Grouse Ridge Near Blue Lake / South Yuba
Land and landscapes shared by settlers and indigenes are divergently imagined. Whereas settlers see an empty wilderness, Aboriginal people see a busy spiritual landscape, peopled by ancestors and the evidence of their creative feats (Marcia Langton).
We will not - we cannot - see the same landscape… any landscape is composed not only of what lies before our eyes but what lies in our heads (D. W. Meinig).
Americans and Europeans stamp themselves upon the landscape; it becomes their territory, the product of their work and their journeying. What better way to bag a landscape than to photograph it – especially now that you can use your phone – which you’re never without.
Photography’s humble origins began in France in the 1830s. Early cameras were expensive and knowledge of particular techniques and chemistry was beyond the ken of the average person. By the time of the California gold rush the Daguerreotype process had been developed making it possible to buy prints of western landscapes and, of course, portraits to be sent back home. Photographers sometimes even built wagons that doubled as darkrooms so that they could work in remote regions.
Lawrence & Houseworth of San Francisco were a stock agency selling “Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity” to a predominantly East Coast audience who were curious about the West. They were in business from 1852 to 1892. In the 1860s they were working in the Yuba watershed photographing hydraulic mines, dams, water conveyance systems, towns, agriculture, etc. Their albums featured many scenes of people working in the very landscape that they were transforming. Many of these landscapes, such as hydraulic mining pits, ditches, orchards, railroad grades and tunnels, to name but a few, are still highly visible. These landforms are also artifacts that represent human activity, or more precisely they are cultural landscapes.
Lawrence & Houseworth Photograph, circa 1866
Alfred A. Hart was the official photographer for the Central Pacific Railroad from 1862 to 1869, when it was completed. On the South Yuba he photographed, among other places, Cisco, Summit Valley, Meadow Lake and Fordyce Creek (then known as the North Branch of the South Fork). In addition to landscapes he photographed the construction activities and the, mostly Chinese, workers. He also included several petroglyph sites near the South Yuba. His is flat-out documentary photography.
English Dam / Middle Yuba
Stereo Photographs by Carlton Watkins, circa 1871
On the other hand, Carlton Watkins, in the 1860s, made a hundred stereo views and thirty operatic photos on 22 by 18 inch plates of the Yosemite Valley. There are no people to be found in these landscapes, despite the fact that the indigenous Miwok people used the area for hundreds of years. His goal was to go with the grandeur and create an Eden-like wilderness. In 1871 the North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company hired Watkins to document their holdings and activities on the South Yuba and its tributaries. He was back in 1879 when he made photographs from Mt. Lola, the highest peak in the Yuba watershed at 9,142’.
Camptonville 1875 / Middle Yuba
(photographer unknown)
National Geographic magazine debuted in 1890 and devoted their pages to the photographic study of the world. They published their first color photograph in 1919. In 1924 the 35mm Leica was introduced. This was a sturdy miniature camera with quality optics that advanced the scope and quality of documentary photography.
Highway 49 Bridge Over the South Yuba
During the Depression President Roosevelt launched his New Deal Program and part of that package included the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Photographers were hired to photograph what was happening in America. Among them were Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, John Collier, Jr. and Gordon Parks. There was no TV and, at the time, nothing told the story better than photographs. Landscapes were photographed with traces of contemporary life including buildings, cars and even advertising. The dominant themes of the FSA were about social justice. I consider myself fortunate to have had John Collier as a teacher while attending San Francisco State University.
Realism was both the gift and curse of photography – a millstone of veracity. The camera was so good at rendering the “real world” it was difficult to transcend it. The style known as "Pictorialism" had been lingering around in camera clubs and in photography magazines since the end of the 19th century but it had become mired in sentimentality becoming the Hallmark Card of its time. After World War II there were photographers who saw themselves as artists among them were Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Imogene Cunningham.
Ansel Adams at Work
(Photographer unknown)
Ansel Adams has the greatest legacy of the group. He elevated the techniques of exposure, film developing and printing to extremely high levels. His work is often compared to the finest quality classical music. From the start of his career in the 1930s until his death in 1984, Adams made thousands of photographs of western landscapes. I'm sure that you have seen an Ansel Adams print, somewhere – these are the iconic black and white photographs of the Sierra Nevada, especially the Yosemite area. Adams became a photographic master, with many devotees, in a genre that he created. His serious landscapes (and they are very serious) do not show people or their activities. To me they are a little churchy – a place to visit, not to live in. While most of Adams’ prints are stunningly beautiful they reinforce the notion that wilderness (a very recent concept itself) and urbanized worlds are separate. They re-enforce the idea that nature is a wilderness to visit and not an environment to inhabit, despite archaeological evidence that proves that was not always the case.
In the 1970s photographers like Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz, under the banner of "New Topographics", depicted the encroachment of man-made civilization into the landscape of the American west. Adams assembled a group of photographers who were “born and raised in suburban sprawl. To this crop of young photographers, wilderness is a foreign concept. Our environment has been significantly altered. We live with nature at arm’s length.”
Grass Valley / Bear River
The exhibition's subtitle was "Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape", which gave some clue as to the deeper unifying theme. Photographers such as Frank Gohlke, Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz,and Nicholas Nixon shared an interest in the created landscapes of 70s urban America. Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanized world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealized landscape photography that elevated the natural world and elemental subjects. In a way, they were reacting to the tradition of nature photography that the likes of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston had created.
The first digital camera was introduced by Canon in 1984. Photography is less precious now – everyone’s a photographer. I recently attended a birthday party where friends from all over the country showed up for the event. When they entered the room almost every one of them whipped out their phones and made photographs, which were instantly transmitted elsewhere.
A Sacred Landscape /Lower Yuba
In the foreground are tailings that have been mined for gold at least twice. Is gold sacred?
In the background is Histum Yani (aka: Sutter Buttes) sacred to the indigenous Nisenan, Konkow and Wintun.
Meanwhile landscapes are being replaced with billboards and uninspired concrete boxes adorned with all too familiar logos and commercial messages. Bird watching is considered an esoteric practice to most, yet spending citizens, especially children, can easily identify 50 or more corporate brands at a glance. We’re briskly creating a mercantile habitat. Amazingly, most people are at home in it – an environment teeming with efficient predators and docile prey. Commercialism is already creeping into public lands – will we eventually have sponsored landscapes? Will the challenge for emerging photographers be finding landscapes without advertising? I have no doubt that we'll transcend this shabby aesthetic.
