Couple recaptures historical
photos across the state
Growing up, Paul Horsted didn’t realize picking up his father’s 1950s Voigtlander 35mm camera would turn into a lifetime photography career for him and include publishing with his future wife, Camille Riner. Over the decades, they have collaborated and recaptured history while making a bit of their own.
Paul and Camille have published five photography books including The Black Hills Yesterday & Today and Exploring with Custer, with their sixth title, South Dakota Yesterday & Today, releasing this month. The books include historic photographs generally taken a century or so ago alongside carefully composed photos taken by Paul of those exact spots today.
“Sometimes you end up being in the middle of the street or on a mountainside,” Paul says. “Finding the sites for the repeat photography starts with matching the background and then triangulating up to the foreground. There was a lot of hiking, sometimes fruitless searching as well, but I can do a lot of front-end research now thanks to internet resources.”
Inside the story
Paul and Camille live just outside Custer, each with a home office serving as their creative studios. Camille designs the books, and their friend, Ernie Grafe, edits them. Their publishing process begins with months of preparation, notetaking, and exploring photo archives before taking road trips to locations across the state.
While Paul travels for photos, Camille designs backgrounds and textures for the book that reflect the landscapes. She also uses her typography skills and adds touches to make the images pop.
“I collaborate with him,” Camille says. “I made templates for the photos on this last project, which was a little different. The approach changes based on the overarching themes and context of the photos.”
Along with designing books, Camille teaches mindfulness and art classes locally and online for participants around the world. She sells patterns on Etsy for her artist’s books, supported by step-by-step tutorials on her YouTube channel.
Connecting across continents
Golden West brought a fiberoptic connection to Paul and Camille in 2025. The couple regularly puts their connection to the test, including uploading two terabytes of data across the ocean to send their latest book to their printer and creating art communities online with people in Africa and Europe.
“Once the fiber-optics came in, we haven’t had to worry about the internet even if we are both doing Zoom calls,” Paul says. “Everything I do relies on the internet. From finding and downloading archived photos all the way to publication, it all needs a good connection since the files are so large.”
Returning to the Black Hills
Paul grew up East river, while Camille landed in the Black Hills in high school after moving to various locations as her father served in the Air Force. Paul worked for the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls before earning a degree from South Dakota State University.
Camille attended the University of South Dakota and went to Wisconsin for her master’s degree in graphic design and printmaking. They married in 1987 and moved to Michigan where Camille taught college art, before returning to their roots in the Black Hills in 1998.
“We moved here wanting to be more of lone eagles in our projects,” says Camille. “We decided we can do this and chose Custer as our place to be.”
The couple is accepting preorders at paulhorsted.com and will start packing and mailing their South Dakota Yesterday & Today photography books in August. In the meantime, Paul looks forward to sharing more history with people across the state at museums and conventions, and Camille is excited to continue making art and teaching classes.
