Ok, I admit I did not read the text. But I don't know why one would - this is a book of photos. I looked at the plates. If they don't speak for themselves, they're not art; they don't have a message; they don't provoke. And, ok, to some viewers, yes, they are artistic & moving. But so are the B&W snapshots my folks took back in the 50s and 60s. The technique didn't impress me.

Ok, you say, what about the subject matter, the homage to that place & time? Well, granted, Aspen and Silverton are gentrified now, so it's interesting to glimpse what they used to look like. But I know, from living and traveling out here, that there are other dying towns just as picturesque as the ones Porter captured 50 or more years ago. Ruins of cabins are still in progress in 2015 in the NV outback. Storms still brew over mountains. Sagebrush still stands bravely between the viewer and the mountains.

Can I say something nice about the book itself? Well, it's big enough to see the pix clearly. But there's no organization: either by location, date, or subject. There's no table of contents or index. The human mind needs order, links or patterns, to make sense of what it's seeing. Without it, this book looks like a stack of your neighbor's vacation photos. ( )