William Henry Jackson's "The Pioneer Photographer" [Hardcover]

William Henry Jackson (Author), Bob Blair (Editor), Lee H. Whittlesey (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2005

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 (1870-1878) as the official photographer for the US Geological Survey. This reconstruction of Jackson's classic work, long out of print, presents one hundred sixty photographs and early drawings, paintings and lithographs by America's best-known landscape photographer, drawing on Jackson's diaries, other published accounts, and importantly 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Famed for photographs that led to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, William Henry Jackson had an as-told-to memoir published in 1929, which provides this volume's foundation. But this is virtually a new book because it collects 136 black-and-white and 24 color images and reconciles Jackson's recollections with ancillary information about the Ferdinand Hayden geological surveys of the 1870s. An easterner, Jackson began his memoir with a description of his sound reasons for going west: a broken engagement and the lack of an occupation. After adventures in a wagon train in the waning years of the Oregon Trail, he established himself as a photographer in Omaha, where Hayden recruited him. Jackson matter-of-factly recalled the incidents of each expedition, many of which involved contretemps with Old Mag, the mule packing his cumbersome wet-plate equipment. In step with the text, the images of landscapes, companions, and Indians render the vibrancy of traveling with Jackson, if only vicariously, and make this handsome restoration a must for the Old West collection. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Bob Blair, an elementary teacher and amateur photographer residing in Taos, New Mexico, first became intrigued with the life and work of William Henry Jackson after obtaining a first edition copy of The Pioneer Photographer. Two decades of research have led to the rediscovery and reissue of this important, but forgotten autobiography.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Museum of New Mexico Press (April 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0890134359
• ISBN-13: 978-0890134351
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,688,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book but more words, artwork than photographs, January 12, 2006

By 

A. Burchfield (Conway, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Henry Jackson's "The Pioneer Photographer" (Hardcover)

I've just started reading the book, the biographical sections are extensive and interesting. They might, in fact, be the best part of the book (together with the update/ annotations).
I was hoping for a large collection of Mr. Jacksons photographs but instead got more text than anything. You do get some photographs but they tend to be small, not full page (they are interesting). I didn't count them but believe that there are more sketches and paintings than photographs of the man's subjects.
One thing I noted was that the editor of this edition writes that many of the photographs are "attributed to", meaning either no one is certain of the photographer but think he did them or even that an employee actually did the work.
If what you really want are 1870's photographs you'll have to find another Jackson book somewhere to get many of them.

5.0 out of 5 stars The 1st Autobiography, November 11, 2011

By 

Roy K. Farber (Grand Junction, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Henry Jackson's "The Pioneer Photographer" (Hardcover)

William Henry Jackson's autobiography, "Time Exposure", was published in 1940. He was then 97. He had been writing it for 80 years, and lived another 2. My volume, a reprint, has a few of his photographs, of poor quality, and some of his sketches. I only recently re-read it, was once again amazed at the sweep of history this man truly lived, all the while developing his artistic (he painted well into late-life) and photographic skills, while participating in some of the greatest explorations and experiences of our American West.

But "Time Exposure" is his second autobiography, encompassing his entire life, with notably less detail in its latter reaches, and relying upon his first, published in 1929 when he was only 86 and with much greater retention and ability to review the notes and sketches he'd begun making even before soldiering in the Civil War. Therein, he does not describe his life in Denver and subsequent wanderinging and work for the Railroads, instead ending with the close of the Hayden surveys, when he explored with those Immortals, Hayden himself, and his good friend Thomas Moran, the artist who excelled over even Bierstadt. This was the making of legends.

My volume of his first autobiography, entitled "The Pioneer Photographer", is the 2005 reprint of 1929's. It has numerous black and white, as well as colored, sketches, paintings and photographs. Ansel Adams is not remembered as a pianist, nor, unfortunately, Jackson as the artist, and I was so pleased to see the art, both chemical and of pencil and brush, that he created of the events he wrote so eloquently about with such passion.

There are many finer sources for Jackson's photographs than found in these two autobiographies. The Internet is rich with them, and they are interspersed in the numerous Americana books of our West. My volume of "Picture Maker of the Old West", published in 1949, has more, larger and better quality photographs and sketches by Jackson, but without the depth of his autobiographies. And the phenomenal creation of Sundance Press, publishing in the original large-format contact prints Jackson's Railroad pictures, can never be equaled.

There are other volumes of his photographs available, but apparently none with the synthesis of "The Pioneer Photographer" with its fluid text of high adventure and often humorous description, and accompanying artwork and photographs. So take your pick, and pick well, for this man is unequaled, and no one volume will contain all.