LB2017.19.17414

LB2017.19.17414

Vehicle tracks covered with snow that has melted and refrozen draw the viewer's eye straight back across a vast white plain toward high mountain peaks in the distance. In the winter of 1954 Life Magazine sent Ruohomaa to Fraser, Colorado to photograph life and work amongst the woodsmen and ranchers in the frigid, snow-laden landscapes of the Rocky Mountains. The following year Life assigned him to make images to illustrate the magazine's centennial celebration of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", including scenes from Fraser, and other locations tracing the path of the poet around America. Ultimately the magazine selected twelve, titled "The Paths Whitman Walked: poet's 'Leaves of Grass' has its 100th anniversary." Sixteen years later, several of Ruohomaa's photos from Colorado and beyond were included in another publication of the poet's collection, "The Illustrated Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman" (1971). Howard Chapnick , Ruohomaa's dear friend and colleague, was the editor, and had arranged early on in the project to have the poet William Carlos Williams write the introduction. In it Williams' insights extolled a deep appreciation of the relationship between the arts of poetry and photography. Life editors selected this among others in Kosti's series to appear in the piece. The caption read: "Wandering through the snow of a mountain meadow, a narrow wagon track, laboriously plowed and now drifted over again, stretches toward a haystack on the Neilsen Ranch. Beyond the meadow the Rockies stand out sharply in the clear 20-below-zero air. In the center rises Byers Peak, 12,790 feet high."