Listen to a Photographer Born in 1843 Talk About Documenting the Wild West

[Tin Can]

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[jmdavis]

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[Tin Can]

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[Tin Can]

https://petapixel.com/2022/03/02/lis...the-wild-west/

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[FrancisF]

Thanks for sharing this. It is really remarkable to have an interview with such a great photographer from so far back. His work is so imporant and so influential today. At about the 20 minute mark this is an exchange with the interviewer:

"Since your eye has been for natural beauty primarily and you the opportunity to see a great deal of our country and then the opportunity to see the beauty of nature spots of other countries, what is your opinion is the comparison? Is America a beautiful country?"

Jackson replies, "Well the aesthetic part of America is pretty well done. Photographers today are more intent upon Hollywood and (inaudible) than the scenery of the country."

In so many places, he was the one who got there first with a camera and we all benefit from his eye today. But I like to think that the work is not all done yet - there are still scenes to capture.

I was at A Gallery for Fine Photography in New Orleans a few years ago, and on the second floor gallery, proped up agaist the wall there was a magnificent panoramic by Jackson that I had never seen. Spectacular and as inspiring as the day he shot it.

[John Kasaian]

Thanks!

[Andrew O'Neill]

That was really cool! Thanks for that, Tin Can!

[Jim Jones]

William Henry Jackson may be somewhat forgotten now, with our digital recording and manipulation of photographs and, for me, over 10,000 Kodachrome slides stored away. However, his contribution to images of the old west in full color are nearly unique. In the first decade of the 1900s, Autochrome was the first somewhat practical color photographic technique. Before then, hand tinting of photographs usually lacked realism. However, Jackson was already helping to convert thousands of his B&W photographs to color through the new Photochrom technique. One B&W image was applied to several or many lithographic stones. These were retouched by hand to print one color for each stone. Prints from this laborious technique had a unique beauty: not photographically perfect color, but with a hint of the touch of the Photochrom technicians. For a few decades, the Detroit Publishing Company mass produced the finest color prints. Then newer and far easier half-tone color reproduction overwhelmed the company. For more on this stage in the life of William Hanry Jackson and early color photography see The Birth of a Century by Jim Hughes (1994).