512
venture out from the main group. This is driven home
particularly well where one has occasion to read the
written accounts of intrepid artists like Samuel Bourne,
Timothy O’Sullivan, or William Bradford. Each in his
own way was able to successfully capture the essence
of a personal encounter with the wilderness, though
with larger implications for study: Bourne on his three
Himalayan Expeditions in the 1860s; O’Sullivan on his
campaigns with Clarence King in the American Great
Basin in the late 1860s and early 1870s; and the painter
Bradford in the Arctic region and Greenland in 1869
with the photographers John L. Dunmore and George
Critcherson. In Bradford’s case, for instance, the iceberg
was the chief feature that epitomized his experience,
and photography became the enabling medium for this
as clearly evident in passages from his account of the
expedition in The Arctic Regions (1873): “The wild,
rugged shapes, indescribable and ever-changing, baffl e
all description, and nothing can do them justice but the
sun-given powers of the camera” (Bradford, 49).
Although the “conquest” of the terrain by the pho-
tographer is implicit in the image appearing before the
viewer, the implications run much deeper than is evident
in a single image. First, any immediate aesthetic regard
related to the aging Romantic standards of the pictur-
esque and sublime must be tempered by the knowledge
of photography’s transcriptional powers, of almost
magical character to nineteenth-century observers and
to the artists themselves. The attainment of geophysical
locations remote in space and time was authenticated
by their appearance in the pictures, but the representa-
tions themselves corresponded to shifting sensibilities
toward the empirical: raw attributes of rocks, fi ssures,
fossils, glaciers, ice caves, and the like paralleled sci-
entifi c directions that placed high importance of the
gathering of fi rsthand evidence in the fi eld. Moreover,
the experience was greatly augmented by the systematic
effort of a number of photographers to produce multiple
interrelated views at a specifi c location, including pan-
oramas and sequenced pictures, to better represent the
space-time continuum of place through careful study
and imaginative refl ection. The peoples encountered on
these voyages were also assigned to a text and image
realm, frequently integrated into ethnographic studies
as a representation of disappearing cultures only too
readily taken as part of the aesthetic experience. Thus,
expeditionary photography, beyond matters of taste and
the pleasure of looking, engaged the cultural and politi-
cal dynamics of the age.
Gary D. Sampson
See also: Bell, William H.; Bisson, Louis-Auguste
and Auguste-Rosalie; Blanquart-Evrard, Louis-
Désiré; Bourne, Samuel; Du Camp, Maxime;
Egerton, Philp H.; Frith & Co; Greene, John B.;Jackson, William Henry; O’Sullivan, Timothy H.;
Teynard, Félix; Geology; Survey Photography; and
Travel Photography.Further Reading
Bradford, William, The Arctic Regions, Illustrated with Photo-
graphs Taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland, London, S.
Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1873.
Cassidy, James G., Ferdinand V. Hayden: Entrepreneur of Sci-
ence, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,
2000.
Clarke, Melville, From Simla through Ladac and Cashmere,
Calcutta: Savielle and Cranenburgh, 1862.
Egerton, Philip Henry, Journal of a Photographic Trip through
Spiti, to the Frontier of Chinese Thibet, with Photographic
Illustrations, London: Cundall, Downes and Co., 1864.
Frizot, Michel, ed., A New History of Photography, Köln: Köne-
mann, 1998.
Goetzmann, William, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer
and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West, New
York: Knopf 1966
Marien, Mary Warner, Photography: A Cultural History, New
York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002.
Naef, Weston J., Era of Exploration: The Rise of Landscape
Photography in the American West, 1860–1885, Buffalo:
Albright-Knox Art Gallery and New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1975.
Ryan, James R., Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visual-
ization of the British Empire, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997.
Stafford, Robert A., Sir Robert Murchison, Scientifi c Exploration
and Victorian Imperialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989.EXPOSITIONS UNIVERSELLE, PARIS
(1854, 1855, 1867 etc.)
The Paris Expositions Universelles and the other world’s
fairs of the nineteenth century were curious and spec-
tacular cultural events. Sponsored by the host country’s
government, they were well-orchestrated public rela-
tions campaigns as well. These exhibitions provided the
ideal forum for the host country to promote its notions
of progress, nationalism, imperialism, unity, education,
culture, entertainment, and commerce. They also served
as some of the largest and earliest public venues for
the exhibition of photography. Thus, the Expositions
Universelles of 1855 and 1867 are rich points for study
of particular moments in photographic history.
The fi rst French exposition universelle was held in the
center of Paris along the Champs Elysées from May 15
to November 15, 1855. It was also the fi rst international
event where art was shown together with industrial
products, albeit in separate buildings—art in the Palais
des Beaux-Arts and industrial products in the Palais de
l’Industrie and its Annexe. Photography was exhibited
in the industrial division, in the same building as steam
engines, gloves, animal skins, lacework, ironwork, food,EXPEDITION PHOTOGRAPHY
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