Otto Ping began taking pictures of the people and places of his native Brown County, Indiana, in 1900 at the age of seventeen in order to make some extra money. He continued doing so for forty years while he worked at such other endeavors as peddling, farming, canning, and chicken raising. Unlike the painters and photographers who came to the county in these years to capture quaint and rustic scenes for sophisticated audiences elsewhere, Ping made...

"When the Bass Photo Company began its operation, Indiana had been a state for less than a hundred years, photography was less than seventy-five years old, and Indianapolis's centennial was more than a decade away. The capital city was growing rapidly, and new businesses and institutions were forming to meet the needs of the population as it moved into the twentieth century. The Bass Photo Company photographed the local automobile industry, the rise...

The postcards in this book document the life and times of the country's sixteenth president and represent notable images from two nationally significant Lincoln collectors.