Glass Plates & Wagon Ruts: Images of the Southwest by Lisle Updike & William Pennington

by H. Jackson Clark

Book Overview

Incorporates the entire corpus from 1905 to 1915 of two photographers who travelled the American Southwest capturing such images as Zuni Indians drilling turquoise; Jicarilla Apaches wearing eagle... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870814958
• ISBN13: 9780870814952
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.3" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Fabulous and Worthwhile Photographs

I love the photographs in "Glass Plates and Wagon Ruts." This book, by H. Jackson Clark, records the history of Lisle Update and William Pennington, who creates an amazing photoarchive of the American Southwest in the first several decades of the twentieth century.Clark presents nearly 100 classic photographs, around which he tells the story of constant travel in the Four Corners states by these two reknown photographers. Many of these photos are of Native Americans, both in the Pueblos of New Mexico, and in Navajo and Apache territory in Arizona. The prints, in particular, represent some of the best photo portraits from these cultures in existence.Some of the pictures will just surprise you. My favorite is one of the Wright Brothers' plane, flown at a fair in Colorado in 1914. I really enjoyed this book. If you have an interest in the Southwest, or in old photography, the chances are good that you will, too.

The beauty of these photographs left me speechless.

If there was not one line of prose in this book, the photographs would be more than worth the price of the book. We have grown up with images from the movies and television. These photographs portray the real American Indian. I found myself with a lense studying the detail of the clothing, beads and headdresses and eventually transported by the expresses. What were these people thinking as they poised? Are we the readers the ones that are really caught in time?