Barns
& Backcountry Scenes
A Vanishing History
(View  the Barns Collection)

AMERICAN BARNS: Singular relics intrinsic to our heritage, their seasoned rusticity encompassed by fields of crops melding with backdrops awash in verdancy or gold, multihued foliage or drifts of glistening snow. Decades ago, millions of barns dotted the landscape of North America. Today, they are vanishing.

On a photo mission, a shutterbug is wise to travel solo. This way he is free to pull over at whim to frame a classic or awe-inspiring scene.

Driving the back roads, photographer Terry Ruscin cannot resist a moldering barn. As he sizes up the composition, admiring the clean, straightforward lines and weathered texture of his subject, he imagines pastoral times. He envisions mule- or horse-drawn wagons or sleighs pulling up to the barn and handers toiling after the harvest.

They don’t do it like they used to

Since the late twentieth century, mechanized methods of cultivating have replaced many of the hands-on methods, the mule with tractor, and sleigh with harvester. Even the architecture of barns has changed. Though many old-time barns have succumbed to the scrap heap, some are still in use. Others are abandoned and pose precariously, framed now in rural splendor. Still others find function as garages, tool sheds or studios.

As our iconic barns decay or become obsolete due to a bottom-line-driven economy and larger utilitarian sheds of galvanized metal take their place, the charming old sentinels seem to be going the way of values, morals and pride in one’s work.

Terry Ruscin’s photography is a means of preserving the worthiness and historical intrigue of America’s barns.

Barns & Back Country Scenes©
An edition limited to 100 copies
Each photo hand printed with archival inks on Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper,
signed and numbered by the artist, 11" x 15"
Prints: $210 each
Stock photo usage: Contact Terry Ruscin for details
Hendersonville, N.C., USA
All rights reserved by Terry Ruscin, 2005©

View the Barns & Back-country Scenes Collection.

(Looking for an image you did not find on my site? Contact me. I may have it. If not, I can shoot it for you.)
(Stock photo usage: Contact Terry Ruscin for details.)