Barbara Van Cleve, a renowned photographer and author, was raised on her family’s Lazy K Bar Ranch on the east slopes of the Crazy Mountains. Surrounded by sweeping prairies and towering peaks, she has spent a lifetime capturing the rhythms of ranching life and highlighting the often time-overlooked contributions of women in the American West. Her gallery is in Big Timber, Montana, a picturesque agricultural town that serves as a gateway to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

I was five-years-old when my dad told me in 1940 that “you can be anything you want, you just have to work.” Two moments changed me forever. One was the first time I sat in a saddle at three years old. The second was when my dad gave me, when I was 11, a Brownie Box Junior Camera. I couldn’t draw or paint, but through the lens, I found my way of seeing the world–light and shadows, dust rising behind a herd, the curve of a horse’s neck. I carried that camera everywhere, oftentimes from the back of a horse, chasing dawn and dusk across Montana and beyond.

Early on, galleries didn’t quite know what to do with me, dismissing my work because I was a woman from a ranch. But I knew the truth. They had never roped a calf, dragged it to the fire, branded it, or pushed cattle across a ridge. That was my reality. So I turned my lens to what inspired me most: ranch women, not just capturing cattle and horses and the land, but capturing identity, freedom, and a way of life.

Too often forgotten, ranch women work from sunup to sundowns, keeping house, raising kids, and still saddling up to help move cattle or work them in the branding pen. Ranch women embody the grace and grit of the West, especially the women who carry just as much weight as any man. I’ve spent my life making sure their stories are seen and heard and their strength is remembered. Thank God for photography, it’s preserved the West I know.

To explore more of my work, visit Two Rivers Gallery in Big Timber and/or The Blue Door Gallery in Livingston, Montana.