Earlier this year, the Brunnier Gallery at Iowa State University, under the direction of Lynette Puhlman, held a showing of photographs called “Images of Iowa.”

The show, which the organizers want to take on the road, has, as the organizers put it, photographs from across the state of Iowa’s natural beauty.

In reality, it is not a state-wide show. Of 18 photographers, only one was from the western third of the state.

Of 57 photos in the show, just six are of the western third of the state (and three of those by the lone, western Iowa photographer, Don Poggensee of Ida Grove).

Yet this show, organized with the help Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources, a state-wide department at last report, pretends to show the entire state.

Of 20,000 acres of prairie remaining in Iowa, 15,000+ are in western Iowa.

The state’s oldest rocks are in western Iowa. So are the last remaining prairie rattlesnakes.

Bruce Williams of the Iowa Arts Council commented in the council’s Spring 2003 newsletter, “The photographs in this exhibit demonstrate what Iowa in its natural state is all about. The landscape portrayed through the lenses of diverse photographers show a side of Iowa you might not even know exists.”

Well, the way the show is organized, there is a side of Iowa that viewers might not even know exists and that’s the western third of the state.

The next time government money from the entire state is used to fund an all-Iowa event, it should live up to its name and represent all of Iowa.

Mike Whye

Council Bluffs, IA