Interested in reading more? Below are some (I repeat, some - this is not a comprehensive bibliography) of the key works on Repeat Photography, the Upper Mississippi River, and Federal River Management and the 9-foot Project. I receive no compensation for sharing these resources. If you wish to purchase these books, please consider using a local, independent bookseller. Three of my favorites are Prairie Lights Books (Iowa City, IA), The Country Bookshelf (Bozeman, MT), and Sundance Books and Music (Reno, NV).
Third Views, Second Sights: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West. 2004. By Mark Klett. Museum of New Mexico Press.
Most of us who use repeat photography are familiar with Mark Klett’s amazing body of work. Klett modernized the use of repeat photography and continues to push the methodological boundaries of the medium. His groundbreaking Second View, published in 1984, recaptured the landscapes of the great 19th century expeditionary photographers William Henry Jackson, T.H. O’Sullivan, and William Bell. Third Views revisits many of those sites 20 years later to see what can be learned. Klett has an amazing website as well.
On the Road Again: Montana’s Changing Landscape. By William Wyckoff. 2006. University of Washington Press.
Wyckoff is the American Intermountain West’s most important historical geographer. He has a broad bibliography that explores the evolution of landscape from Arizona to Montana. On the Road Again captures highway photos taken in the 1920s and uses repeat photography to explore Montana’s larger physical and cultural evolution. This book was monumental for Two-Mississippi as it introduced a way in which mundane federal engineering photos could be re-evaluated through repeat photography.
Riding Shotgun with Norman Wallace: Rephotographing the Arizona Landscape. By William Wyckoff. 2020. University of New Mexico Press.
Wyckoff’s most recent repeat photography takes across Arizona. Riding Shotgun is a beautifully composed and enlightening book that turns the lens on the photographer. Wyckoff follows the eye of Norman Wallace, a federal highway engineer and professional landscape photographer, around Arizona. Riding Shotgun makes the repeat photography deeply personal and has been of great value to Two-Mississippi. Wyckoff describes that connection in his first chapter: “…my adventures in Arizona became wedded to Wallace’s. My perfect day became standing where he stood and peering into my Canon viewfinder, often perched on unstable slopes and grabbing at saguaros for support … I knew what that simple positional truth proclaimed: that I stood within a foot or two of where Norman had stood seventy-eight years earlier; that in a small but visceral way I shared a part of his day, a view, an idea for a picture of this place …”
The Colorado Front Range: A Century of Ecological Change. By Thomas Veblen and Diane C. Lorenz. 1991. University of Utah Press.
This difficult to find repeat photography is an excellent primer on using repeat photography to examine ecological change. It is a product of its time - its maps are tough to read and there are errors in location description. But the analysis is captivating and the methodology sound. It is an early example of how all repeat photography was done.
Stopping Time: A Rephotographic Survey of Lake Tahoe. By Peter Goin. 1992. University of New Mexico Press.
Peter Goin is one of the western United States’ best photographers. Goin turns his lens to document the ecological and cultural change ongoing in the Lake Tahoe Basin at the end of the 20th century. I have often thought that it is time for Stopping Time to be redone, by me, thirty years later. Research in Lake Tahoe is quite a lure.
U.S. 40 Today: Thirty Years of Landscape Change in America. By Thomas and Geraldine Vale. 1983. University of Wisconsin Press.
The father of road repeat photographies. U.S. 40 traverses the United States from Atlantic City to San Francisco. The Vales follow U.S. 40 and conduct a repeat photography of photos originally taken in 1953. The analysis is superb and telling of America’s change from the 1950s to the 1980s. Tremendous place-based and thematic organization.
The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi. By John Anfinson. 2005. University of Minnesota Press.
Anfinson’s superb history stands alone as THE history of the Upper Mississippi River. The River We Have Wrought explores the political history that has constrained the Upper Mississippi with levees, wing dams, and a checkerboard of federal and state authorities. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the region, the river, and Midwestern landscapes.