Rich Bergeman, The Vanishing West

April 30 – June 12, 2021

White Lotus Gallery
767 Willamette St., Eugene, OR 97401
541-375-3276
wlotus.com
lin@wlotus.com
Open Tuesday through Saturday 10am – 4pm
Masks and social distancing required
Private appointments on request

During the Great Western Migration, as the Native American population in eastern Oregon and Washington gradually gave way to disease, conflict and broken treaties, they were replaced by pioneers in search of gold, homesteads and open range. During the late 19th century and the early years of the next, settlers built cabins, proved up homesteads and organized small communities all across this high, wide and dry country. Over time many gave up on the harsh landscape, leaving the region dotted with melancholic relics of their hopes and dreams–schoolhouses crumbling from neglect, farmhouses falling back to earth, ghost towns gradually giving up their ghosts.

With a combination of platinum/palladium prints and pigment ink prints spanning the past three decades, this exhibition will illustrate Corvallis photographer Rich Bergeman’s photographic pursuit of the vanishing traces of early settlement east of the Cascades. A native of Ohio and an Oregonian since 1976, Rich has been a journalist, educator and curator during his career, and an exhibiting fine art photographer for over 30 years. He enjoys expressing himself through photography in a variety of forms, but primarily by pointing his camera backward, to the past.