Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild features color photography by Nebraska-based artist Michael Forsberg. The exhibit’s images of the Great Plains present breathtaking landscapes and close encounters with wild creatures. However, the show offers more than a collection of beautiful pictures; it raises essential questions of how we will preserve what remains of our Great Plains natural heritage.
Forsberg is a conservation photographer, author, and educator who has focused much of his work on North America’s Great Plains. Forsberg’s goal is to capture the wild spirit that still survives in these wide-open spaces and to put a face to the often overlooked native creatures and landscapes found there. His hope is that his images will build appreciation and inspire conservation efforts on the land far into the future.
“Photography can be a powerful witness to our shortcomings, but also show that beauty and hope still exists in the natural world. It can help communicate to people why something matters. Conservation photography is an active and powerful tool to begin this process, to start the conversation, to call for action. Time is short.” Forsberg states.
Forsberg’s work has appeared in publications including Audubon, National Geographic, National Wildlife, and Natural History, and has been recognized in Pictures of the Year and Wildlife Photographer of the Year competitions. In 2004, he was awarded a Conservation Education Award from The Wildlife Society.
Currently, Forsberg serves as faculty at the University of Nebraska’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, where he is co-founder and co-director of the Platte Basin Time Lapse Project. The project is a multi-year, community-building effort that uses time-lapse photography to set a watershed in motion from the Platte River’s headwaters in the Colorado Rockies to its confluence with the Missouri River along Nebraska’s eastern border.
