During the decade he spent in California’s Imperial County observing life on the Mexican border, William T. Vollmann learned to navigate by smell, following the Salton Sea’s acrid stench and Calipatria’s sweet-burning grass on his way to Mexicali. But if his nose served as his guide while he researched his 1,344-page portrait of the region (see review in Snap Judgments), his camera served as his memory. Imperial: Photographs by William T. Vollmann (PowerHouse books, $55)  reproduces 194 of his large-format and 35-millimeter black-and-white images, surveying some of the places he visited and the people he interviewed for his epic journalistic feat.

Though Vollmann is a National Book Award–winning author, he is by no means a professional photographer. His subjects—from border guards to prostitutes to illegal aliens—show patience verging on boredom as he struggles to coax a technically proficient picture out of three cameras, including his antiquated Kodak wooden field camera, under the harsh Impe­rial sun. Individually, Vollmann’s pictures tend to have the look of what was once called amateur photography. Yet the awkwardness of his compositions mirrors his status as an interloper, a well-meaning gringo whom field workers call a “big stupid idiot” when he’s beyond hearing range. Blunt but fitting: The images in Imperial are imbued with an old-fashioned sincerity that visually echoes Vollmann’s writing.