View Photographers vs. Topographic Photographers and Pictorial vs. Straight Photography

Valley of the Yosemite, 1864

Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863. (73.5 in × 120.75 in) Fogg Museum, Cambridge MA

Looking Up the Yosemite Valley, 1863-75

Autumn in North America, c. 1856

Niagara Falls, 1857

Cross in the Wilderness, 1857

Lithography (above) based upon daguerreotypes (at right) made by

William and Frederick Langenheim, 1845

Self portrait, Under the Upper Yosemite Fall, 1861

Watkins, The Half-Dome from Glacier Point, Yosemite No. 101, c. 1866

Yosemite Valley, c. 1865

Yosemite Falls (River View), 1861

2009 reprint of 1868 edition

Muybridge's first photographic project took place in Yosemite, California in spring 1867. A pioneer in capturing this astounding landscape, Muybridge trekked the uneven terrain of Yosemite Valley with assistants and a pack train, often camping overnight. 
Finding the right light and view was the challenging beginning to an equally demanding process of outdoor collodion wet-plate photography. This was the most progressive technique available, invented in 1851. Before taking shots, Muybridge's dark-tent needed to be pitched and his camera equipment and chemicals unpacked and prepared. Then wet plates were sensitised in the tent whilst exposures were made outside; to be developed immediately afterwards. 
After six months, Muybridge's first trip to Yosemite was complete. The resulting photographs were published in local newspapers and used to illustrate a guidebook entitled 'Yosemite: its Wonders and its Beauties'. Then, around May 1868, they were collated into a series of 260 images for purchase. Amid enthusiasm from professionals, public and the press, Muybridge's Yosemite photographs had launched his career, naming him an innovative and technically excellent photographer. 
Muybridge went on to make landscape photography within California a fundament of his early career. After Yosemite, Muybridge photographed the scenery of Geyser Springs, Alameda County and Menlo Park, as well as the rugged Farralon Islands. He then completed a second six month Yosemite project in 1872 - the resulting series of both large and small plates winning him the 'International Gold Medal for Landscape' at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, and with it, fame overseas (Haas, p45). 
Landscape painting and photography was popular in California at this time, reflecting a wider trend throughout the Western World. Entrepreneurial Muybridge was quick to capitalise on the market.

Domes from Merced River, Yosemite Valley, c1874

Yosemite Valley, c1870

Vernal Fall, 350 Ft., Yosemite Valley, c. 1874, albumen print, George Eastman House

The Turn-of-the-Century Pictorialists

"The Black Bowl", by George Seeley. Published in Camera Work, No 20 (1907)

American Landscape, c. 1900

October Morning, c. 1900

Voulangis, 1900–1902

Pond in Moonlight, 1904

Note: the color was created by manually applying light- sensitive gums. Only three prints of this photograph are in existence and, as a result of the hand-layering of the gums, each is unique. Source: Wikipedia

The Emergence of Straight Photography

Paul Strand, Mr. Bennett, Vermont, 1944 (example of straight photography

Eduard J. Steichen Clarence H. White, A study for Beneath the Wrinkle, 1903

(pictorialist photograph)

The Hand of Man, 1902

Stieglitz was one of the first U.S. aesthetic photographers to evolve from pictorialism to straight photography.

Looking Northwest from the Shelton, 1932

Near Rinconada, New Mexico, 1932

Landscape, New Mexico, c. 1930

Near Rinconada, New Mexico, 1932

The Tetons and the Snake River, 1942

"Canyon de Chelly," vertical panorama from river valley, 1941

Evening, McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1942

Surf Sequence III, California, 1940

Note the increasing emphasis upon abstraction in Adams’ work.

Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California, 1944

Nineteenth-Century Government Survey Photography

A member of Clarence King's Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel is surveying from a rock. Shoshone Canyon and Falls, Idaho Terr., in background. 1868

A view across the Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho in 1874

Twin buttes near Green River City, Wyoming, 1872

Cañon de Chelle. Walls of the Grand Cañon about 1200 Feet in Height, 1873

Photo of some members of the Hayden party, taken by William Henry Jackson, 1873

Members of the Survey Party in Camp, 1870

Wagon and Dark Tent, 1870

Photographing High Places

Sanford Gifford, October Afternoon, 1871

William Henry Jackson, Gilbert’s Peak, 1870

Notice the similarity in composition between Jackson’s photo on the left and Gifford’s painting below.

The composition of Jackson’s photo of the Great Falls of the Yellowstone (1873) owes a debt to the famous Thomas Cole painting of the Falls of the Kaaterskill from 1926 (below). For a larger image of this painting, click here.

William Henry Jackson, Mud Geyser in Action, 1871

Because the glass plate photographic method was unable to capture motion, the smoke in this photo was added to the negative after the image was exposed.

New Topographics

Rather than celebrating the landscape, as did earlier topographic photographers, the “new topographics” focused on the “man-altered environment.

As Miles Orvell writes, “It was the premise of these photographers that Americans have not been kind to their natural spaces. . .” (American Photography, 56)

Lewis Baltz, Prospector Village, Lot 85, Looking West, Park City, Utah, 1980

Lewis Baltz, From Park City

Robert Adams, Frame for a Tract House, Colorado Springs

The Selling of the West

I have tried to record what I see, but in order to accomplish this, I have had to shed the mantle of the tradition of landscape photography from which I come. These images come complete with trash, weeds, bushes, fences, roads and power lines, which make up the real world we live in. Read Woodman’s full description of his Selling of the West series on his website.

