This beautifully produced book of 170 black and white photos by David Plowden, taken between 1956 and 1992, captures everyday man-made America before it vanishes, railroads, steamboats, farmland, small towns, bridges and the subject I like best, the grittyness of the US industrial city. Each page photo has a generous border and a caption centred below.

All the photographs are wonderful compositions, many of them divided into threes, horizontally, some land in the foreground, then a freight train and finally the sky. This is interesting because they show things that could not be moved, unlike studio photography, here the photographer had to move the camera to get the best shot. David Plowden seems to know instinctively when he sees something that it will make an interesting photograph. If you want to have a keepsake of slowly disappearing man-made America get this book.

Imprints is a wonderful representation of the America of our fathers and grandfathers that will soon exist no more, for better or worse. The photographic record in Imprints speaks wonderfully of the articulate and experienced eye of David Plowden. His images depict the unglamorous parts of life that most of us grow up with. Yet, at the same time, his keen vision shows us that there is beauty and art in everything. I grew up in the American Midwest in the 1950's and this book elicits nostalgia, sentimentality and a sense of loss. I wish I had been more observant, aware, appreciative at that time. Plowden has given me a second chance.

David Plowden has spent a lifetime taking his camera into small towns and down the backroads between them trying to capture an America that has almost completely vanished. We are fortunate that he arrived in time with a wonderful sense of composition that invests his black and white photographs with grace and beauty. This retrospective collects the best of these images into a cohesive photo essay of small towns, lonely farms and abandoned railroads. Placed against these small and quiet images are Plowden's photos of brutal industrial and mechanical structures. These nightmare images of factories and elevators and rail yards, draped in smoke and soot, make us as uneasy in turn as the rural photos made us nostalgic for the old ways. Plowden can cross between these two worlds so easily because they are really two sides of the same American coin. His brilliant photograph of a dark, brooding steel mill at the end of a grimy residental street combines the best and worst of the American dream. Plowden clearly would return to the simple small town days, but he has seen enough to understand that we are too far down the other path to turn back now. The photographs in this book are heartfelt. Some are very sad, and some impart a terrible sense of unease - as though we have stumbled onto an ugly secret. Plowden can take his place next to Walker Evans and Wright Morris with this book. He has captured our lost America and, for better or worse, marked the way into the new century.

We bridge difficulties. We like a bridge over troubled waters. We needed a bridge into the new millennium. Bridges have a hold on us in a way that other examples of civil engineering do not. And we often don't notice them as we use them. Although I had traveled on the Natchez Trace Parkway many times, upheld by a bridge in Franklin, Tennessee, I had never looked down and appreciated the span until alerted to it a couple of years ago. It is a beautiful, big, parabolic concrete arch which I now get off and admire fairly often. According to _Bridges: The Spans of North America_ (Norton) by David Plowden, I am not alone. This bridge "is unlike any heretofore built in America and has been the recipient of innumerable awards." Calling attention to the bridges we take for granted, and telling a history of American bridge building, Plowden's book is fittingly big, and displays his beautiful black and white pictures in large format, splendidly reproduced. It is properly sized for the coffee table, but the text is appropriately comprehensive, and as worth reading as the pictures are worth admiring.

_Bridges_ is divided into chronological sections based on the materials used: stone and brick; wood; iron; steel (divided into three time periods, since there are so many steel bridges); and concrete. Erecting a stone bridge was expensive and time consuming, especially compared to using wood. There are more miles of wooden bridges than any other type in America, although Plowden has little good to say about the "cult of the covered bridge" which has obscured the trusswork he thinks is the important part of these wooden bridges. Iron was used for bridges for only a short time, and iron bridges are the rarest of bridge artifacts. Concrete bridges are the way to go for the main bridge-building impetus in America, the highway system. Reinforced concrete does extremely well for piers to hold bridges up, as well as for the flats that carry traffic. Plowden spends many pages on the most famous type of bridge, the steel spans, and his pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge present them in new ways, and he hurtles through the engrossing stories of their construction because they are relatively familiar. The stories of lesser known bridges, such as the wonderful Eads bridge in St. Louis (built by Captain James Eads, of few engineering credentials and no bridge experience) bring to light many surprising difficulties and solutions the bridge builders came up with.

