The North Fork takes its form from several threads of Bailey's childhood memories — including a rift between his father and an uncle, macrobiotic meals prepared by his aunt, afternoons free-ranging with his cousins and the premature death of his mother — and suggests how those remembrances tie into small-scale family farms and wilderness along Colorado’s Western Slope. Photography, here, becomes a tool for piecing together a map of Bailey's own complicated personal terrain, mending and rerouting notions of place and family.

"In truth, 'The North Fork’ is an invented town, not existing on any map. It is a fictive place that Bailey has crowded with the people and things of his inner world. Yet there is a soulfulness, a reality, here that defies explanation. It is an aesthetic reality that can only be seen, felt, intimated, tasted, in perfect stillness."
— Tyson Duffy, Musée Magazine

"Bailey admits that the real North Fork is different from the one he imagined for 20 years. It's more gritty and less romantic. But in every way that matters, it's the same. He doesn't have to choose between the facts and the fiction of the North Fork because they're both equally appealing to him."
— Ellyn Kail, VICE

Select links

VICE: The Beauty and Timelessness of Rural Colorado
The Wall Street Journal: Connecting with a Camera
High Country News: A refuge in the North Fork