Taking Sides With the Sun: Landscape Photographer Herbert W. Gleason

By Dale Schwie. Nodin Press, July 2017. Available on Amazon. The author tells the story of Williams alumnus Herbert W. Gleason (Class of 1877) who abandoned a career as a Congregational minister in midlife and went on to become one of the most distinguished landscape photographers of his age. He took many photographs of Yosemite, Zion, and other parks for the National Park Service, roaming the Sierras with John Muir and Stephen Mather. But at the core of Gleason’s achievement lies a series of photographs he took over a period of nearly forty years that document the places Henry David Thoreau visited and referred to in his voluminous writings. The book is thick with Gleason’s photos and also contains an extensive bibliography.