Capturing rare moments of untamed horses roaming the wild requires a great deal of patience, but career photographer Deborah Kalas was well-prepared before her latest venture. For her new book, The Wild Herd: A Vanishing American Treasure, Kalas spent countless hours (within a total of more than five years) observing the herds of wild horses that occupy Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.
Kalas is bringing the book to Solvang for a special author talk at the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature, where she will discuss her experience shooting in North Dakota, her long career, and photographic influences as well.
“One of my favorite photographers is Henri Cartier Bresson. He believed in the decisive moment,” Kalas told the Sun. “I too believe there is a moment when all the elements fall, even if somewhat unexpectedly, into place.”
Being able to predict these decisive moments, based on observing patterns, is the key to wild horse photography, Kalas explained.
“With the wild horses, there are certain predictable moments,” she said. “When two stallions come together, there is going to be some level of discussion. When a newborn foal wakes up from a long nap, it is going to nurse before doing anything else.
“Knowing horses and watching for predictable movement helped me to be in the right place at the right time,” Kalas added.
The photographer recalled one specific instance during the project where she waited patiently and silently for one band of horses to awake from napping.
“One band was cooling off underneath an overhanging rock ledge for five hours. They had shade, I didn’t,” Kalas said. “It wasn’t until early evening that they came out. Lots of patience is required.”
An accomplished photojournalist, with credits including LIFE, People, and New York magazine, and professional equine photographer over the last three decades, Kalas had plenty of experience working with horses before her North Dakota expedition, just not with the untamed variety.
“Ever since I was a young girl, I loved horses. For 30 some years, my focus has always been about the relationships between horses and people,” Kalas said. “In June 2014, it broadened to include wild horses. I had been photographing the horses in North Dakota for over five years. I felt I had enough material to put together a book.”
Her background in equine photography also helped Kalas ease into capturing the aforementioned decisive moments of movement and action between the wild horses.
“I spent years photographing show horses jumping over jumps. I am familiar with putting movement together,” Kalas said.
Kalas’s goal in North Dakota was to capture herds of wild horses during each season, to show their character and interactions through the changing weather. Her goal was also to observe wild horses at each stage of their life cycle, from the newborns to the maturing and eldest horses.
“I love watching the young foals play with their siblings,” Kalas said, “and the way all the mares can be protective of the little ones.”
One reason that inspired Kalas to take the seasonal approach, observing several herds rather than one specific band of horses, was the constant shift of horses within a group over time, she said.
“It’s impossible to tell the story of each band since the members of that band are frequently shifting and changing,” Kalas said. “No sooner would you publish a book and it would be outdated if categorized according to band stallions and their mares and foals. Horses die, mares are taken by other stallions, there is an ebb and flow.
“I liked the idea of the seasons as a way of observing them in their habitat and how each changing season affected them,” Kalas added.
Winter was the most difficult season to shoot during, the photographer recalled, for a variety of reasons.
“Frigid temperature, biting wind, finding access to the horses where you won’t freeze in the process,” Kalas listed.
But even during the winter, as with the other three seasons, Kalas felt a sense of peace in the North Dakota wilderness. Photographing wild horses in open spaces without a single fence in sight made her feel like an explorer, she said. Kalas compared the feeling to something she imagines early 1900s photographer William Henry Jackson might have experienced, as he captured the American West through the lens of his view camera.
“It is a very calm sense of being home. Of feeling safe. Of feeling surrounded by love and nature,” Kalas said.
Send comments to Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 12-19, 2020.
