The decimation of wooden elevators is not unique to the Canadian prairies. Large concrete high-throughput elevators are replacing the wooden structures in states like Montana, North Dakota and Utah as well.
Bruce Selyem started photographing elevators in 1990, about the same time that elevator companies began rationalizing their buildings.
In 1995 Selyem established the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to preserving the history of the grain handling industry.
Right now the group operates a website and produces a quarterly newsletter that goes out to 220 society members. Future plans include an elevator museum that will house, among other things, Selyem’s 26,000 elevator photos.
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His full-time job as photographer for Bozeman’s Museum of the Rockies has given him an appreciation for the value of documented photographic collections. But mainly he felt a need to preserve the memory of the wooden relics for the hundreds of townspeople he has met over the years.
“I had a real sense of people’s sadness that their little rural town landmark that had been there for 80 years is now gone or is going to be gone.”
Selyem uses vacation time and weekends for his photography sideline, averaging 20 elevator sites a day. Film and processing costs alone are $100 for each day on the road. Every click of the shutter on the large format camera means $5 out of his pocket.
To cover costs, he and his wife Barbara have put together a catalogue of about 100 black and white elevator photos that he sells framed for about $150 to $200 each.
His relentless pursuit of elevators has taken him as far east as Illinois, south to Kansas, west to Oregon and up to High Level, Alta., in the north.
“As long as there are some elevators out there and I have my vision and I have my energy and my health and I can afford it, there’s no end in sight.”
He isn’t offended by the concrete monoliths that are leading to the destruction of smaller wooden elevators. He can’t drive by one without stopping to take a photo.
“In a way they’re even more a sense of power and monumentalness because they’re so much bigger.”
