Sir Henry Fox Talbot; early 1840’s

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Photography has had a preoccupation with nature almost from the very beginning. In fact, it was probably a preoccupation with nature that led to Photography in the first place. The Pencil of Nature was a photobook published in the mid-1840’s by Sir Henry Fox Talbot, who was the first to successfully develop a reproducible negative.

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Anna Atkins; from Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, 1843

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Even before The Pencil of Nature was finished, a pupil of Talbot’s, Anna Atkins, published a photobook cataloguing British Algae. This was only one year after the process used, the cyanotype, was invented. Often times in art, and especially in nature photography, women are overshadowed by their male counterparts. Atkins was not only one of the earliest working photographers, she was the very first person to produce a photobook, and proof that women have been making important contributions all along.

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Thomas Martin Easterly; Daguerrotype of a Streak of Lightning taken June 18th, 1847 at 9 o’clock, St. Louis, Mo., 1847.

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Thomas Martin Easterly; Destruction of Big Mound, 1869.

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Almost from the start, St. Louis was an important center for photography. The city’s first daguerreotype studio was opened in 1842, a mere three years after the process’ commercial introduction in Europe. In 1848, this studio was ceded to Thomas Martin Easterly, a New York City-trained daguerreotypist, who was to become one of the world’s most famous early photographers. Slightly before taking over that studio, he photographed the first image of lightning in St. Louis.

Later, he documented the removal of the largest Native American mound in the city, called Big Mound. Both examples are somewhat unusual in that daguerreotypes were more typically shot in studio.

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Wet plate collodion equipment and studio (above and below)

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Early photography equipment weighed hundreds of pounds, and images had to be prepared, photographed, and processed in quick succession.

AND exposure times were long.

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Note the head clamp on the sitter to keep him still while the photograph is made

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Roger Fenton; Moscow, Domes of Churches in the Kremlin, 1852.

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Though wealthy Europeans had been traveling on their “Grand Tours” for years, most people of modest means had very little mobility, so the notion of seeing distant countries was nearly impossible for the laboring majority. However, after the introduction and later refinement of the reproducible negative, far-off places suddenly found their way back to the metropolitan centers of Europe, and into the hands of the populace. Viewers of little means could now transport themselves through images.

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Roger Fenton, a former law student, began documenting the significant religious and cultural buildings in his native England in the early 1850’s. In 1852, he travelled through Russia, photographing sites like the Kremlin. For most British at the time, Fenton’s images were often their first glimpse at such exotic locales.

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Roger Fenton; The valley of the shadow of death. Dirt road in ravine scattered with cannonballs., 1855.

The photographer travelled to Crimea in 1855 to document the skirmish unfolding there. His pictures are regarded as the first war photographs in history.

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Matthew Brady; Soldier Guarding Arsenal, Washington D.C., 1862.

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Mathew Brady (Alexander Gardner?); Dead at Antietam, 1862.

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Carrying on the tradition established by Fenton, Matthew Brady (a noted celebrity and portrait photographer from New York) was the most famous photographer of those who documented the United States Civil War. Because of the size and weight of cameras at this time (and the requirements for picture developing), both Brady and Fenton tended to shy away from the frontlines, preferring to either photograph the soldiers before combat or in the aftermath.

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Because Brady employed many photographers under his studio, and the images they produced were owned and sold by Brady under his studio moniker, some images lack proper attribution.

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Alexander Gardner; Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, 1865.

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One very talented photographer that worked for Brady was Alexander Gardner who shot the image above (and possibly the one above that). The image tells of the death of a rebel sharpshooter, but in fact, the body of the victim was moved and positioned for the photograph, as was the weapon. These early photographs that attempted to convey “news” existed prior to the rules of photojournalism that we are used to. It was commonplace for photographers of the era to move around aspects of the scene to suit the composition or narrative.

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Gustave Le Gray; The Great Wave, 1857.

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In Europe, photographers continued to experiment with craft which led to important breakthroughs in representation. Until this point, it was extremely difficult for photographs to render both sky and ground in the same image. Gustave Le Gray learned that by combining negatives (one for sky and one for ground) he could get around this problem.

Le Gray’s innovations led, arguably, to one of the earliest forms of art in photography, the photomontage. [Let me know in the comments if you think combining separate component images into one whole constitutes a “violation” of photography. Is it honest? How could it be dishonest?]

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Timothy O’Sullivan; Shoshone Falls, Idaho, 1868.

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In the era of westward expansion for the United States, geological survey teams often included a photographer, like Timothy O’Sullivan. This was notable not just for the spectacular imagery generated, but for the hundreds of pounds of photo equipment, chemistry, and fragile glass plates that needed to accompany them. The images from these trips had an especially profound impact on painters who began producing works that emulated the sense of awe conveyed by these natural motifs. To them, human beings were insignificant compared to nature, and their compositions were arranged to suggest monumental scale. Many artists even began to charter their own routes through the wilderness.

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William Henry Jackson (American, 1843 – 1942)
Mountain of the Holy Cross, 1873, Albumen silver print
24.6 × 33.7 cm (9 11/16 × 13 1/4 in.), 84.XM.1015.26
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

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As the result of nature and landscape photography’s progression and widening applications, photography turned from an experimental science into the world’s most accepted form of documentation. Also, the outdoors was not just an inspiring place for photography; it served to promote technological developments and process adaptations.

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Carlton Watkins; Starting Out, Yosemite, 1858-61.

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One of the best credited but least known photographers that worked in the American West was Carlton Watkins. To many, he is considered the father of landscape photography, at least in terms of how we think of it today. The most popular souvenir of the era was the stereoscopic print (shown here), which goes to show that even in the wilderness, photographers kept a finger on the pulse of what was popular.

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Edward Curtis; An Oasis in the Badlands, 1905.

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Photographic documentation could have social implications too. In the early 20th century, much focus was placed on the perceived collapsing culture of Native Americans. Millionaire J.P. Morgan provided $75,000 to the photographer Edward Curtis to document the disappearing livelihood of indigenous peoples. This was to become the focus of a 20-year project for Curtis, which resulted in more than 40,000 images. Incidentally, he is also the most represented artist in the collection of our local Museum.

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Edward Curtis; Lucille, Dakota Sioux, 1907.

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That said, Curtis often blurred the lines of reality a bit. He carried costumes and other props with him while traveling for this project, and would “dress-up” some Native Americans to make them appear more “Indian”.

There are certainly unintended implications in that decision. On one hand, an authentic rendering was avoided in favor of a pastiche, which many Native Americans to this day say they still struggle against. On the other hand, some Native Americans look to these images as the only record of a livelihood that has been otherwise lost to time. [Let me know what you think in the comments.]

COMING SOON: HISTORY OF NATURE AND LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY, THE TRANSITION TO ART FORM