Window on the West - Hardcover

Lawlor, Laurie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823413802 ISBN 13: 9780823413805

Publisher: Holiday House, 1999

Synopsis

An exploration of the career of Western photographer William Henry Jackson features forty photographs of such subjects as Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and discusses how his work and life parallel the opening of the West in the 1800s.

About this title

About the Author

Laurie Lawlor grew up in a family enamored with the theater. Along with her five brothers and sisters she spent summers in a summer stock repertory company in a small mountain town in Colorado that was run by their mother (costumer, cook, accountant, and resident psychiatrist) and their father (artistic director). Lawlor's father liked to joke that she "spent kindergarten under the piano." She says, "I was the only one with stage fright. I preferred the back stage, where I shook the sheet metal to simulate thunder for storm scenes or helped paint rubber chickens for props.

Coming from a theatrical family with a highly developed imagination gave Lawlor some advantages. She soon learned that if she wanted some peace and quiet, she could simply invent terrifying stories bout characters who happened to inhabit the family's home. In this way Lawlor was able to convince her gullible younger brothers and sisters to stay out of the attic or suffer the wrath of Evil Pan. In this clever way Lawlor acquired her first studio. There she was able to write and read and "nobody," she says, "dared bother me."

According to Laurie Lawlor, her "very first characters were strange and fabulous creatures who haunted the attic of my first childhood home -- a run-down two-flat on a busy street in LaGrange, Illinois. My characters' names were Jack Frost and the Fat Lady."

Laurie says, "Conveniently for me, a little boy my age lived in our building. Poor Greggy! Whenever he got scared, his big eyes got even bigger. His mouth made a perfect O-shape, and he howled like a dog. I made it my business to use the magic of stories about Jack Frost and the Fat Lady to terrify Greggy. His howling gave me a very satisfied feeling. This was probaby the earliest indication that I would one day become a writer."

It was when Lawlor was in about the third grade that she decided to become a writer. That was when she made the amazing discovery that she did not have to tell these scary stories over and over again. She could simply write them down. Her best friend in third grade, who was an excellent artist, illustrated the books she wrote. They had such a good time creating the books that they decided to work together, making books, when they grew up. Unfortunately, Laurie's friend became a dental hygienist, Laurie, however, trained as a journalist and then went on to write books.

Laurie worked on the high school newspaper and eventually went to journalism school at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She worked for many years as a freelance writer and editor before devoting herself on a more full-time basis to the creation of fiction and nonfiction for children and young adults. She teaches writing workshops to elementary and junior high school students throughout the country as an artist-in-residence. She is a part-time faculty member of Chicago's Columbia College, where she teaches w

Reviews

Grade 5-8-Lawlor describes the artist's life and work, but also goes further, investigating the historical and social background that made his photos relevant and the crucial part they played in shaping national attitudes. The book is arranged neatly around phases of Jackson's varied career. He photographed for railroads, explored and surveyed with the Hayden Expeditions, published the first photographs of the Yellowstone Valley, and captured the rapid changes of the West in pictures of American Indians and mining towns. Lawlor gives extensive background about the land and events that shaped Jackson's West. With clear and engaging prose, she covers topics as diverse as industrialization, the Gilded Age, railroad developments, photographic techniques, racial prejudice, and the decline of the American Indian lifestyle. The text frequently diverges from Jackson's life for several pages at a time in order to provide background, but the information ultimately provides a richer appreciation of the photographer's experiences. Jackson himself is represented through descriptions of his life, excerpts from his diaries, and dozens of reproductions. Few intimate details or strong emotions related to Jackson's personal life emerge, but his fascination with the West and his dedication to his art come through consistently. The photographer's experiences touched upon many key developments in the history of the American West, and Lawlor successfully brings the era to life within the framework of this man's remarkable career.
Steven Engelfried, Deschutes County Library, Bend, OR
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although this dense volume offers a sweeping view of the rapidly changing American West between 1869 and 1893, it provides few insights into Jackson and his photography. The details of life in the West that made Lawlor's recent American Sisters: West Along the Wagon Road, 1852 so compelling are nearly absent here. In chronicling the work and career of the self-taught photographer and explorer who popularized images of the Western frontier, the author provides only sketchy biographical information. For example, Lawlor makes a vague reference to a "broken heart" that drove Jackson from his job working in a photography gallery to bullwack on the Oregon Trail; a few paragraphs later the author refers to a bride "of less than one month" whom Jackson leaves for his first Western photographic expedition, offering little more than the wife's name. Lengthy digressions on subjects as diverse as the Industrial Revolution, the history of photography and the effect of train travel on the frontier prove less interesting because they omit Jackson almost entirely. Jackson's dramatic black-and-white images capture the grandeur, scale and mystery of the West, but, except for a few anecdotal gems (including the story about a Jackson photo that inspired a poem by Longfellow), this volume will be utilized best as a research tool. Ages 10-up. (Dec.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lawlor shares the danger and promise of the American West as it was presented through the lens of William Henry Jackson to a nation rebuilding after the Civil War. The Vermont-born photographer was 26 when he fell in love with the West and began to record its vast expanse. Soon his photos became best-selling postcards that helped attract courageous Easterners to the unspoiled land. Along the way, he met geologist and surveyor Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and became part of a series of federally funded expeditions to map, photograph, and sketch the territory for Congress. Jackson's images are balanced by Lawlor's eloquent text, which folds in details about everything from the wonder of Yellowstone's geysers to the debasement of the Native Americans. This is much more than a look at early photography; it's a memorable, bittersweet valentine to the Old West. Time line and bibliography. Randy Meyer

Edition details

• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823413802
• ISBN 13: 9780823413805
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 132