Leland Payton

In high school Leland Payton began drawing and painting the central Missouri countryside where he grew up. The only child of small town parents (father born in Horse Cave, Kentucky; mother from Versailles, Missouri) he is an unapologetic provincial. He studied painting with Edmund Dickinson at the Art Students League in New York City, but switched to photography in his mid-20s. Soon after acquiring a camera, his images of the Ozarks were exhibited and published. Before instigating, with the Environmental Defense Fund, a lawsuit to stop the construction of Truman Dam on the Osage River, his work was generously supported by private foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. This quixotic gesture derailed Payton’s career as a subsidized photographer. Abbeville Press, NY; Chronicle Books, San Francisco; and St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, have published their pop culture books.

www.beautifulozarks.com
www.dammingtheosage.com
www.hypercommon.com

email: lensandpen@yahoo.com