Featured Essay

Montana Love: 18 Stories About Love, Relationships and Sexuality

By Chris Lombardi, 5-15-07

Back in February, Missoula photographer Brain McDermott gave New West a Valentine's Day present. The present took the form of an audio-visual essay called "Local Poets on Love" which combined photographs of five Missoula poets with audio recordings of each poet reading and discussing love poetry. We were charmed and grateful.

But it turns out McDermott was holding out on us. He has a lot more love to give. His Valentine's Day essay was a spin-off of a much larger project that he has been creating for his master's thesis in journalism at the University of Montana, a project he calls Montana Love. The project combines photography, audio recordings and music to tell 18 stories of love and relationships in big sky country. The stories range from a married military couple dealing with the insecurity of separate deployments, to a couple living and loving through the process of gender reassignment. We visit a lonely Montana farmer once dubiously dubbed "The Loneliest Man in America" and learn how a young woman's quest for sexual health and happiness led her to become Montana's only licensed sexologist. The stories are full of color and variety, span the full emotional gamut, and are told with brevity, care and wit.

The full project can be seen at montanalove.net.

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