Photographs

One of the issues in publishing through a small publishing house, like McFarland & Co, is it is up to me to procure the illustrations and photographs to accompany the manuscript, and pay for them. It is wild how much the prices vary from archive to archive. By way of example, I was looking for a photograph of William Zeckendorf, a Tucson merchant who was instrumental in the capture and the justice meted out to the murderers of Vincente “Jose” Hernandez, a.k.a. Piedras Negras, and his wife, Librada Chaves in 1873. The Arizona Historical Society has a copy of the photograph of the man, which will cost $120 to purchase and publish. However, I picked the exact same photograph from the Jewish Museum of the American West, and they charged me nothing. All I am required to do is credit the museum. Another example, is a photograph of the Cochise County Courthouse prior to the addition made in the late 1800s. The Arizona Historical Society has one, and again, it costs $120 to reproduce the image in a book. The Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records, through the Arizona Memory Project, has a photo of the structure, dated to about 1888, which shows it as it looked during the trial of May Woodson in 1883. It costs $32.00 to reproduce. It also has wonderful provenance, as it was saved from the fire that burned Camilius Flys' photo studio during one of the conflagrations which destroyed Tombstone. Don't get me wrong, The Arizona Historical Society has a vast collection of wonderful photographs, and I understand they, like most archives are suffering under this Trump-induced idiocracy. There are so many wonderful photographs they have which need to be seen by the general public. If access is not given authors and others who will promote them. how will this organization disseminate them? How will the pubic know that have them? Point is, if one looks hard enough, one can often source photograph and illustrations from other sources and not have to pay the ludicrous prices some of these archives charge. But, I rant.