The Photography of Ben Winans of Brookville, Indiana, 1902-1926

the long version

"From 1891 until ill health incapacitated him in 1947, Ben Winans operated a printing business in Brookville, the county seat of Franklin County. In addition to his work as a printer, however, Winans also produced approximately three thousand glass-plate negatives depicting life in this archetypal small Indiana community of two thousand people. With his studio camera, Winans captured such scenes as a parade honoring the Grand Army of tbe Republic; women advising their husbands on their views during election day; the remnants of the once vibrant Whitewater Canal; the devastation wrought by the 1913 flood; and views of the Hermitage, the house once owned by noted Indiana landscape painters T. C. Steele and J. Ottis Adams.". "The work of this most prolific photographer became forgotten after his death in 1949. Through the efforts of an Anderson newspaperman, Eugene Bock, however, Winans's original glass-plate negatives were saved from destruction. In the late 1980s, Bock gave the collection to Brookville resident Don Dunaway, who has painstakingly prepared the photographs to showcase not only Winans's work, but also to enhance the community's proper place in early Indiana history. The book includes approximately 130 of Winan's photos along with historical information and captions contributed by Dunaway."--BOOK JACKET.