Group portrait of workshop participants, held at the Colorado Historical Society, Denver.

The turn of the century brings an abundance of "look-back" endeavors. One of the more unusual is Robert Shlaer's re-photographing of the first photographically documented expedition in the West, John Charles Fremont's 1853 journey from Kansas City to Utah.

A search for a central route for a transcontinental railroad, the Fremont expedition was recorded with a daguerreotype camera, using polished copper plates, gaseous chemicals and long exposure times, and that's what the photographer used 147 years later. Shlaer also did painstaking research in libraries, museums and archives to find the exact spot from which the original daguerreotypes were taken for his replication.