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Remembering Jacksonville
By the late nineteenth century, the city of Jacksonville was a vibrant cultural center on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Through changing fortunes, Jacksonville has continued to grow and prosper by overcoming adversity and maintaining the strong, independent culture of its citizens. With a selection of fine historic images from her bestselling book Historic Photos of Jacksonville, Carolyn Williams provides a valuable and revealing historical retrospective on the growth and development of Jacksonville. Remembering Jacksonville captures this journey through still photography selected from the finest archives. From the earliest days to the recent past, Remembering Jacksonville follows life, government, education, and events throughout the city’s history. This volume captures unique and rare scenes as depicted in more than a hundred historic photographs. Published in striking black-and-white, these images communicate historic events and everyday life of two centuries of people building a unique and prosperous city.
144 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2010
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June 22, 2018
Back in the old days (like 2010), people interested in historical photos had to hie themselves to their local, state, or national archives, don white gloves, and sift through boxes of materials to turn up the kind of images featured in Remembering Jacksonville. For people to whom that does not sound like heaven but who may still want a little visual historical context of their home town, University of North Florida history professor Carolyn Williams considerately gathered 131 beautifully reproduced images into this slim but attractive book.
Williams, who passed away in 2011, was a prominent historian, author, and speaker, and the care she took in selecting a range of images representing the four eras covered here (1860s-1901, 1902-1919, 1920-1939, and 1940-1960s) is obvious. In comparison the captioning seems perfunctory. While that can obviously sometimes be a function of a lack of documentation regarding the photo itself, it grew frustrating reading snippets about buildings and events that the author clearly knew much more about but provided only a sentence on. (I get particularly cranky when cross streets or addresses aren't provided for buildings with known locations.)
Given my complaints about lack of verbiage, it's probably ironic that my main issue with the book is the preface, which this review may wind up being longer than, but which is by far the lengthiest piece of text in the book. While I generally applaud publisher Todd Bottorff's comments about the importance of making history more accessible, as a photography major, his bald statement that "the power of photographs is that they are less subjective than words in the treatment of history" left me howling with laughter. Go tell it to Arthur Fellig, dear, or the lost genius who managed to create an equestrian portrait of U.S. Grant in front of captured Confederates in 1864 when Grant wasn't even ahorse, let alone at the camp.
Aside from my personal quibbles with the publisher's filler text and my unending need for historians to GPS tag every lost building in the city so I can find them easily, Remembering Jacksonville offers an entertaining and gorgeously rendered look at Jacksonville's history. Since its publication most if not all of the photos featured here have become available for perusal at the State Archive's online presence, FloridaMemory.com, but as Professor Williams likely understood there's something to being able to hold the past in your hand rather than staring at it on a screen.
Williams, who passed away in 2011, was a prominent historian, author, and speaker, and the care she took in selecting a range of images representing the four eras covered here (1860s-1901, 1902-1919, 1920-1939, and 1940-1960s) is obvious. In comparison the captioning seems perfunctory. While that can obviously sometimes be a function of a lack of documentation regarding the photo itself, it grew frustrating reading snippets about buildings and events that the author clearly knew much more about but provided only a sentence on. (I get particularly cranky when cross streets or addresses aren't provided for buildings with known locations.)
Given my complaints about lack of verbiage, it's probably ironic that my main issue with the book is the preface, which this review may wind up being longer than, but which is by far the lengthiest piece of text in the book. While I generally applaud publisher Todd Bottorff's comments about the importance of making history more accessible, as a photography major, his bald statement that "the power of photographs is that they are less subjective than words in the treatment of history" left me howling with laughter. Go tell it to Arthur Fellig, dear, or the lost genius who managed to create an equestrian portrait of U.S. Grant in front of captured Confederates in 1864 when Grant wasn't even ahorse, let alone at the camp.
Aside from my personal quibbles with the publisher's filler text and my unending need for historians to GPS tag every lost building in the city so I can find them easily, Remembering Jacksonville offers an entertaining and gorgeously rendered look at Jacksonville's history. Since its publication most if not all of the photos featured here have become available for perusal at the State Archive's online presence, FloridaMemory.com, but as Professor Williams likely understood there's something to being able to hold the past in your hand rather than staring at it on a screen.
Displaying 1 of 1 review