Enduring Images of the American West

Several surveys and expeditions of the American West were sponsored by the US government in the latter half of the 19th century. Painters, naturalists, and photographers joined these expeditions to record and document their encounters in diaries, sketches, paintings, and photographs.

An enduring legacy from these expeditions are collections of stunningly beautiful sepia-toned photographs using state-of-the-art photographic equipment of the day.

Notable among the photographers who documented the American West were William Henry Jackson and Timothy O'Sullivan.

Crater of the Castle and the Crested Hot Spring (1875?-1885?)
by William Henry Jackson (1843 - 1942)

William Henry Jackson joined the 1870 and 1871 Ferdinand Hayden expeditions of the Yellowstone River and Rocky Mountains. Hayden and his men were dispatched to chart the west, identify navigational routes, and to observe plants, animals, and geological conditions. Jackson's photographs were instrumental in establishing Yellowstone National Park.

Jackson's photographic equipment included:

• a stereographic camera for making stereoscope cards;
• an 8 x10 inch large-format view camera; and
• an 18 x 22 inch large-format view camera.

Timothy O'Sullivan joined several extended expeditions as a photographer including the United States Geological Survey exploration of the 40th parallel (1867 to 1869), and the survey west of the 100th meridian for the War Department (1871 to 1874).

A view across the Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho (1874)
by Timothy O'Sullivan (1840 - 1882)

The view cameras of the era used glass photographic plates. The photographer had to coat, expose, and develop the image onsite before the collodion emulsion dried.

Depending on the light conditions, exposure times varied between 5 seconds and 20 minutes. The image the photographer had to compose was upside-down because the direct optics from the lens rendered it upside-down on the ground-glass screen of the view finder.

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.”
― Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water

REFERENCES

• Early Landscape Photography of the American West, New York Public Library Digital Collections.
• How the Wild West Really looked by Rob Cooper, Daily Mail.

Discovery and Natural Wonder

Wind Canyon  10 Aug 2012

Coming upon a natural wonder, it's human nature to consider the notion of discovery.

Who was the first to witness this?

We romanticize discovery. But what is the nature of true discovery?

We imagine ourselves the fortuitous first-discoverer, but perhaps we overlook an important aspect of discovery.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. ― Marcel Proust

We sow the seeds of discovery by adopting Beginner's Mind. Discovery begins when we see the world through fresh eyes.

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.
― Rachel Carson, excerpt from The Sense of Wonder

We cultivate the probability of discovery when we shed the baggage of expectations to meet the world with openness.

When I am a beginner, everything is discovery.

Tower Fall

Year after year, I discover and re-discover natural wonders. I fancy myself an explorer seeing things for the first time. I wonder about these natural wonders. I romanticize the history of these sacred places.

Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. ― Theodore Roosevelt

Tower Fall is one such natural wonder I have romanticized.

Six days into the Yellowstone Expedition of 1870, Lieutenant Gustavus Doane describes Tower Fall in his journal:

The great curiosity of the locality, however, is the Tower Fall of Hot Spring Creek, where that stream is precipitated, in one unbroken body, from an amygdaloid ledge, a sheer descent of 115 feet, into a deep gorge, joining the Yellowstone a few hundred yards below. ― Lt. Doane

Tower Fall. Sketched by Private Moore. The Yellowstone Expedition of 1870.

Lt. Doane's excellent journal writing often tempers his delight and exhilaration with the analytic detachment expected of his station, but of Tower Fall he waxes poetic:

Nothing can be more chastely beautiful than this lovely cascade, hidden away in the dim light of overshadowing rocks and woods, its very voice hushed to a low murmur, unheard at the distance of a few hundred yards. Thousands might pass by within a half mile and not dream of its existence; but once seen, it passes to the list of most pleasant memories. ― Lt. Doane