Photography on the South Texas Frontier: Images from the Witte Museum Collection

Compelling images of people in a region that in many ways remains a frontier fill the pages of this handsome book. The photographs, most published for the first time, are from the top-ranked collection of the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas. They catch South Texans during more than a century and a half of formal and informal moments in studios, at home, at work and at play. All illustrations were scanned in color, yielding a range of tones that otherwise disappear when historic images are converted to black and white. The images are also treated as artifacts, preserving their patina of age and reproducing the original mountings and borders, which often bear elaborate typography. The oldest, a daguerreotype, was made in 1849, less than twenty years after the birth of photography. It pictures Major General William Jenkins Worth, a Mexican War hero for whom the city of Fort Worth is named. Images of others in South Texas appear in tintypes, then cabinet cards, autochromes, photo