950
Himalayas between 1863 and 1866. Bourne published
accounts of his adventures in the British Journal of
Photography. Like Carvalho before him in the Rocky
Mountains, but at much higher altitudes, Bourne de-
scribed the effects of the cold and the weather on his
efforts to photograph at over 15,000 feet elevation in
the Taree Pass:
... while at this elevation I was anxious, if possible, to try
a picture; but to attempt it required all the courage and
resolution I was possessed of. In the fi rst place, having no
water I had to make a fi re on the glacier and melt some
snow. In the next place, the hands of my assistants were
so benumbed with cold that they could render me no
service in erecting the tent, and my own were nearly as
bad. These obstacles having at length been overcome, on
going to fi x the camera I was greatly disappointed after
much trouble to fi nd that the sky had become obscured,
and that a snow storm was fast approaching. Shivering
through my whole frame and almost frozen to the ice,
I stood waiting to see if it would blow over. It did so in
about fi fteen minutes, but not in the direction I wanted to
take a view; but as there was no probability that waiting
longer would better my condition, I placed the camera
and proceeded to coat a plate. I thought the collodion
would never set. I kept the plate at least fi ve minutes
before immersing in the bath, and even that was hardly
long enough. Exposed fi fteen seconds (size 12 × 10), and
found it was somewhat overdone; but my hands were so
devoid of feeling that I could not attempt another. I man-
aged to get through all the operations, and the fi nished
negative—though rather weak, and not so good a picture
as it would have been if the snow storm had not prevented
my taking the view as intended—is still presentable, and
I keep it as a memento of the circumstances under which
it was taken, and as being, so far as I am aware, a pho-
tograph taken at the greatest altitude ever yet attempted.
(Bourne, “Ten Weeks with the Camera in the Himalaya,”
British Journal of Photography, February 15, 1864, quoted
in Ollman, 1983, 10)According to Scharf (1976, 91), the highest altitude
at which Bourne photographed was 18,600 feet at
Manirung Pass. Fabian and Adam (1981, 180) report
that until 1880 this was the highest point at which a
photograph was taken. The 1880 high-altitude photog-
raphy was accomplished with the dry-plate process by
British climber Edward Whymper during one of his
ascents of the inactive volcano Chimborazo (20,703
feet) in Ecuador. Similar problems as faced Bourne in
the Himalayas also challenged the Scottish Astronomer
Royal and scientifi c photographer Charles Piazzi Smyth
during 1856 expedition to Tenerife, Canary Islands,
where he set up a telescope on the volanic peak of Mount
Guajara at the 10,700 feet elevation and photographed
his activities with a wet-collodion stereo camera. He
wrote in his book, Teneriffe, an Astronomer’s Experi-
ment (1858), which included 20 mounted stereographs,
“In taking pictures of the several volcanic phenomena,
our camera and photographic tent had been blow over
more than once. ... [but] other unlooked-for accidents
would often occur, amongst the most frequent of which,
was the opening of cracks in camera-box, or plate-
boards, in consequence of the desert-like dryness of the
air” (Smyth, Teneriffe, 152, in Schaaf, “Piazzi Smyth
at Teneriffe: Part 1, 296–97) Other vexatious problems
that hindered Smyth’s photography included heat from
the sun and sulphur fumes.
The last great mountain photographs of the 19th
century were taken during the Klondike Gold Rush by
dedicated photographers such as E.A. Hegg, Frank La
Roche, and Asahel Curtis (Edward S. Curtis’ younger
brother). They endured the same hardships as the gold
seekers with whom they travelled. Hegg’s classic
“Packers Ascending Summit of Chilkoot Pass” (1898)
captures the chill air as an endless line of mostly men
makes their way to top of the 3,739 feet high pass divid-
ing Alaska from British Columbia. Another nearby trail
through the White Pass (2,885 feet) formed the route
for a railway built between 1898 and 1900 and still op-
erating as a tourist attraction. Harry C. Barley was the
offi cial photographer for the railway. Edward S. Curtis
was himself also recognized for his 1890s mountaineer-
ing photographs in Washington State, which led to his
appointment as the offi cial photographers for the 1899
Harriman Alaska Expedition.
David Mattison
See also: Alinari, Fratelli; Braun, Adolphe; Bridges,
George Wilson; Valentine, James and Sons;
Daguerreotype; Brady, Matthew B.; Wet Collodion
Negative; Watkins, Carleton Eugene; O’Sullivan,
Timothy Henry; Jackson, William Henry; Russell,
Andrew Joseph; Muybridge, Eadweard James;
Haynes, Frank Jay; Royal Engineers; Notman,
William & Sons; Maynard, Richard and Hannah;
Henderson, Alexander; Friederich Martens; Ruskin,
John; Bisson, Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie;
Sella, Vittorio; Civiale, Aimé; Bourne, Samuel;
Kodak; Roll Film; and Curtis, Edward Sheriff.Further Reading
American Memory, Library of Congress, “Taking the Long View:
Panoramic Photographs, 1851–1991,” http://memory.loc.
gov/ammem/pnhtml/pnhome.html.
Bensen, Jon, Souvenirs from High Places, Seattle: The Moun-
taineers, 1998.
Birrell, Andrew, Benjamin Baltzly: Photographs & Journal of an
Expedition Through British Columbia, 1871, Toronto: Coach
House Press, 1978.
Birrell, Andrew, “Survey Photography in British Columbia,
1858–1900,” in BC Studies, no. 52 (1981–82), 39–60.
Buckland, Gail, Reality Recorded: Early Documentary Photog-
raphy, Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1974.
Carvalho, S.N., Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West,