Spencer Beckwith On The Arts

In each photograph, Joan Myers shows us the West both as we want it to be and as we fear it's become: a plywood buffalo stands before a piñon -dotted mesa, a neon saguaro glows against a starry night, a mountain worthy of photographer Ansel Adams rises over tourists and their lime-green cooler. In her striking new book, Where The Buffalo Roamed: Images of the New West , the Santa Fe-based photographer asks us how the myth of the West can survive the realities of modern life.