For 15 years, Cochrane photographer Patrick Price has driven over 50,000 kilometres a year travelling the highways, byways and back ways of southern Alberta searching for the perfect picture.
And now, after building a substantial library of photographs documenting rural life, Price has released his first coffee-table book, Range Life: A photographic journey of western culture in southern Alberta, and has plans for two more books on southern Alberta to follow.
But to say ‘perfect picture’ does not mean he’s after that stereotypical postcard image. Instead, based on Price’s photographs, it is safe to say that to Price a perfect picture is those that honestly and openly document the unique aspects of rural life, rather than romanticize it.
Price, an editorial and documentary photographer who has worked for the likes of the Cochrane Eagle, Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, United Press and Reuters, moved to Cochrane from Calgary with his family in 1990, seeing the town change grow from 5,600 residents to over 17,000.
As part of that, he has also seen the degradation of rural landscapes and rural culture – or rural spirit as Price puts it in the introduction to Range Life – that has come as rural areas become urbanized with housing developments and golf courses.
“I have tried to capture the rural spirit of the people that work the land. People that work hard and play hard and smile while they’re doing it,” Price wrote. “Generous people that have opened their doors to me and allowed me to photograph their operation (farms and ranches) and families.”
And Price has returned their generosity and their trust, an all-important quality in rural areas and small towns, with an honest telling of their lives and their ways as he highlights cattle drives, rodeos, brandings, powwows and the Calgary Stampede, along with the trials, tribulations and joy of rural life.
His photographs open a door that many people never have the opportunity to pull back for themselves, especially as we become increasingly disconnected from the land and the farm.
Price doesn’t glamorize his subjects or pose them, instead preferring candid photos that are not always pretty – although some certainly are – but are always up front or take a more philosophical bent. They just are, neither pretty nor ugly.
And that is the best way to tell a story, through the details and the highs and lows.
But the challenge of shooting candid photos means Price can’t just roll in and rattle off a few hundred photographs and be on his way. His work demonstrates that he understands that he has to be there, be patient and be ready.
He uses his camera as a passport and if Range Life is any indication, it obviously gives him free passage through into the rural world.
Range Life: A photographic journey of western culture in southern Alberta is available in Banff at About Canada Gallery.
