• Ariaz has described his photography as a “decades-long dialogue between the real and the imagined West” and an exploration of the West “as both a physical space and a terrain for the imagination.”

• Louisiana Trail Riders is one of several photographic essays by Ariaz emphasizing Western culture. Other series include Tucumcari [New Mexico], Fact and Fiction: Imagining the West, and Staging the West.

• The artist was raised in Great Bend, Kansas. The city’s name derives from its position at a bend of the Arkansas River in a region of cropland, shortgrass prairie, and wetlands that was part of the Kiowa Nation. This landscape and family and friends who live in the region are the subjects of Ariaz’s current work.

• Ariaz is a professor of art at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He earned his bachelor of fine arts degree from the Kansas City Art Institute and master of fine arts degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo.