cover image Hutterites of Montana

Hutterites of Montana

Laura Wilson. Yale University Press, $39.95 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-300-08339-2

While working with Richard Avedon, photographer Laura Wilson (Watt Matthews of Lambshead) discovered the Hutterites of Montana, a religious community of 40,000 people living throughout the American West, . Like Avedon's, Wilson's b&w photographs are stark and tactile. In her new book--a unique product, because the Hutterites generally shun photography--she compassionately and artistically captures Hutterite men, women and children, whose lifestyle is even further removed from mainstream America than that of the Amish; yet as both she and they observe, the modern world is encroaching upon them. Wilson captures the distinctiveness the Hutterites maintain while still being conscious of the larger world, such as in her photo of Hutterite schoolchildren--the boys in somber black suits and the girls in brightly patterned skirts--as they pledge allegiance to the American flag. (Yale Univ., $39.95 160p ISBN 0-300-08339-4)