692
such a practice with their work). Catalogues, in contrast
to books and other closed systems of printed material
with pre-selected pictorial accompaniment, allowed for
individuals as well as collecting institutions to select the
images and to compile them as they pleased. The open
format of distribution thus lent itself to specifi c interests
or areas of inquiry, for mementos of a lived experience
through foreign residency or travel, for satisfying one’s
historical or scientifi c curiosity, for scholarly research,
or perhaps a combination of these concerns.
The work of traveling photographers of the period
were compelled by several, sometimes confl icting mo-
tives to get their views. They often went to extraordi-
narily lengths to do so, and the widespread use in the
1860s of wet collodion on glass for landscapes makes
these adventures even more astounding in light of the
physical encumbrance of equipment necessary for any
serious traveling photographer. In the tradition of the
Picturesque, landscapists often looked for features that
matched their conception of the pleasant prospect; if
the scenery fell short of such expectations, the inclu-
sion of a rustic or exotic dwelling, a fore-grounded tree
with background hills, or a fi gure or two situated in the
view would suffi ce. One detects, however, a change
in awareness that enlarged the conception of earlier
artists concerning the pictorial interest of unusual or
unconventional subjects. Photographs were, after all,
unavoidably informed by the very shape of the terrain
and the impact of its inhabitants. And the majority of
professional photographers—in contrast to talented
“amateurs” without pressure to sell their work—were
scarcely at liberty to pursue their individual subjective
vision and interests exclusively, but must frequently
adhere to the mandates of the various circumstances
underlying their presence in the fi eld, from entrepre-
neurial to political and scientifi c.
Samuel Bourne’s seven years in India, beginning with
his arrival from England in 1863, provides an signifi cant
instance of a photographer who worked abroad in order
to build a successful enterprise particularly based on
landscape and architectural views, in this case with his
partner Charles Shepherd. Bourne and Shepherd’s vast
archive of images of the subcontinent encompassed
Bourne’s extensive photography of the Himalayas and
architectural monuments. His sensitivity to both current
public and scientifi c interest undoubtedly served him
well to achieve acclaim for his work in photographic
societies in India and in Europe, and to fi nd their way
into multiple collections and texts of use to a variety
of disciplines. Bourne’s work shares with others of the
period a personal attraction to the extremes of nature,
particularly with his counterparts who ventured into
the North American wilderness. Carleton Watkins and
Eadweard Muybridge offer perhaps the closest paral-
lels, insofar as they too had a taste for the spectacular
in nature. Both Watkins and Muybridge made several
trips into California’s Yosemite Valley in the High Sierra
wilderness in the 1860s, while seeking to market their
views to the public. Each strongly displays a distinctive
approach to framing the natural environment. They also
align themselves with others of their contemporaries
who, unlike Bourne, worked under government patron-
age at one time or another. Watkins had photographed
for Josiah Whitney’s California State Geological Survey
in the mid-1860s and Muybridge had received govern-
ment commissions between 1868 and 1871. Perhaps
most controversial with respect to government survey
photography was Timothy O’Sullivan, a rather enig-
matic character who had worked for Brady and Gardner
during the Civil War. O’Sullivan was hired in 1867 to
join the fi rst of several campaigns under the leadership
of geologist Clarence King, the U.S. Geological Ex-
ploration of the Fortieth Parallel. The area of explora-
tion mainly comprised the exceedingly vast, decidedly
non- picturesque desert and mountain wilderness of
the Great Basin region. Though diffi cult to gauge pre-
cisely, King’s relationship with O’Sullivan was surely a
mutually reinforcing one, with the scientist assisting to
direct the photographer’s vision, while conversely, the
striking formations pictorially articulated by O’Sullivan
necessarily impacting King’s ideas concerning theories
of geologic time.
O’Sullivan’s work for the King survey also exempli-
fi es a direct correlation between the wilderness view
and political ideology that was consistent with U.S.
expansionist policies, readily evident in the way King
used the photographs as illustrations in his reports to
identify economically promising areas. More subtly,
photographs could be construed as symbolic appro-
priations of regions otherwise occupied by indigenous
peoples, or instrumental in the surveillance of areas of
political or economic interest to multiple confl icting
powers. Even the archaeological documentation of
India, which became extensive from the 1860s, and
ostensibly neutral in its collective efforts to construct
a viable history of architecture (see, e.g., the treatises
of James Fergusson), can be demonstrated to have
supported the British justifi cation of political control
of the subcontinent. Further, individual civilian efforts
to document a land and its people might also be inter-
preted as reinforcing the paternalism of the imperialist
project, as witnessed in John Thomson’s narratives
and photographs of his travels in China between 1867
and 1872 (see Illustrations of China and Its people, 4
volumes, 1873–74).
Thus the proliferation of photographs in the late
1850s and 1860s refl ects a diversity of image types and
channels of dissemination, which implicates how the
subjects portrayed could be open to multiple interpreta-
tions based on the social and economic conditions sur-HISTORY: 5. 1860s