"This book originated with a curiosity about birds in North America and what happened to them. The project took photographer Krista Elrick ten years and over forty thousand miles of travel to complete. She became engrossed in the story of birds and their losses, the collector Audubon who painted them when they were so abundant, and the changes to the environment that we have inherited today. The photographs rely on mixed methods, including a multiple image, collage, approach that depicts the places Audubon traveled. The work is sufficient by itself, but the real contribution of this book lies in its scholarship. There's in-depth field research contained in this volume, and along with the essays and maps, it becomes a unique and notable contribution to the field of environmental change and Audubon research. It's the product of a photographer passionate to explore and discover the remains of a lost avian world."
—Mark Klett, for photo-eye

"A Country No More is a book to savor for its prose — Elrick's, her contributors' and Audubon's, whom we get to know through his journal entries — and for its imagery. Elrick's photographs, shot on film and developed in a darkroom, are juxtaposed in creative ways with vintage maps, Audubon's avian imagery, and other ephemera in collages that underscore the changes to the landscape over time."
—Michael Abatemarco, Pasatiempo (read full article here)

"A Country No More is just the kind of obsessive journey of beauty and healing that makes so much sense now, to help us understand how we have arrived at this place as a country and a world."
—Alex Harris is a photographer and a founder of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, whose most recent book with Margaret Sartor is Where We Find Ourselves: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum, 1897–1922

"This beautiful book offers a thoughtful meditation on the celebrated naturalist John James Audubon and the world he glimpsed in the 1820s and 30s. With Audubon's words and pictures as her guide, photographer Krista Elrick follows his path across the deep South and up the Missouri River as he collected specimens for his great illustrated work, The Birds of America. The world she photographs is both the same and profoundly different than the one he saw; patches of seeming wildness mix with landscapes that testify to the degradation of bird habitats during the past 200 years. So many of the birds Audubon saw are simply gone.

"Elrick admires Audubon as an artist and writer, but she places him squarely in his time, positioning him as someone enmeshed in the economic system of slavery who could not always see how his own actions threatened the birds and landscapes he loved. Her stunning photographs and own eloquent prose, interspersed here with Audubon's work and excerpts from his journals, make this a book that tacks between present and past, gently pushing the reader to think hard about environmental change, the ethics of conservation, and the profound beauty of the natural world."
—Martha A. Sandweiss is a Professor of history at Princeton University and the author of Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line and Print the Legend: Photography and the American West

"In her decade-long project following the path of renowned artist and naturalist John James Audubon, Krista Elrick found rivers and wetlands scarred and shaped by humans, their waters polluted and dominated by commerce. The waterways are evidence of a dynamic history that engaged European settlers like Audubon, Africans brought to the New World as slaves, and Native Americans, often in conflict and always for/against the natural bounty. As their descendants we now see a way forward in much-changed ecosystems. We can look back with an awareness that recognizes the varied perspectives and redefine overlapping histories: not as divergent or disparate but as American and contributing to our strength and continuing struggles for equity and reconciliation."
—Liz Allen, Curator of Northlight Gallery, Arizona State University