William Henry Jackson's "The Pioneer Photographer"

by Bob Blair (Editor)

Of the many published accounts to come out of William Henry Jackson's long career, The Pioneer Photographer, first published in 1929, is widely accepted as Jackson's most trusted autobiography of his early pioneering days and his first eight years as the official photographer for the U.S. Geological Survey. This reconstruction of Jackson's classic work, long out of print, presents 160 photographs and early drawings, paintings, and lithographs by America's best-known landscape photographer, drawing on Jackson's diaries, other published accounts, and his annotations of The Pioneer Photographer to create a complete and multidimensional view of the unfolding nineteenth-century American West. Editor Bob Blair has significantly expanded Jackson's original autobiography, reprinted here in full with the author's annotations, with seventy additional photographs, drawings, and paintings, and extensive excerpts from Jackson's writings, much of the new material drawn from archives and historical collections and never before published.

Genres: Photography

248 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2005

Reviews

[phil breidenbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a review of William Jacksons early life as a photographer in the west during the mid 1800's. He writes about the places he photographed for the government, the adventures he undertook and best of all, to me at least, he talks about how he took his pictures and the way he developed his negatives. He took photos of the building of the cross-country railroads, he took many pictures of the native Americans and he explored and photographed many of the National Parks. His equipment was carried on muleback mostly. His cameras were large, (5X7's, 8X10's and 20X24's!) and his negatives were made of glass. The book is an interesting tale of the photo industry. The copy I read was printed in 1929, a book I'll treasure!