---
description: As Breaking Bad fans become increasingly transfixed by imagery of the American West, Bryan Schutmaat's haunting photographs of Western mountain men reveal an even darker landscape, without a meth-camper in sight.
title: Grays the Mountain Sends: Poetic Views of the American West's Darker Side
image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt819c08ddc4ba4b61/6987a703a988ca33506af3ce/13_schutmaat_red_mountain.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9
---
* [World](/section/world/)
## World
Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/)
Close
* [LightBox](/tag/time-section-lightbox/)
## LightBox
Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/)
Close
# Grays the Mountain Sends: Poetic Views of the American West's Darker Side
by
[Charlotte Alter](/author/charlotte-alter/)
## Charlotte Alter
Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/)
Close
Senior Correspondent
Sep 13, 2013 8:00 AM CUT
Red Mountain Mining District, Colorado, 2011
Red Mountain Mining District, Colorado, 2011Bryan Schutmaat
by
[Charlotte Alter](/author/charlotte-alter/)
## Charlotte Alter
Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/)
Close
Senior Correspondent
Sep 13, 2013 8:00 AM CUT
As _Breaking Bad_ fans become increasingly transfixed by imagery of the American West, Bryan Schutmaat’s haunting photographs of Western mountain men reveal an even darker landscape, without a meth-camper in sight.
Schutmaat’s poetic series, “Grays the Mountain Sends,” recently won first prize in the Aperture portfolio contest, and the gallery show will open at Aperture on September 17th. The photographs are also collected in a book to be published by the Silas Finch Foundation next month.
Texas-raised Schutmaat is living a NYC photographer’s dream, though he’s not interested in shooting what he sees out his Brooklyn window. “I’m really compelled by that type of art that can take you somewhere else, that is a break from what you encounter in your daily life,” he said. “I don’t want to make a project about the city, I want to make a project about places that are far away and unfamiliar and not what I see every day.”
The West fit the bill. Schutmaat started shooting the series when he was living in Bozeman, Montana and became increasingly interested in the visual landscape of nearby Butte. “The American West was founded with such great expectations, and mining towns in particular have a memory of the past that the present lives with, and there’s often a very big gap between what once was and what is,” he said. “So I do think that there’s a loss, maybe a little bit of loss of hope.”
Inspired by the poetry of Richard Hugo and the work of other Westward-looking photographers like Dorothea Lange, Schutmaat expanded his project to other mining and mill towns. He searched specifically for images of a landscape unscarred by 20th century sprawl. “I’ll consciously avoid the MacDonalds on the east side of town and go to the west side of town, where there is this interesting decay, a rural decay,” he explained. “Just something different than what you’d see driving down a six lane highway in New Jersey.”
But the images of the people who inhabit these landscapes are what really give Schutmaat’s series its emotional power. “There’s something really beautiful to me about how people get by, what people do day to day,” he said. “And I think that for anyone living anywhere there’s going to be a sense of loss, I don’t think life is a particularly happy journey that we go on, I think it’s just something that we all have to do.”
Despite the iconic source material and the temptation to draw parallels with the economic crisis, Schutmaat insists that he intends his photographs to be poetic, not political. “America is such a vast and complex place, and what I present in photographs is a very fragmented and projected view of this, so I wouldn’t want to claim that I’m defining any kind of American character,” he says. “I’m really into Italian neo-realist movies, and those were loaded with social and political comments in the postwar era. But it’s always just the plight of the main character that appeals to me. I’m concerned with that guy, what he’s going through, and I’m crying for him. I guess I was just more interested in that.”
---
[**_Bryan Schutmaat_**](http://www.bryanschutmaat.com/ "undefined") _is a Brooklyn-based photographer. His work will be_[ _on view at Aperture in New York Sept. 17th through Oct. 31st_](http://www.aperture.org/exhibition/bryan-schutmaat-grays-the-mountain-sends-exhibition/ "undefined")_._
**_Charlotte Alter_** _is a reporter for TIME.com covering breaking news, culture and society. Follow her on Twitter_ [_@CharlotteAlter_](https://twitter.com/CharlotteAlter "undefined")_._
---
The following photographs appear in Bryan Schutmaat's new book Grays the Mountain Sends.Gold Mine, Lead, South Dakota, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Ralph, Moorcroft, Wyoming, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Abandoned Homestead, Red Mountain Mining District, Colorado, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Abandoned Living Room, Philipsburg, Montana, 2010 Bryan Schutmaat
Casey, Philipsburg, Montana, 2010 Bryan Schutmaat
Moorcroft, Wyoming, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Wes, near Kellogg, Idaho, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Tonopah, Nevada, 2012 Bryan Schutmaat
Dave, Goldfield, Nevada, 2012 Bryan Schutmaat
Gunsmoke, Goldfield, Nevada, 2012 Bryan Schutmaat
Cemetery, Tonopah, Nevada, 2012 Bryan Schutmaat
Paul, Bozeman, Montana, 2010 Bryan Schutmaat
Red Mountain Mining District, Colorado, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Copper City Electric, Bisbee, Arizona, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Abandoned Schoolhouse, Wyoming, 2012 Bryan Schutmaat
Buckmaster, Rawlins, Wyoming, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Broken Car, Idaho, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Rich, Sierra Blanca, Texas, 2012 Bryan Schutmaat
Billboard, Nevada, 2012 Bryan Schutmaat
Perry, Cascade, Montana, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
Alpine Lake, Gallatin National Forest, Montana, 2011 Bryan Schutmaat
```json
[{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3802371/grays-the-mountain-sends-poetic-views-of-the-american-wests-darker-side/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3802371/grays-the-mountain-sends-poetic-views-of-the-american-wests-darker-side/"},"headline":"Grays the Mountain Sends: Poetic Views of the American West's Darker Side","datePublished":"2013-09-13T08:00:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:40:41.415Z","description":"As Breaking Bad fans become increasingly transfixed by imagery of the American West, Bryan Schutmaat's haunting photographs of Western mountain men reveal an even darker landscape, without a meth-camper in sight.","url":"https://time.com/3802371/grays-the-mountain-sends-poetic-views-of-the-american-wests-darker-side/","keywords":["LightBox","portraits","Out There","Aperture"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt819c08ddc4ba4b61/6987a703a988ca33506af3ce/13_schutmaat_red_mountain.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt819c08ddc4ba4b61/6987a703a988ca33506af3ce/13_schutmaat_red_mountain.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"13_schutmaat_red_mountain","caption":"Red Mountain Mining District, Colorado, 2011","creditText":"Bryan Schutmaat","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-lightbox/","name":"LightBox"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3802371/grays-the-mountain-sends-poetic-views-of-the-american-wests-darker-side/","name":"Grays the Mountain Sends: Poetic Views of the American West's Darker Side"}}]}]
```