Territorial photography.
Summary of Joel Snyder’s essay Territorial Photography.
Early photographers were seen by established art critics as mere mechanics who were not capable of interpreting or enhancing a scene but could only reproduce it as it was. This exclusion from the art scene, and having no way of reproducing their work in sufficient quantities to reach a wider audience, made them band together and exhibit to each other.
Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, an art critic, said that such inhuman mechanical reproduction could not pass as art. There was a distinct social divide that grew up between the upper class guardians of what was then understood as art and newly emerging commercial photographers.
This new wave of early photographers were less interested in the established rules of composition and more interested in obtaining the perfect print with fine detail with a broad range of tone and a good finish.
Art was seen as coming from the imagination, while the photograph was seen as fact. Charles Baudelaire accused photography of poisoning the mind and corrupting art. Oliver Wendell Holmes took a different view that paintings were but fanciful and photographs were truth.
Photography had by the 1860s been popularised and used to record nature. These new photographers drifted further from the conventions of landscape painting and concentrated on accuracy and fineness of detail. Photographers wanted to record the scene as seen and not as interpreted. However, by removing the “art” from their landscapes they were producing images without a hint of the sublime or feeling of awe and wonder.
The problem was recognised by a San Francisco photographer, Watkins, who, during the 1860s, combined the conventions of the old and new traditions. With his 24” x 24” negatives, the employment of painter’s traditional techniques and choice of subject, Yosemite Park, Utah, Nevada and the West Coast he set the standard for the next 40 years.
Despite the work done by Watkins the critic Holmes still described the photograph as images that anyone standing at that same spot could see. There was no artistic intervention or interpretation.
This, so called, limitation of the photograph, the accurate recording of a scene, was used to record the new frontier as North America was opened up. As well as taking his own pictures Watkins worked for various pioneering companies such as The Californian Geological Society, The Transcontinental Railway, and mining and lumber interests.
The subject matter was often the brutal exploitation of pristine land, but by careful framing, toning, printing and presentation he would produce sublime images that lessened the impact of industry but still include it.
The world of painting started to take a lead from Watkins’ view of the West and painters such as Albert Bierstadt, William Keith and Thomas Moran were influenced by him. The criticism that photographers were mere mechanics was turned on its head as they were now praised for the manner in which they employed established landscape techniques to recorded their images.
Watkins seems to have avoided the politics of the time by ignoring the fate of the original inhabitants of this “empty” land but still including the changes that were taking place.
The first surveys of the USA were carried out by The Army but this changed in 1867 when a twenty one year old geologist named Clarence King was entrusted with carrying out two surveys, one of the 40th. Parallel and another of the 100th. Meridian. The photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan joined the party. O’Sullivan’s images were far more factual and scientific that those of Watkins. His aim was to record and not interpret what the Survey discovered, however bleak and unforgiving that may appear.
Ever since these images were taken arguments as whether they are are art or only scientific records have risen. According to his employers he was engaged to provide “generally descriptive” photographs of the places visited and to “give a sense of the area.” They were never meant to back up any scientific claims made by the survey. They largely dropped out of sight until when, in 1939, Ansel Adams found them and sent them to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. They were seen as prototypical modernist photographic landscapes and as such, have entered into the modernist history of photography.
O’Sullivan’s images show a landscape bereft of man’s influence; empty, sublime and without the enticement of the promised land that was implicit in Watkins’. Where O’Sullivan has included the human figure it is not as part of the natural landscape but as a means of demonstrating the scale of something within it.
Watkins showed the promise of riches to come in a land full of opportunity. O’Sullivan depicted a land as God had left it and where man is not welcome.
Two Photographs.
The first photograph is by Andrew Joseph Russell. It was taken in 1868 and is titled, "Temporary and permanent bridges and Citadel Rock, Green River." It was one of a series that Russell took while employed by the Union Pacific Railroad to record their progress as they worked west from the Omaha Nebraska to Promontory Summit where they joined up with the Central Pacific Railroad who had been building out east from Sacramento. It' very title hints at a prosaic use and non artistic audience.
Russell was employed to record the progress made by the railroad and to demonstrate to their current, and any future backers, that there were business opportunities a plenty in this newly opened land. The most famous of Russell's images is the one of the the meeting of the tracks at Promontory Summit.
The scene depicts the crossing of a wide valley and shows the difficulties encountered by the engineers as they worked through this terrain. The plain they are crossing leads up to the hills and bluffs in the background where no doubt the track would be blasted through the rock. The temporary light track is still in place indicating that this is very much a work in progress. There are hints as to the work that was involved in getting even this track laid with the clear signs of blasting and buttressing.
The Image manages to portray both the sublime nature of the terrain and the impact that modern man was having on it. Prior to the arrival of white settlers the land had been occupied by Native Americans who's impact on it was slight. Their philosophy was to graze off the land and its animals rather that tame the land and farm it. The white newcomers viewed the land in a very different way and set out to exploit its riches to the full.
This image demonstrates that impact very well with the virgin country to the left and the impact of the newcomers to the right. The two tracks act like an arrow driving into the distance and future.
The second is Coast View Number One. It was taken by Carlton Watkins in 1863 for the California State Geological Society.
Here we have a view of the Pacific Ocean and a bay that has no evidence of man's influence. It is a pristine landscape on which those who follow can put their mark.
As an image it follows some basic rules with an horizon at close to the 1/3 mark, a balance of land masses each side of the central rock and clearly defined fore, middle and back grounds.
The evidence of a long exposure is to be seen in the milky appearance of the water where movement of the waves has become blurred. This gives the image a dreamy quality and raises it above the level of pure topography towards that of art. Here is an image that cold be used both in a geological text book and sold as pleasing landscape.
With its strong central rock feature and mid ground promontories this my have been taken with the intention of use as a stereograph. The strong contrasts and sharp focus would have leant themselves to the 3D effect. Watkins produced a series of stereographs featuring the California coast and this with its rounded top corners and general look appears to be one. I have tracked down a number of these stereographs but not this one.
These pictures share a common purpose: to show the folks back East what a land of opportunity awaits them should they wish to move West.
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