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JACKSON, WILLIAM HENRY
- During this time he made Mountain of the Holy
Cross, in1873, a photograph which Moran used for a
painting. For the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of
1876, Hayden placed Jackson in charge of the Survey’s
exhibition, which included his photographs and his clay
models of cliff dwellings based on his exploration the
previous year in the Mancos Canyon and Canyon de
Chelly.
With the end of the Survey, Jackson left Washington,
D.C. in 1879, and moved to Denver, Colorado, where
he formed the Jackson Photographic Company. Mean-
while, western railroads sought tourists and settlers on
their routes and recognized the persuasive power of
dramatic landscape photographs. Beginning in 1881,
Jackson worked for numerous lines as an “offi cial rail-
road photographer,” and depicted landscape and trains
in picturesque and sublime settings. He now used the
new dry plate process, and much of his work involved
mammoth plates (18" × 22").
This western railroad photography led to the Balti-
more & Ohio railroad’s P. G. Pangborn hiring Jackson
in 1892, to photographs along that company’s route.
The photographs were shown at the World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where Jackson was com-
missioned to photograph the architecture.
Pangborn then organized The World Transportation
Commission and hired Jackson to photograph a tour
that included Egypt, India, China, and Russia. Jackson
was away from his business and family for 17 months,
during which time he also supplied Harper’s Weekly
with photographs and articles.
Returning from the arduous tour, Jackson found his
business foundering, and he sold out to the Photochrom
Company in 1897, to become a salaried director and part
owner of the parent company, The Detroit Publishing
Company. Jackson continued to actively photograph
until 1903, when managerial duties precluded extensive
travel. The Photochrom Company failed in 1924, and
Jackson retired.
In 1936, Jackson painted murals for the U. S. De-
partment of the Interior in Washington, D. C. That
same year Henry Ford acquired 40,000 of his nega-
tives for the Edison Institute in Dearborn, Michigan.
By this time Jackson’s camera of choice had shifted
from the 20" × 24" plate camera used on the 1875
expedition to a 35 mm Leica. By 1939, he was using
Kodachrome fi lm.
Jackson also produced a series of romanticized
watercolor paintings based on his original sketches,
photographs, and recollections. When 97, he published
an autobiography, Time Exposure, which Peter Hales
found “heavily embellished,” but which Douglas Waitley
claimed had “a scrupulous regard for accuracy...”
Shortly after a fall, Jackson died on 30 June 1942, in
New York City at age 99.
John FullerJackson, William Henry.
Mammoth Hot Springs,
Pulpit Terraces.
The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, Rogers Fund, 1874
(1974.530) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.