Yellow Peril, 2007—to zoom in on this image, click here.

Developing the Future

PARKING GARAGE Inkjet print from scanned 4 x 5 negative. Printed on Epson Exhibition Fiber paper.

i find the desert and the night go well together in my art. At night, the vast distances of the stars become obvious, a desert in itself, and the far horizon melds the two deserts into one. In this twin desert of sky and land, I explore outposts of human habitability. Mystery and loneliness are the themes that unite all of my night work, and they are palpable in the infinity that darkness suggests. For more information, visit David Hines’ website.

AVENUE I, 190TH ST. EAST, ANTELOPE VALLEY, CA Inkjet print from drum scanned 4 x 5 negative. Printed on Epson Exhibition Fiber paper.

CORNER HOUSE IN BORON, CA Inkjet print from drum scanned 4 x 5 negative. Printed on Exhibition Fiber paper.

HI VISTA Oil on linen. 24" x 40".

HI VISTA Oil painting on linen. 24" x 40".

and U.S. painting and photographs

Manifest Destiny is a term for the attitude prevalent during the 19th century period of American expansion that the United States not only could, but was destined to, stretch from coast to coast. This attitude helped fuel western settlement, Native American removal and war with Mexico. Source: history.com For more information, see ushistory.org

Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1862

Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1862

Often used to illustrate the concept of Manifest Destiny, this 20 x 30 foot mural in the U.S. Capitol Building depicts intrepid pioneers steadily moving west—in the direction of the setting sun.

Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1862

The journey may have required hardship and sacrifice, symbolized by the grave marker at the foot of the rocky hill, but the wagons keep coming.

Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1862

The Native Americans in this picture are relegated to the elaborately painted frame—clearly, they are no longer “in the picture.”

Alexander Gardner, Across the Continent on the Union Pacific Railway, 1867

Alexander Gardner, Across the Continent on the Union Pacific Railway, 1867

The meaning of this photograph is clearer in its subtitle than in the picture itself, as Alexander Gardner subtitled it “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” copying the title of the Leutze painting. We see a fairly dull scene of railroad building, which however symbolizes the conquest of the continent through the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

A.J. Russell, East Meets West at the Laying of the Last Rail, 1869

A.J. Russell, East Meets West

at the Laying of the Last Rail,

1869

Andrew A. Russell was the official photographer for the Union Pacific. In his view, which was reproduced in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, the two trains meet head to head on the track. In front of them, the chief engineers, mounted on the fronts of their locomotives, strain to shake hands before the assembled workmen and dignitaries, with bottles of champagne in their outstretched arms. Image does NOT show the Chinese laborers of the Central Pacific at the edge of the crowd, composing 90% of the company’s construction force, who had blasted and tunneled their way through the granite peaks of the Sierra Nevada.

Frances Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” 1868

This is a hand-colored lithograph published by Currier & Ives, based on a drawing by the English artist Frances Palmer, who had never seen the West herself.

Frances Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,“ 1868

Here’s a close-up of the left side of the print. The signs of “civilization” include the school in the foreground and the beginnings of a town being built in this vicinity. The community is serving as a jumping-off point for pioneers heading further West by wagon—and also passengers traveling West by railroad.

Re-manifesting destiny

Now that you have some background on Manifest Destiny, you will better be able to understand what Erika Osborne is suggesting in the following paintings in her “Remanifesting Destiny” series.

As one of a growing body of artists in the current field of environmental art, I have devoted myself to the investigation of contemporary notions of land. Most recently I have been creating paintings based on the iconic visual language of the American Sublime landscape painters who traveled to the western United States and abroad.

The imagery that I create addresses the role these artists played in the expansionism of Manifest Destiny by using their sublime visual structure to paint the artifacts of what their work helped bring about: the boom of industry, development and growth, and all its subsequent issues that we continue to see today.

Erika Osborne

 Look at Osborne’s paintings in this portfolio. (www.erikaosborne.com/work/md/index.html)

 What, in general, is she saying about the U.S. West? How and why has the landscape changed since 19th-century topographic photographers like Jackson and O’Sullivan took their pictures of the West?

 Select one painting from Osborne’s series to present to the rest of the class.

WE RAN OUT OF TIME FOR THIS EXERCISE IN CLASS. YOU AREN’T REQUIRED TO DO THIS ON YOUR OWN—JUST SKIP THIS SLIDE!

Military Encampment, 2010

Chasm of the Colorado, painted following the artist's 1873 trip with John Wesley Powell to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River.

Looking for Moran

Looking for Moran (detail)

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845) Shooting for the Beef, 1850

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845) Shooting for the Beef, 1850

George Caleb Bingham depicted Missouri scenes in the 1840s and 1850s. Missouri was then on the U.S. frontier. Bingham’s paintings portrayed the early fur traders who operated in what had previously been exclusively Native American territory. Other paintings showed white settlers who were settling the new communities in the area.

View of Pikes Peak, 1872

Perhaps it is this later Bingham painting, of an as of yet untouched wilderness further west than Missouri that inspired Osborne’s next painting:

Chasm of Bingham

Chasm of Bingham, detail

This is a view of a strip mining operation.

 David Hines: Photographs

 Donald Woodman: The Selling of the West

 Eedweard Muybridge: Defining Modernities

 Erika Osborne: Remanifesting Destiny

 How The West Was Framed: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

 O’Sullivan photos from the Wheeler Survey, 1871-74

 How the Wild West REALLY Looked (Daily Mail)

 The Photographs of Carleton Watkins

 William Henry Jackson: Foremost Photographer of the American West