Texas Then & Now (review)

Westcliffe Publishers asked Texas photographer Richard Reynolds to produce a book of photographs similar to the volume by John Fielder about Colorado. Fielder followed in the footsteps of pioneer landscape photographer William Henry Jackson, found his vantage points, and took a modern picture of the same scene. This is called a "rephotograph." Fielder then organized "then and now" images in a large, handsome, coffee-table book, Colorado, 1870–2000 (Englewood, Colo.: Westcliffe, 1999). Texas was difficult, however, because there was no single nineteenth-century photographer such as Jackson who covered the state and because Texans tended to focus their cameras on towns and technology, not landscapes. There was no chronological consistency, furthermore, and Reynolds, after looking at thousands of historic pictures in twenty collections, found a wide range from a photo of Houston in 1856 to Marshall in the 1940s.

Unlike Fielder, who understandably concentrated on Colorado's scenic mountains in the western half of the state, Reynolds tried to look at all of Texas divided into geographical regions—West Texas, Panhandle, Central Texas, East Texas, South Texas, and Gulf Coast. He was obviously hindered by the enormous space to cover as well as by the lack of serviceable historic photographs and, consequently, many places were not included. Also unlike Fielder, Reynolds provided explanatory captions for the photographs. The information given about a place is rarely anything more than you might find in the Handbook of Texas or from a Chamber of Commerce, but once in a while Reynolds offers architectural data about a building and details about changes. Of most interest are his comments about attaining the correct historic point to place his camera. This could not be done, for instance, in the middle of a busy street where drivers seemed to take aim at the vulnerable photographer.

The printed photographs, of course, are stunning. They are reproduced on thick, slick pages that measure 10 inches high by 14 inches long with the black-and-white historic pictures placed side by side with the color rephotograph. They are a pleasure to look at and inspire the use of a magnifying glass. For the serious-minded historian there is not much to be learned. The information from the book is too scattered, piecemeal, and unanalyzed. For example, there are no answers to questions about how and when Texas became paved, electrified, irrigated, drained, and transformed by automobiles. But, that is really not the point. This is basically an art book that is fun to look at and would make a nice present for someone with a mild interest in Texas history.