The Bookshelf, The Parlor, The Young Texas Reader, and the Monthly

The Texas Bookshelf is different from the The Texas Parlor, http://texasparlor.blogspot.com/ . The Texas Parlor carries "general" bookish information and non-book information and even different Texana news and notes of use to the bibliographically challenged and other nosey folks intersted in historical, literary, and cultural observations. Will's Texana Monthly may carry material from either blog, but extends itself beyond those, especially for longer compilations or treatments. The Monthly, the Bookshelf and the Parlor are all companions. So, is the Young Texas Reader http://youngtexasreader.blogspot.com/ which specialized on books and such things for the youngest to the teenagers.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Photography on the South Texas Frontier - Shackelfor


Photography on the South Texas Frontier:

Images from the Witte Collection.


By Bruce M. Shackelford.

San Antonio: Maverick Publishing Co., 2007.

112 pages, hardcover, 10 x 10 inches, 80 illustrations ISBN 978-1-893271-45-6 Jacketed, covered by, and with endpapers of brown tones. http://www.maverickpub.com/ $38.95

Shackelford has curated several exhibits for the well known Witte in San Antonio. Here he’s selected almost a hundred of the vintage South Texas Collection. Most date about the turn of 1900 or before, with some later from the late Jack Specht photographs. The collection is refreshing – settings and poses. Most of the works are period soft brown and shades of white. But some few are in color, and some were hand colored afterwards. The reader / viewer will turn the page slowly, enjoying the frontier / travel / worksite / play scenes / formal posing / reunions / and diverse ethnic and economic groups.

One is a daguerreotype of 1849.

Dobie, sitting, leaning against a tree trunk, barbed wire fence, near a spiny cactus, isn’t so old.

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