Plowden's history serves as a demonstration of engineering problem-solving. Each bridge is unique in purpose, location, and difficulties of completion. This is true even in replacement bridges. Many of these beautiful photographs show bridges that are no longer existent. There have been bridge failures, of course, but usually bridges built in the nineteenth century show signs of distress, and are called out of commission. Sometimes railroads simply no longer need a particular link. There are, however, new vistas for bridge building, especially in the straits and bays that have needed bridges and now have proposals for bridges meeting new engineering and economic abilities previously unavailable. Plowden is confident that utility will continue to be combined with beauty, and his handsome book supports such confidence.

So many great books of photography are out of print. Here's another one. If you can get your hands on a copy somewhere, hang onto it. The photographer, David Plowden, has a wonderful sensitivity for the vast sweep of this landscape and the big sky. While there are a few 2-page spreads that reach for the breadth of spaces on the open plains, most of the photos are square or very nearly so, and Plowden is a master of images framed in these proportions.

For example, a photograph taken in what looks like late afternoon captures a deserted dirt street in Carter, Montana. Stretching straight ahead to the edge of town, the street is wide as the bottom frame of the picture and in the course of two blocks quickly narrows, then ends, and beyond in the middle distance to the blue, range of far-off mountains are gently rolling, golden fields, under a milky blue sky. The buildings on both sides of the street turn blank, windowless walls to the camera, and a white General Mills elevator rises above the rooflines. Beside it stands the criss-crossed arms of a railroad crossing sign. Along the street there are utility poles and wires running overhead. In the foreground the street has been oiled to settle the dust, and grass grows right to the edges. There's not a sign of human life. The picture evokes a vast open stillness and an air of time suspended.

The photographs were shot during 1970-71 across all of the Great Plains states from Montana south to New Mexico and Texas. There's a great variety of images impossible to summarize here, including white markers in the grass of the Little Big Horn, a full moon over bluffs, sunsets, abandoned farm buildings, vacant store fronts, cars and trucks parked in front of a bar, wheat fields, hay fields, windmills, an old tractor, railroad tracks, an endless freight train, riverbeds and dry water holes, stormy skies, badlands, the faces of rural people, and the backside of one cowboy sitting on the top rail of a fence. Plowden has caught the Great Plains in all kinds of moods and conditions, and the images just take your breath away.

The book also has a considerable amount of text. Being a Sierra Club publication, there is a sense of both loss and anger at the failure of humans to be more respectful of the earth. A section called "The Short grass and the big sky" describes the terrain, climate, plant and animal life. A longer section follows called "The way it was when the way was west," providing a history of the area's immigrants, beginning with the Spanish. The final section, "The way it is," describes life on the Great Plains as Plowden found it in 1970-71, and the book introduces several people he talked to, including farmers and ranchers.

The photographs are mostly color; some are black and white. The title is from Willa Cather, who described the Great Plains as "the floor of the sky." I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in this part of the American West. Plowden has a wonderful eye and clearly a fascination for what he discovered here in his travels across the flat and rolling landscapes.

I love beautiful photography of machines and grew up watching the ore boats off of Cleveland. I couldn't resist buying it and I've enjoyed having it. This is a nice picture book and also has an interesting history of the development and demise of the uniquely configured Great Lakes ships. Jay Heise

For those intrigued with American marine technology this is "must buy". As a child growing up near Detroit in the 1940s these huge ships were only in my distant memories until I read Plowdens' narratives and saw the stunning photographs of the ships, the living spaces, the engines and firerooms, scenes underway, and the crew. An excellent work!

David Plowden has spent many hours sailing aboard older Great Lakes Steamships. His goal was to capture the essence and emotion of this unique type of steam vessel. The days of the the reciprocating steam engine aboard commercial frieght ships has come and gone just like the old venerable steam locomotives. The beautiful black and white photographs, coupled with an insightful narrative, gives the reader the most realistic vision of an era which will never again be experienced in human history. When David set out to do this project, he sensed the urgency of his mission. Today, most all of these vessels have been retired or scrapped and will never again feel the the seas, or the warmth and love of thier the crews. I have personally observed David as he stolled about our decks with great love and devotion for these ships. This book is a culmination of that love. This artists goal, to capture these vessels as they lived and breathed, has been majestically fulfilled. It is a must for anyone with interest into the daily workings of steamships, steam engines, and the people who lived among them. This book truly captures an "End of an Era".

Great real people and real life photos from the midwest and eastern U.S. An excellent theatrical research text for scenic and costume design. Archetecture, furniture, signage, decoration and clothing are all well represented.