But if Hanson’s pictures of the coal plant have a cold, desolate majesty, it’s in the images of the surrounding town of 2,500 residents that a more persistent sadness seeps through. In the abandoned trailer parks, the hastily put-up company houses, the bland interior of a small church, one senses absence—not just of life (there are no humans or animals in the images) but of love, spontaneity, joy. You can bet that if humans were in these images, they’d look like the people in an Edward Hopper painting: beaten-down, self-contained in their isolation.
    When Hanson shot these images in the 1980s, they were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art and praised by art critics, who saw the work as an exciting way of merging the American landscape tradition with a political consciousness. Three decades later, the work still looks fresh and unusual. Hanson illuminated some difficult truths about the way we live, and the costs of our energy consumption. With luck, the issue of this book now will inspire a new generation of artists to do the same.

Colstrip, Montana by David T. Hanson, distributed by D.A.P.