The Matanuska Colony Album

This book features the dynamic photography of the official ARRC photographer, Willis T. Geisman. From the officials and transients sailing to Alaska on the BIA ship North Star to the Colonists going about their daily chores in their tent homes, and later in their cabins, this book shares the linear history of the first six months of the Matanuska Colony, as seen through Geisman’s lens.

As the official photographer for the Matanuska Colony Project, Geisman documented every aspect of the venture from officials posing stiffly for portraits to his fellow journalists filming the Colony families, from truckloads of transient workers setting off for their day’s labor to a farmer and his son hauling water down a dusty dirt road. These photographs tell the true stories, moments in time captured and preserved, children laughing, women working, men building futures for their families.

Colony kids in a tent camp. Photograph by Willis T. Geisman for the A.R.R.C. [ASL-PCA-303, Mary Nan Gamble Collection, Alaska State Library] — Colony kids in a tent camp. [Photograph by Willis T. Geisman ASL-PCA-303, Mary Nan Gamble Collection, Alaska State Library]

Willis T. Geisman’s documentation of the 1935 Matanuska Colony project was a monumental achievement, and has become the most frequently referenced work on that part of Alaska’s history. Geisman’s compelling photographs have appeared in hundreds of books, magazines, news articles, on television, and in films, and now this book brings some of his most compelling images together.

Willis T. Geisman’s photographs played a major role in the award-winning 2008 documentary, Alaska Far Away, and they were lauded by Valley historian Jim Fox, author of The First Summer, a splendid collection of some of Geisman’s most memorable photos: “Geisman’s work is of tremendous importance in its documentation of the Colony’s history and its technical skill, artistic and documentary style.”

Mrs. Carl Erickson shown in her neat tent home at camp 8. [photograph by Willis T. Geisman, Mary Nan Gamble collection, Alaska State Library]

The complete A.R.R.C. photograph album by Willis T. Geisman can be viewed online at Alaska’s Digital Archives for the Alaska State Library.

The Matanuska Colony Album was combined with The 1935 Matanuska Colony Project in 2016 to comprise the 276-page single volume, “A Mighty Nice Place,” The History of the 1935 Matanuska Colony Project, by Helen Hegener. All three books remain available from Northern Light Media.