part of the United States and Canada photographing the quickly disappearing structures of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  These structures include gold, silver and copper mining communities, ghost towns, wooden grain elevators, abandoned homesteads, churches and schools.  These buildings represent what is left of the efforts of the western pioneers to build a better life and to seek their fortune.

Cassway’s photographs are not meant to be pretty.  Each picture is meant to tell part of the story of the pioneer’s westward movement.  Many of the photographers are presented in a panoramic format, in order to emphasize the vastness of the northwest prairies.

The photographers were taken using a Pentax 67 II medium format camera.   The majority of the photos were taken with a 75 mm architectural shift lens.  The remainder was taken using 45 mm wide angle lens.

The negatives were processed in the normal manner and then scanned to a high resolution disc.  The images were then downloaded into Photoshop, where they were cropped and given minimal adjustments.