Badlands: A Geography of Metaphors

by Ken Dalgarno

Foreword by Ross King, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Governor General’s Award. There can be few places in the world where the visual impact of the landscape is as hauntingly captivating as the Badlands of the Northern Great Plains. Encompassing Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Montana, these amazing regions contain some of the most surreal and magical terrain you can imagine. Renowned photographer and painter Ken Dalgarno first visited Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta “more or less out of curiosity,” he writes. “But I was instantly struck by the mystical hoodoos, spires, and other mesmerizing geological wonders. It felt like I was walking amongst a geography of metaphors, or perhaps entering an archives where stories have been exiled.” “A treasure trove for dinosaur fossils and First Nations history, the Badlands,” Ken continues, “are certainly a place where the past has invaded the present. Like finding a great writer, I wanted to read more. The result of my explorations is this photographic survey of the Badlands of the Northern Great Plains.” Covering eleven different Badland regions across Saskatchewan, Alberta, North Dakota and Montana, this book provides a living photographic portrait of some of the most intriguing and least understood places on Earth – North America’s mysterious Badlands.

194 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2014

Reviews

[Kirk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came across this book through my local library's "new arrivals" notice on their webpage. Having visited the American portions of the Badlands in South and North Dakota, I was already familiar with their strange beauty ("There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion," as Francis Bacon said). Dalgarno's book is primarily an overview of the Canadian Badlands, although Theodore Roosevelt National Park is featured near the end. I suppose Badlands NP has been documented thoroughly enough already that it needn't have been included; still, I was surprised not to find it here. Each Badlands area is introduced with a couple of pages of text from the author. Every photograph has been given some sort of poetic name that often felt forced, and eventually I stopped looking at the picture titles.

Dalgarno's photos appear to be predominantly digital and processed for color and lighting (Google: "shitty HDR"). This sort of manipulation grows dull rather quickly, making an already unnatural-looking area even more so. His compositions are good; nothing radical, but effective nonetheless. I will also give him credit for bringing more attention to the Canadian Badlands. I just don't care for all this digital wizardry.