On Firm Ground

Widely celebrated for his poetic images of the heartland, Larry Kanfer returns to familiar ground in this bounteous collection of new photographs. Eagerly awaited by Kanfer's many admirers, "On Firm Ground" reveals a deepening and maturing of the photographer's gifts. To open "On Firm Ground" is to enter a deeply loved and meticulously observed country, a land generous with its gifts and unforgiving in its climate, a land that yields its beauty only to the patient observer. In the deep grain of ploughed fields, the hypnotic grace of tall grasses, the texture of weathered barn wood, Kanfer harvests all the subtlety of colour and season and amplifies the quiet elegance of the region.As in his earlier volumes, "Prairiescapes and On Second Glance", Kanfer brings the understated and unexpected beauty of the Midwest to the fore. In the clean lines of field and horizon, in the vast expanse of a threatening or brilliantly clear sky, in the pinpoint of light from a farmhouse window that fends off the darkness pressing in on all sides, Kanfer's images capture the living, breathing exchange of human and natural energies that animates the heartland. Ranging through the seasons and throughout the Midwest, "On Firm Ground" is an exhilarating celebration of the subtlety that distinguishes the prairie from any other place.