Farms of Northern Colorado

Colorado Farms
“This land pulses with life. It breathes in me; it breathes around me; it breathes in spite of me. When I walk on this land, I am walking on the heartbeat of the past and the future. And that’s only one of the reasons I am a farmer.”
—Brenda Sutton Rose

The images of farms in this portfolio are part of an ongoing series I’m creating here in Colorado—a return to place, memory, and heritage.

For the past five months, I’ve been photographing farms across northern Colorado. My adopted grandparents farmed this region until the early 1970s, and my memories of visiting as a young girl remain vivid: the cool, dewy mornings, the midday family meals, the scent of fresh-cut silage and sugar beets in autumn, the golden cottonwoods shading weathered farmhouses. I remember the hard work, and the quiet peace found in the open fields and forgotten corners where a child could be alone with her thoughts.

Much of this landscape is disappearing. The farming communities I once knew are shrinking—challenged not only by Front Range development, but by shifting water rights, diminishing income, oil and gas operations, rising water tables, and generational change. Some farms remain; many have faded into memory.

After nearly 30 years away, I returned to Colorado and was struck by the transformation. I began photographing these places—not just to record them, but to honor them. The images were made using a Sony a7R full-frame mirrorless camera converted to infrared with a 720nm filter. The ethereal, dreamlike quality of infrared feels perfectly suited to how I see this land: as a living memory, a landscape steeped in history and change.

“These memories are part of my heritage, the fabric of my personality, and as real to me as the land itself.”
—Karen Jones Gowen, Farm Girl