Clarence King's Survey, undertaken between 1867 and 1872, covered a vast swath of terrain, from the border of California eastward to the edge of the Great Plains. It was the first survey to include a full-time photographer—Timothy O'Sullivan—who produced about 450 finished photographs in large-format and smaller-format stereographs. O'Sullivan's images convey a distinct individual quality of perception, at once direct and laconic, as well as a perfect union of objective fact and personal interpretation. As such, O'Sullivan remains the most admired, studied, and debated photographer who worked on the great western surveys of the 19th century. This handsome and enlightening book aims to enrich and enlarge our understanding of O'Sullivan's pivotal body of western photographs by emphasizing the idea of context. This ambition encompasses several frames of reference: O'Sullivan's best-known images in relation to his larger body of survey work; the function his photographs served in relation to the survey's overall goals and methodologies; and the King Survey itself as a logical part of a complex and prolonged expeditionary endeavor. The volume also includes an essential catalogue raisonné of O'Sullivan's King Survey work.

Timothy H. O'Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)

Arts & Photography

Aspinwall, Jane L.

Davis, Keith F.

Photography & Video

Nelson Atkins

The landscape and people of the American Midwest have captivated photographer Terry Evans (b. 1944) throughout her forty-year photographic career. Evans has a deep connection to her native region, which she has explored from a variety of visual and thematic perspectives. Heartland traces the evolution of Evans’s vision, beginning in the early 1970s with her social documentary images of people in Kansas. She became a landscape photographer in 1978, focusing on the grasses, land, and skies of the prairie; this was followed by an aerial survey of the entire Great Plains, from Texas to Canada. She has also photographed Chicago from the air, an abandoned military site, small-town life in Kansas, and historical samples of prairie flora and fauna from Chicago’s Field Museum. More recently, she has documented the steel industry in the Midwest and oil and gas drilling in North Dakota. This generously illustrated book examines all of these works, which together reveal the enduring beauty of the prairie landscape.

Heartland: The Photographs of Terry Evans

Watson, April M.

Individual Artists

A glimpse into the development of the American West through startling photographs of the frontier landscape and the rich culture of American Indian tribes Best known for his Civil War photographs, Alexander Gardner (1821–1882) also created two extraordinary bodies of work depicting the transformation of the American West: Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific Railway and Scenes in the Indian County. In 1867, after joining the survey team for what became the Kansas Pacific Railroad, Gardner photographed the path of the proposed extension, emphasizing the ease of future railroad construction and economic development, while including studies of American Indians and settlements along the way. The following year, Gardner recorded peace talks with Indian tribes at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Distinctly sympathetic to the plight of the American Indian, Gardner made candid documentation of individual chiefs, their encampments and daily life, burial trees, and the peace proceedings themselves. With a full catalogue raisonné of these two rare series, Alexander Gardner offers a complete visual index of these remarkable photographs, made at a critical moment in the history of the American West.

Alexander Gardner: The Western Photographs, 1867–1868 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)

A fresh, comprehensive, and critical look at the California gold rush through the lens of the daguerreotype camera The California gold rush was the first major event in American history to be documented in depth by photography. This fascinating volume offers a fresh, comprehensive, and critical look at the people, places, and culture of that historical episode as seen through daguerreotypes and ambrotypes of the era. After gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, thousands made the journey to California, including daguerreotypists who established studios in cities and towns and ventured into the gold fields in specially outfitted photographic wagons. Their images, including portraits, views of cities and gold towns, and miners at work in the field, provide an extraordinary glimpse into the evolution of mining culture and technology, the variety of nationalities and races involved in the mining industry, and the growth of cities such as San Francisco and Sacramento. Including numerous images published here for the first time, this book provides an extraordinary glimpse into the transformation of the American West.

Golden Prospects: Daguerreotypes of the California Gold Rush

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Aspinwall, Jane L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Aspinwall, Jane L.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Aspinwall, Jane L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Timothy H. O'Sullivan: The King Survey Photographs (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)

Heartland: The Photographs of Terry Evans

Alexander Gardner: The Western Photographs, 1867–1868 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)

Golden Prospects: Daguerreotypes of the California Gold Rush