Join First Light Books to celebrate photographer Henry Horenstein's newest monograph, MILES AND MILES OF TEXAS, and the 20th anniversary reissue of his iconic HONKY TONK: PORTRAITS OF COUNTRY MUSIC.

Henry will be joined in conversation by musician Elana James, who will give a short performance. We will also be screening Horenstein's 2014 short film Spoke about Austin's own Broken Spoke dance hall.

Tickets include a copy of one or both books and a reserved seat. Unreserved seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged.

About the artists

Henry Horenstein studied history at the University of Chicago and earned his BFA and MFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied with legends Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind.

Henry's work is collected and exhibited internationally, and he has published more than 40 books, including several monographs of his own work such as Honky Tonk, Histories, Show, Animalia, Humans, Racing Days, Close Relations, and many others. He has also authored Black & White Photography, Digital Photography, and Beyond Basic Photography, used by hundreds of thousands of college, university, high school, and art school students as their introduction to photography. His Shoot What You Love serves both as a memoir and a personal history of photography over the past 50 years. His recent monographs Speedway1972 and We Sort of People were published in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

In recent years, Henry has been making films: Preacher, Murray, Spoke, Partners, and Blitto Underground. He is currently in production on Marksville, LA, a film about Cajun Louisiana.

Henry is professor of photography at RISD and lives in Boston.

He will be joined in conversation by his friend Elana James, American songwriter; Western swing, folk, and jazz violinist; vocalist; and a founding member of the band Hot Club of Cowtown. Elana grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas and began playing Suzuki violin at age four. It took her almost 20 years to decide between the violin and the fiddle, but after much soul searching, Elana found her calling in American roots music (and occasional horse wrangling) and has never looked back.

She is a founding member, along with Whit Smith, of the hot jazz and Western swing trio Hot Club of Cowtown, formed after Whit and Elana met through an ad Elana placed in the music section of the Village Voice in 1994 while she was working as an editorial intern at Harper’s Magazine. Playing with Whit at night and on weekends, by the fall of that year she had became the managing editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and had every intention of living a normal life before music eventually edged out everything else. After a stint in San Diego, Elana and Whit moved to Austin in 1998, joined up with bassist Jake Erwin in 2000, and all three have been touring and recording as the Hot Club of Cowtown ever since.

About the books

Miles and Miles of Texas features a collection of nearly 100 photographs that Henry has taken all over the state, mostly between 2021 to 2024. Texas has been a continual source of inspiration for Henry, and these pictures reflect the people, places, music, and culture that make Texas so unique.

Honky Tonk 1969–2010 documents the changing world of both country music and American culture through images of its stars, its fans, and the places where they meet. Foreword by Eddie Stubbs of the Grand Ole Opry.