Edie Winograde

Triggered by accounts in American history of its Native people and pioneering settlers and inspired by a unique cultural phenomenon, photographer Edie Winograde takes an expansive view of re-enactment dramas throughout the West. A subject matter that is part theatrical entertainment and part education, the captured or reframed dramas allow for a reconsideration or a reclaiming of the mythological West. The battleground scenes and the stories told of the first European settlements are deeply rooted within the history of the territory – one that encompassed the expanse of Manifest Destiny. 

Very often taking place at the actual sites where the epic incidents unfolded and by using long distance views and long-exposure techniques, Winograde purposely allows for an overarching take on the action. Through her contemporary lens and perspective, Winograde’s freeze-framed accounts of the West illuminates what was once accepted as chronicled truth and still maintained by many. She offers a curious, less absolute view while seeing outside the prescribed area of play of written history’s passionate practitioners.  Neither judgmental nor revisionist, Winograde’s uniquely distinctive photographs allow for an open-ended and non-linear, communal interpretation of a very human endeavor – a longing for an ancestral connection as it mirrors life now.