Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957

Portland, OR: Northwest Photography Archive & Oregon State University Press, 2008. First printing. 345 pp., 12 x 12.5 inches. Cloth over boards in printed dust-jacket. With 134 full-page reproductions, and an introduction, epilogue, list of plates, notes, acknowledgments, selected bibliography, and index. From the first printing of five thousand copies, designed and produced by John Laursen, this is one of one hundred special copies, numbered and signed by Laursen, housed in a special slipcase, and accompanied by an archival digital pigment print of an 1867 Carleton Watkins photograph, "Cape Horn." A gorgeous production. As new.

The Northwest Photography Archive was the culmination of many years of research, field work, collecting, planning, and organization — not to mention fundraising! — by Terry Toedtemeier and John Laursen. Wild Beauty, the first publication of the Archive, appeared in tandem with a celebrated exhibition of the same name at the Portland Art Museum, where Toedtemeier, a geologist by training and photographer by forceful inclination, was curator of photography. The first printing of the book sold out during the course of the exhibition, and the book was immediately reprinted. Tragically, Terry Toedtemeier passed away unexpectedly not quite three months after the publication of the book, in December 2008, before the limited edition was ready to be signed.