The Substance and The Shadow

The Substance and the Shadow is a photograph book. According to the description, it features sixty-five photographs with narrative from the archives of the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. The pictures display everyday life in the San Juan Mountains and the nearby valleys.

The description quotes David Lavender to say that these people "believed" and had faith in the future. It calls the book only the tip of an amazing collection covering the 1880s into the 1960s, mostly the 1880s through the 1920s, with a main focus from the Four Corners through the Montrose and Delta region. The title suggests the contrast it draws, between the real thing and its image.

It is a small book of 82 pages in our catalogue, with the ISBN 1-890437-56-5. Open Library lists a 2000 edition from Western Reflections Pub. Its subject headings are pictorial works, social life and customs, and local history. Duane A. Smith supplies the narrative, which makes it a good first book of his to pick up.

The Substance and the Shadow is for people who like to look at old pictures as much as read about them. Families in southwestern Colorado may recognize places and kinds of work in the photographs. Teachers can use the book to show students what everyday life looked like in the San Juans. Collectors of regional pictorial works will want it for the archive connection. At 82 pages it can be read in an afternoon, but it rewards slow looking more than speed.

Duane A. Smith worked at Fort Lewis College in Durango, the same institution that houses the archive behind these photographs, and the narrative here draws on his long experience of the region. Many of his books are histories of towns and railroads, and this one is a change of pace. His author page lists all nine books we carry and gives what we can verify about his career.

More about Duane A. Smith →

The Center of Southwest Studies is part of Fort Lewis College in Durango. Its website lists a collections area, the Delaney Research Library and Archives, and college records, along with online exhibits on Southwestern postcards and uranium mining history. The center is at 1000 Rim Drive on the campus.

Fort Lewis College has an unusual history. Wikipedia says the first Fort Lewis army post was built in Pagosa Springs in 1878 and moved to Hesperus, Colorado, in 1880. In 1891 the fort was decommissioned and became a federal off-reservation Indian boarding school, and in 1911 the state of Colorado received the property to establish a school. Durango itself was founded in 1880 by the Denver and Rio Grande Railway.

Source: Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College