Artist Birthday: William H. Jackson

Jackson took photographs of Shoshone Falls numerous times from every conceivable angle. Like the other photographers who were early chroniclers of the Western territories, Jackson's photographs emphasize the sure size and breathtaking natural beauty of the frontier, rather than simply providing factual views of the West. Like the painters of the Rocky Mountain School, who carried on the romantic/realist aesthetic of the Hudson River School, Jackson's photographs reveal a Pictorialist ("art photography") inclination that imitates effects seen in paintings of landscapes. The long exposures required for albumen prints usually meant that any movement that occurred during the exposure resulted in blurred images. In the case of Shoshone Falls, the blurred out mist resulting from the falls heightens the romantic mood of the image and emphasizes the romantic ideal of how Nature overpowers the industry of humanity.

Artist Birthday for 4 April: William Henry Jackson (1843-1942 US)

William H. Jackson was the first photographer to capture the beauty of Yellowstone.

William Henry Jackson, #1111, Shoshone Falls, Idaho, ca. 1883, albumen print from a wet glass plate collodion negative on paper, 43.2 x 53.1 cm   Private Collection, Image © 2025 Davis Art Images   (8s-20709)

The documentation of nature in photography began quite soon after the invention of the art form in 1839. Landscape photography on a grand scale, however, was not perfected until the middle of the 1800s. This came about mainly due to two wars in which photography played the first major part in documentation -- the Crimean War (1853-1856) in Europe, and the American Civil War (1860-1865). The lessons in developing and transportation learned during the Civil War served photographers well when the West was explored in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Transportation was improved, and compositional techniques matured from the wartime experience.

Travel photography had become a new genre as early as the 1850s. Few but the wealthy could afford to travel to foreign places during the nineteenth century. The middle class was eager to have views of exotic lands to place in their homes. They relied on accurate depictions of far-away places in paintings and prints. Photographers throughout Europe in the 1850s and 1860s and in the United States in the late 1860s met the demand for travel photographs.

William Henry Jackson was the first photographer to explore the natural beauty of Yellowstone. Born in Keeseville, NY, he spent his childhood mastering painting and drawing, encouraged by his watercolorist mother. At age 13 he was introduced to photography in Troy, NY, and Rutland, VT. He worked as an assistant in a photographer's studio in Rutland, learning how to compose and retouch photographs and also the use of cameras and darkroom equipment.

In 1862 Jackson enlisted in a Vermont regiment for service in the Civil War (1861-1865). After the war he found work in another photography studio. In 1866 he decided to seek his fortune in the gold mines of Montana. Excited by the spectacular beauty of the West when he got there, he abandoned his dream of striking it rich, painting and sketching what he saw. He opened a photographic studio in Omaha, NE in 1869, and began photographing the neighboring Native Americans and building of the Union Pacific Railroad. He settled on documentation of the settling of the West as his life's work.

His early photographs from Omaha came to the attention of Ferdinand Hayden (1829-1887), a geologist who organized an expedition to explore the geological wonders of the Yellowstone River in Wyoming Territory. As a member of Hayden's expedition from 1871 to 1878, Jackson took thousands of photographs of the West. His photographs caused a great sensation in the East. Public interest that resulted led Congress to make Yellowstone a National Park in 1872.

Jackson continued working in the West, opening a studio in Denver, and one in Detroit. He returned to portrait photography as well as documenting railroad building and mining towns. In his 80s he returned to painting, working as a muralist for the newly created (1873) US Department of the Interior. He created panoramas of the West based on his photographs. These paintings came into demand as illustration for books, articles, and travel guides. Mount Jackson, in the Gallatin Range of Yellowstone, was named after the photographer.