“Bliss”: The dictionary defines it as “perfect happiness; great joy.” But according to the atlas, it’s also a small town in the arid expanse of central Idaho’s Snake River Plain.
It’s fitting, then, that Jon Horvath used that particular Bliss, an agricultural community of 300 people, as the focal point of a photography project that aims to investigate “how mythologies of the American West and mythologies of happiness intersect.”
Titled This is Bliss, photos from the resulting multimedia project will be featured as part of the Grass/Roots exhibition at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver from March 18 – April 28. Horvath’s images of Bliss will be presented alongside William Sutton’s photographs of the vast plains of Wyoming. Collectively, the works explore distinctly Western scenes and consider how the landscape has shaped the experience of its inhabitants. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Grass/Roots, Photo exhibition at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Denver, Colorado.
March 18 – April 28
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A photographer turns his lens on small-town bliss.
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