WASHBURN - Jim and Gillian Elliott, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, got a little extra for their admission to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn on Thursday.

Intrepid travelers themselves, they had an unexpected chance to see the work of another Atlantic Coast traveler who has spent time in North Dakota on and off for the past 25 years.

That work is by Jim Dow, a Massachusetts photographer, who first experienced North Dakota and "snirt" in 1981 and then, over more than two decades, returned to add to the photography collection that is partially displayed at the interpretive center.

It will be there through Friday. It is open to the public as part of the interpretive center's daily fare.

Before Halifax on the sea, Jim Elliot spent his boyhood in Saskatchewan, one of the Canadian prairie provinces just to the north.

He said the photographs were evocative of his own prairie experience and brought back old memories.

"There are certain pictures that capture the folk art," he said. "The people have spoken."

Dow, the photographer, would probably feel that the Canadian visitor got it about right.

With one exception, there are no people in Dow's photographs of folk art, buildings, monuments and cemeteries.

In a preface to a coffee table-style book of the collection, Dow said his work is about the people, even though the collection is devoid of them. "Every photograph is a document and testimony to human ingenuity," he said.

Dow said he traveled from familiar places like from Gladstone to Casselton, from Michigan to New Salem and to a few obscure places like Cashel and Auburn that have even native North Dakotans asking, "Where in the heck is that?"

He found buildings, local art on barns, sculpture in fields, collections in basements, unique exhibits in museums and oddities everywhere, and carefully and artistically captured them on film.

He took note of the rarity of people across the landscape but said "it gives a special value to each and every human activity and interchange."

David Borlaug, executive director of the interpretive center, said this is the center's third time hosting a traveling exhibit through the North Dakota Museum of Art's Rural Arts Initiative.

He said he likes the Dow exhibit because the photographs look for quirkiness, without poking fun.

"This is not a Jay Leno view of North Dakota," Borlaug said. "These are things and places we all drive by, but don't really see."

By the way, Auburn was a post office site five miles northwest of Grafton. It later moved to four miles northeast of Grafton. The post office closed in 1943.

Cashel is northeast of Grafton.

For more information on the exhibit, go the museum's Web site at www.ndoma.com.