Treasured Montana Artist Statement
"Photography has been a life long passion for me. I wanted to share with other people how "wonder full" ranch life was but I could not draw, or paint or make things in clay, so I begged my parents for a camera. Thankfully they gave me a Brownie Box camera when I was 11 and that was the beginning of my being able to share with others my visions of ranch life. I carried that camera everywhere and photographed everything. I still do today.
I have extended my vision beyond ranch life, although I continue to make black and white photographs of ranch life in addition to my other photographic interests. As a self-taught photographer I have always experimented in different techniques ranging from dye transfer, salted paper prints, albumen prints, Van Dyke brown prints, cyanotype prints and even tintypes.
I developed all my film and made all my gelatin silver prints for many, many years, even the very large 30" x 40" prints. Today, I have switched to digital cameras and do all my "processing" (converting the color images to black and white images) in my studio on my computers. So instead of the old darkroom I now work in a light-room at the computers. It is a new world in photography and a challenging one, but a very exciting one.
It is my pleasure to share with you some of my photographic vision. I hope that you enjoy these photographs."
All photographs on this page © Barbara Van Cleve and are protected by U.S. copyright laws. They are not to be downloaded or reproduced in any way under penalty of the law.