Women Shaping the West: Stories from Wyoming

Photographer Buk debuts with a breathtaking visual record of 25 women breaking new ground in the Cowboy State. Looking to challenge monochrome, frequently male-centered depictions of the West, such as a lone cowboy posed against the horizon, the author spotlights in vivid color women who are shifting Wyoming’s culture. Among them are Affie Ellis, who’s pictured wearing a vibrantly blue squash blossom necklace and recounts her tenure as the state’s first Navajo lawmaker, and doctor Diane Norton Coale, who leans against the doors of an emergency room with a stethoscope around her neck and describes the challenges of practicing medicine in a state starved of resources and providers (she was at one point the sole physician in a 40-mile radius). Mary “Mickey” Thoman, the owner of the W&M Thoman ranch in Sweetwater County, who’s pictured in a cowboy hat and herding goats, describes how her work is deeply intertwined with the land and animals (as well as, Buk notes, with the state’s economy, to which ranching contributes nearly $2.5 billion in annual revenue). Throughout, the author draws out the contradictions of a state whose “take-up-the-reins spirit” inspires female trailblazers even as a profound gender wage gap and minimal governmental representation constrain them. The result is a striking group portrait of women remaking the West. (Mar.)