Book Review: Bury Me in the Back Forty by Kyler Zeleny

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Book Review: Bury Me in the Back Forty by Kyler Zeleny

March 10th, 2025 by Cary Benbow

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

In his most recent book, Bury Me in the Back Forty, Kyler Zeleny is reconstructing the history of Mundare, his 915-person rural Canadian hometown, a place deeply rooted in Ukrainian culture. He’s using a variety of media and previously untold stories to weave a new narrative of the town’s 1980 history book. This approach results in a more inclusive history, one that doesn’t shy away from the difficult aspects of the community’s past. The project aims to capture the full spectrum of life in a small town facing potential decline, highlighting the universal experiences of both joy and hardship. It’s a living, evolving narrative, capturing the resilience and quiet suffering of a place.

Bury Me in the Back Forty is the third part in Zeleny’s Prairie trilogy. His other two books, Crown Ditch and the Prairie Castle and Out West were wider, broader views by comparison of the life experience lived and envisioned by Zeleny. Scenes and vignettes of places, landscapes and tropes give us a more removed, sociological view of his interests. I feel ‘Bury Me’ can be seen and read as a more diaristic, shrewd take on subjects literally close to home; cards held close to the vest so-to-speak.

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

Projects like ‘Bury Me’ interest me intensely. I relish in the experience of wanting to know how much of what I’m reading or seeing is fact, or the author’s Truth at the very least. At the same time, I don’t want to know. I don’t want the potentially dualistic nature of the story to be shattered. I want to bask in the struggle the author lays bare; how to explore and explain the histories of ‘where and how’ that informs their ‘now’. Why does the author focus on certain aspects of family, themselves or their sense of place? Do they use portraits of family – if so, how? And so forth, and so on. Zeleny’s manipulation of images and the juxtaposition with the history of his town definitely indicate a “pluralistic history”, and it makes for a great book.

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

Zeleny employs his own photos, collected objects and ephemera, community archive materials – all presented in a quasi-collage format, quasi-diary/scrapbook that the viewer reads and observes in order to discern the portrait of a place and events which straddle the present and the past. Of special interest to me, typed notes on salmon pink paper are bound into the book along with a prairie landscape scene. “Dear Kyler,” they begin. The notes are written from an unnamed “friend and prairie spirit” who reminds Kyler of foreboding conversations from their shared past and shares poems to provide context and frame meanings for these cautionary tales. Variations of the same scene repeat periodically in the book with these notes. We see the same telephone pole and the same geographic location marked on the back of the pink notes. These two-page spreads present a note amidst the view of a snowy, empty landscape scene save a telephone pole, wires and stubby grasses and cattails emerging from the snow-covered earth. Or foggy mist. Or in full sunlight with a large puddle that has formed around the base of the pole – A metaphor of communication, connection and location that spans ecological time periods.

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

From ‘Bury Me in the Back Forty” © Kyler Zeleny

This repeated cycle or returning to the same place to force oneself to keep reconsidering and studying a subject is a nice parallel for the full body of work in “Bury Me”. Zeleny’s sustained practice of documenting a single subject over time, whether through photography, writing, telling and retelling, allows for ever increasingly nuanced and comprehensive understanding. This constant, reiterative process reveals subtle variations, deeper patterns, and the evolution of the subject itself. By revisiting and re-examining, Zeleny has uncovered hidden complexities and developed a more profound connection to his chosen subject, his own history – ultimately producing a rich and insightful body of work.

Bury me in the Back Forty by Kyler Zeleny
168 pages, 210 x 267 mm
Hardcover
Limited Edition of 600
Published by The Velvet Cell

Kyler Zeleny (1988) is a Canadian photographer, educator and author of Out West (2014), Found Polaroids (2017), and Crown Ditch & The Prairie Castle (2020). He has a PhD from the joint Communication & Culture program at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University. His work has been exhibited internationally in thirteen countries and has been featured in numerous publications including The Globe & Mail, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Vice, and The Independent.

About Cary Benbow

Photographer, Writer, Publisher of Wobneb Magazine

View all posts by Cary Benbow →

Location: Online Type: Book Review

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