William Henry Jackson was an explorer, photographer, and artist. He is also one of those most often overlooked figures of the American West. His larger claim to fame involves his repeated forays into the western lands of nineteenth-century America as a photographer. Jackson’s life spanned multiple incarnations of the American West. In a sense, he played a singular role in revealing the West to eastern Americans. While others opened the frontier with the axe and the rifle, Jackson did so with his collection of cameras. He dispelled the geological myths through a lens no one could deny or match. His wet plate collodion prints not only helped to reframe the nation’s image of the West, but they also enticed businessmen, investors, scientists, and even tourists to venture into the western regions of the United States. Prior to Jackson’s widely circulated photographs, the American West was little understood and unmapped—mysterious lands that required a camera and a cameraman to reveal their secrets and, ultimately, provide the first photographic record of such exotic destinations as Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, and the Rocky Mountains. Jackson’s story was long and his life full, as he lived to the enviable age of 99. This biography presents the good, bad, and ugly of Jackson’s life, both personal and professional, through the use primary source materials, including Jackson’s autobiographies, letters, and government reports on the Hayden Surveys.

This bibliography is a catalog of works relating to William Henry Jackson.

An extended visual essay presenting orignal images from William Henry Jackson's 1871 Hayden Survey paired with breathtaking color rephotographs of each view from photojournalist Bradly J. Boner.

Acclaimed photographer Kosti Ruohomaa is widely known for his photographs of hard scrabble Yankees in mid-century Maine. No one was more acutely aware than Ruohomaa that his work was capturing a way of life that was rapidly fading. Before his work in Maine, however, Ruohomaa started out with Disney, then went on to become a freelance photographer for the Black Star Agency, where he was a regular contributor to Life, National Geographic, Look, and Ladies Home Journal. His true passion, however, was documenting the lives of the people of Maine. In this biography by curator Deanna Bonner-Ganter, of the Maine State Museum, Kosti's life and work is made relevant and important to an audience that may be unfamiliar with his work.