State Highway 35 between Abilene and Comanche TX. Photo courtesy Trinity University Press

A gate is defined as an opening or a passage, and the word is usually used in relationship to a fenced in area. But in Texas and the surrounding states there exists a huge, sprawling landscape, where the horizon is so far away that, in contrast, a gate becomes an important event. It is a marker, an entryway and a frame all at once. In relationship to the massive ranches found in this region, a ranch gate provides an intimate moment in a vast and impersonal landscape. Daniel M. Olsen and Henk Van Assen, a graphic designer and photographer, set out to document this rapidly vanishing form of American folk art with their book, Ranch Gates of the Southwest, which features handmade, eclectic letterforms rendered in a diverse range of materials.

Ranch Gates of the Southwest features over 100 full-color photographs of ranch gates taken across Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico,

and Arizona. But this is more than a picture book. The book opens with an introduction written by Lucy Lippard, the famous art historian whose seminal book Overlay introduced the world to the art form of earthworks: art made on or in relationship to the earth. Landscape architecture professor Kenneth I. Helphand explains the environmental history of ranches, from land appropriation and naming to the impact of gates on the landscape. In their own essays, Olsen and van Assen tell the behind-the-scenes story of making the book, and describe type design and language from their perspectives as designers and photographers.

Ranch Gates of the Southwest is both a sumptuous documentary record and a tribute to a quintessentially American symbol.

Highway 163/191 North of Moab, UT. Photo courtesy Trinity University Press