Second Sunday Series

Slide Talk: “Wild Beauty: Pho­tographs of the Columbia Gorge, 1867–1957”
Presented by John Laursen

Join us for an informative and entertaining slide talk of photographs and stories from Wild Beauty: Pho­tographs of the Columbia Gorge, 1867–1957. Wild Beauty, a selection of the finest surviving historical photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, is a portrait of one of the West’s primal landscapes through nearly a century of profound change — beginning in 1867, when the Gorge still looked much as it did when Lewis and Clark made their way through in 1805, and ending in 1957, when the river was dra­matically transformed by the construction of the Dalles Dam and the drowning of the centuries-old Indian fishing grounds at Celilo Falls.

Wild Beauty won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in nonfiction, and was named the best Northwest book of the year by the Oregonian. John Laursen is editor of the Northwest Photography Series and the co-author of Wild Beauty, with the late Portland Art Museum curator Terry Toedtemeier. He is a writer, editor, and book designer who holds degrees from Reed College and UCLA, and was the 2011 recipient of the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award, presented by Literary Arts in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon’s literary community. The Second Sunday Series is a new public program featuring films, community conversations, and scholarly presentations that are free and open to the public.