The photographs in Islands of the Blest depict various places in the American West. They were taken over a one-hundred-year period, from the 1870s through the 1970s. The photographers presented range from the completely unknown to some of America’s most distinguished practitioners of the medium, including Timothy H. O’Sullivan and Dorothea Lange. All images were sourced from digital public archives, such as the Library of Congress and the United States Geological Survey Library, and remain readily available to download.

Artist Bryan Schutmaat and art historian Ashlyn Davis selected the pictures with an eye toward telling a history of the exploration, settlement and industrialization of the West. They worked with Curator of Photography Brian Sholis to create the sequence presented at the Mercantile Library. It is a poetic chronology of a region that retains its mythical status in the American imagination.

With this exhibition, The Mercantile Library, in The Mercantile Library Building at 414 Walnut Street, is one of several FotoFocus Biennial participating venues on the "arts corridor" along Walnut Street. During the biennial, the Taft Museum of Art and the Weston Art Gallery will also exhibit photographs inspired by the American West—creating a unique opportunity to discover the visual history of the region.

The Cincinnati Art Museum and the Mercantile Library produced this exhibition with funding from FotoFocus and private donors. Islands of the Blest is FREE and open to the public.