Eliot Porter's Southwest

This book is full of gorgeous black-and-white photographs from all over the West in the 1940s. Central New Mexico is here--including the Canoncito Church near Santa Fe, Madrid, the La Bajada ruins, and the town and mines of Cerrillos--and so is White Sands, New Mexico, and southern Utah, and the mining towns of Colorado. Many of the places photographed are in ruins, and the black-and-white coloration serves to make them even more desolate, dryer, dustier, bleaker. Sometimes the photos are of wide expanses; oftentimes they're of small details like where the rusted hook of an old door has carved a circle around it, from years of use once upon a time. This book also has a good autobiographical essay by the photographer that serves as an introduction, and the book itself is a terrific historical record of the West, and a great photo collection for any coffee table in need of a conversation piece. I first saw it at a friend's house, and knew I had to get a copy for myself.