Readers gain insight into the life of the Hutterites, who live on the prairies of Montana far from mainstream America, shunning worldly temptations, and carefully protecting their spiritual life. Wilson not only photographed the Hutterites and their communal life, she also interviewed their members over a 14-year period. 109 tritones.

The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of world photography up to the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets out to be the standard, definitive reference work on the subject for years to come. Its coverage is global – an important ‘first’ in that authorities from all over the world have contributed their expertise and scholarship towards making this a truly comprehensive publication. The Encyclopedia presents new and ground-breaking research alongside accounts of the major established figures in the nineteenth century arena. Coverage includes all the key people, processes, equipment, movements, styles, debates and groupings which helped photography develop from being ‘a solution in search of a problem’ when first invented, to the essential communication tool, creative medium, and recorder of everyday life which it had become by the dawn of the twentieth century. The sheer breadth of coverage in the 1200 essays makes the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography an essential reference source for academics, students, researchers and libraries worldwide.

The TSHA is pleased to announce the return of a classic in this second edition of Watt Matthews of Lambshead by renowned photographer Laura Wilson. In this new edition, Wilson adds an afterword to her original award-winning photographic essay, published in 1989 when Watt Matthews was ninety years old and the vital force behind a vast West Texas ranch. Watt was the ninth and last child of pioneering parents who had established the ranch on the banks of the Clear Fork of the Brazos in 1858, and, in the words of historian David McCullough, "created a family kingdom so large and still so true to its traditional way of life that visitors sometimes have to remind themselves that it is all real." Except for four years at Princeton, Watt spent his entire life on the ranch, which had remained its own separate world into the late twentieth century. Those days are beautifully chronicled in Wilson's photographs and, in this new edition, she brings the story of Lambshead Ranch up to the present by writing of Watt's funeral and what has happened to the ranch since Watt's death in 1997.

The first narrative biography of the Civil War's pioneering visual historian, Mathew Brady, known as the “father of American photography.” Mathew Brady's attention to detail, flair for composition, and technical mastery helped establish the photograph as a thing of value. In the 1840s and '50s, “Brady of Broadway” photographed such dignitaries as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Dolley Madison, Horace Greeley, the Prince of Wales, and Jenny Lind. But it was during the Civil War that Brady's photography became an epochal part of American history. The Civil War was the first war in history to leave a detailed photographic record, and Brady knew better than anyone the dual power of the camera to record and excite, to stop a moment in time and preserve it. More than ten thousand war images are attributed to the Brady studio. But as Wilson shows, while Brady himself accompanied the Union army to the first major battle at Bull Run, he was so shaken by the experience that throughout the rest of the war he rarely visited battlefields except well before or after a major battle, instead sending teams of photographers to the front. Mathew Brady is a gracefully written and beautifully illustrated biography of an American legend-a businessman, a suave promoter, a celebrated portrait artist, and, most important, a historian who chronicled America during the gravest moments of the nineteenth century.

This extraordinarily comprehensive, well-documented, biographical dictionary of some 1,500 photographers (and workers engaged in photographically related pursuits) active in western North America before 1865 is enriched by some 250 illustrations. Far from being simply a reference tool, the book provides a rich trove of fascinating narratives that cover both the professional and personal lives of a colorful cast of characters.