Read Martha A. Sandweiss's posts on the Penguin Blog The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West, and the woman he loved Clarence King was a late nineteenth-century celebrity, a brilliant scientist and explorer once described by Secretary of State John Hay as "the best and brightest of his generation." But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life-the first as the prominent white geologist and writer Clarence King, and a second as the black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd. The fair, blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common-law wife, Ada Copeland, only on his deathbed. In Passing Strange, noted historian Martha A. Sandweiss tells the dramatic, distinctively American tale of a family built along the fault lines of celebrity, class, and race- a story that spans the long century from Civil War to civil rights.

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

Biographies & Memoirs

Sandweiss, Martha A.

Community & Culture

Penguin Publishing Group

Presents selected works by the Texas photographer and discusses her use of reflection, distortion, light and shade, cut paper shapes, and solarization

Carlotta Corpron: Designer With Light

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Published for the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, by the University of Texas Press

Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West

A common theme of western American art--from the depictions of Indians by early explorers to the monumental landscapes of Albert Bierstadt to the vibrant images of Georgia O'Keeffe--is the transformation of the land through European-American exploration and resettlement. In this handsome book, leading authorities look at western American art of the past three centuries, reevaluating it from the perspectives of history, art history, and American studies. Jules David Prown begins the book by discussing the need for interdisciplinary approaches to broaden the study of western American art. Nancy K. Anderson then calls for a reconsideration of western art as art rather than documentation and for the adoption of new methods to probe its aesthetic, historical, political, and cultural complexities. William Cronon explores what an environmental historian might learn from American landscape art, concluding that each image must be read as a multilayered view intertwining past, present, and future within a larger context of progress and expansionism. Examining representations of American Indians, Brian W. Dippie finds that early works pictured Indians caught up in a process of dramatic change while later artists showed them frozen outside of time; when the frontier ended, western art made nostalgia its defining characteristic. Martha A. Sandweiss argues that the ways in which views of the American west and its peoples reached nineteenth-century audiences--through large edition prints, book illustrations, or theatrical exhibitions--significantly affected both the images and the meanings attached to them. Susan Prendergast Schoelwer challenges popular perceptions of the frontier as a womanless domain, discovering abundant pictures of Native American women in the art of the western fur trade. Howard R. Lamar concludes by discussing the changing perceptions of western artists and inhabitants of their region's landscape in the twentieth century. Publication of this book will coincide with an exhibition organized by the Yale University Art Gallery and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, opening at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.

Cronon, William

Anderson, Nancy K.

Prown, Professor Jules David

Dippie, Professor Brian W.

Schoelwer, Ms. Susan Prendergast

Lamar, Professor Howard R.

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

This handsome book presents a major reinterpretation of western American art of the past three centuries-from the depictions of Indians by early explorers to the monumental landscapes of Albert Bierstadt to the vibrant images of Georgia O`Keeffe-reevaluating it from the perspectives of history, art history, and American studies.

This book tells the intertwined stories of photography and the American West-a new medium and a new place that came of age together in the nineteenth century. The story begins just a few years after the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, as pioneering photographers followed American troops into the Mexican-American War. Taking advantage of rapidly developing technology, photographers soon set out across the overland trails, recorded the shifting fortunes of California's goldseekers, pictured native peoples, and documented the spectacular topography of the American West. The new medium of photography made vivid a landscape few Americans had seen for themselves. 
Resurrecting scores of little-known images of the nineteenth-century American West, Print the Legend offers engaging tales of ambitious photographic adventurers, missing photographs, and misinterpreted images. Chronicling both the history of a place and the history of a medium, this book portrays how Americans first came to understand western photographs and, consequently, to envision their expanding nation.

Print the Legend: Photography and the American West

A compelling story of how the new medium of photography and the new American frontier came of age together—illustrated with scores of stunning images This prize-winning book tells the intertwined stories of photography and the American West—a new medium and a new place that came of age together in the nineteenth century. “Excellent . . . rewarding . . . a provocative look at the limits of photography as recorder of history—and its role in perpetuating myth.”—Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News “A sophisticated and engaging exploration of photography and the West . . . A really handsome work.”—James McWilliams, Austin Chronicle “A wonderful book.”—Vernon Peter, Sunday Oregonian “A deliciously intelligent new book . . . so engrossing you can’t stop reading.”—Michael More, Albuquerque Journal “Print the Legend belongs on that short shelf of essential books about the American West.”—James P. Ronda, University of Tulsa

Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (The Lamar Series in Western History)

The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West

History

Americas

Princeton University Press

The New World's Old World: Photographic Views of Ancient America showcases the remarkable work of photographers who have captured the archaeological landscapes of ancient American cultures from the dawn of photography to the current day. Through essays and descriptive entries on specific sites, the volume demonstrates how photography serves science by conserving structures and masterpieces of the Americas' past, in addition to being an independent artistic medium. Included are works by nineteenth century explorers such as Désiré Charnay, William Henry Jackson, and Timothy O'Sullivan; scientific documentation by Alfred Maudslay; modernist visions by Josef Albers, Martín Chambi, Edward Weston, and Laura Gilpin; contemporary work by Marilyn Bridges, Javier Hinojosa, and Edward Ranney. Their photographs and essays reflect a diversity of approaches. 
Most of the places shown here have been inhabited continuously since contact or rebuilt over ancient sites. Where some nineteenth-century photographers uncovered jumbles of stone smothered in vegetation, their successors contemplated sites altered by excavation, restoration, earthquakes and floods, vandalism, and the encroachment of settlements that obscure or obliterate ancient structures.
May Castleberry is the editor of a series of artist's books published by The Museum of Modern Art. She has organized the Whitney Museum's exhibition, "Perpetual Mirage: Photographic Narratives of the Desert West," and its accompanying catalogue. Kathleen Howe is Curator of Prints and Photographs, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque. Martha A. Sandweiss is professor of American studies and history, Amherst College, Amherst, MA. She was previously Curator of Photographs at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX. Edward Ranney has been internationally recognized for his photographs of pre-Columbian art and architecture. He resides in Santa Fe, NM. Georgia de Havenon is an art historian whose fields of study range from Andean textiles to comic books. Active in the preservation of Bolivian archaeological sites, she is the coauthor of Krazy Kat: The Art of George Herriman.

The New World's Old World: Photographic Views of Ancient America

Ranney, Edward

Howe, Kathleen Stewart

Castleberry, May

de Havenon, Georgia

University of New Mexico Press

Presents a visual record of the Mexican War

Eyewitness to War: Prints & Daguerreotypes of the Mexican War, 1846-1848

Stewart, Rick

Amon Carter Museum of Western Art

Huseman, Ben W.

Smithsonian

A selection of Laura Gilpin's photographs of the American Southwest and other subjects is accompanied by a discussion of her artistic career

Laura Gilpin: An Enduring Grace

Amon Carter Museum

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