MAXWELL MACKENZIE has selected 30 beautiful and haunting photographs of out-of-the-way places in Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Idaho for his book American Ruins: Ghosts on the Landscape.

One of the most important architectural photographers working today, MacKenzie chronicles a fast-disappearing manifestation of the American Dream—the eloquent remains of barns, houses, and schools erected by immigrant settlers. His crisp black-and-white prints provide a poignant reminder that architecture sometimes becomes most evocative when it slips toward ruin. With an artist’s eye, an architect’s sensibility, and a native son’s passion, MacKenzie has made poetic images of these primitive but elegant structures that transcend both time and place. His photographs speak not only to students of photography and architecture, but to anyone who appreciates the history and simple beauty of America’s rural landscapes.

“Max MacKenzie has earned a reputation as one of the best architectural photographers in the country. A master of elegant light.”—Frank Van Riper, Focus Magazine

“Hardly anyone lives on a farm anymore—about one in a hundred Americans. Back when more than half did, some of them lived in the houses that MacKenzie presents here. What hopes! What despairs! What wild turns of fortune! The houses are empty, or they’re full of abandonment by MacKenzie’s artistic reckonings. If they didn’t haunt you before, they will now.”—Henry Allen, Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize for Criticism