I\'m Jim Camp, the guy behind the synaesthesia press. I\'m a letterpress printer, a publisher of limited-edition books and broadsides, and a lifelong book collector. I\'ve been at this for close to 40 years, and most of what I\'m offering here has lived on my shelves for decades. Now it\'s time for these books to move on to new homes. When one finds its way to your shelf, it\'ll arrive quickly, securely packed, and with no extra fees for shipping or handling. Oh, and don\'t be afraid to make an offer!Offering: Western American Travel Photograph Album: California, Nevada, and the Southwest. Ca. 1950s. 85 original black-and-white vernacular photographs, principally approximately 3 × 5 and 4 × 3 inches, mounted on black leaves in a 6 × 9 inch photograph album.Near Fine. Brown embossed boards measuring approximately 6 × 9 inches (15.2 × 22.9 cm), titled “SNAPS” in silver on the upper board. Contains 85 original black-and-white photographs, principally approximately 3 × 5 inches (7.6 × 12.7 cm) and 4 × 3 inches (10.2 × 7.6 cm), mounted to black album leaves. Two photographs have been removed and are no longer present. Photographs remain generally clean and well preserved, with occasional light age wear and corner mounting marks.A wonderfully compact vernacular record of a mid-century journey through the American West, containing 85 original photographs of roadside America, national-park landscapes, cities, casinos, dams, mountains and the people moving through them. Among the recognizable subjects are downtown Reno\'s neon-lined Virginia Street, Hoover Dam, Southwestern desert and petrified-wood landscapes, mountain lakes and an early chairlift, together with views apparently including the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon and California scenes including the Golden Gate Bridge and distant Alcatraz. The Reno photograph is particularly evocative, catching the Nevada Club, Frontier Club and Harold\'s Club during the city\'s classic postwar casino era.What makes the album work is the traveler\'s-eye mixture of landmark and accident: a man reaching toward a deer, cars pulled beneath a roadside “SEA FOODS / TOURISTS WELCOME” sign, empty Western terrain, a huge piece of petrified wood, casino marquees, lake country, ski lifts and monumental public works. One photograph records the memorial inscription at Hoover Dam honoring the vision and labor behind its construction, firmly identifying that stop on the journey. Taken together, the photographs feel less like a collection of tourist views than an intact visual itinerary through the postwar West—Nevada gambling towns, California, the Sierra and the great Southwestern landscape all compressed into a modest six-by-nine-inch album.
A terrific little piece of postwar Western Americana—the American road trip before interstates, smartphones and a thousand identical photographs of every stop.
My best pieces never sit around for long, so click the heart on my store page to save me as a seller. I\'m also the publisher behind thesynaesthesia press, known for its limited-edition books and broadsides, so when you buy here you\'re buying from a collector and letterpress printer who\'s been at this longer than I\'d like to admit.
THANKS!
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