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Finding Freedom in the Parting of the Ways

Wagon Train Outside Manhattan, Kansas, c. 1863 Carte de Visite Picturing Wagon Train outside of Manhattan, Kansas, c. 1860.

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Photographic Truth It is precisely the twisted logic betraying the values of Enlightenment elites that Julie Shafer’s photographic practice works to engage. For this reason, Shafer’s Parting of the Ways images are not entirely idyllic. Ready on the surface is evidence of the photographer grappling with deep seated perspectives like Emerson's Transcendental transparent eye and the assumed divine benevolence that grants resource extraction to a privileged few without responsibility for the ensuing ecological destruction and contamination granted through Locke's philosophical rhetoric.

A prepared eye likely finds a rupture on the surface of a Shafer photograph, rather than within the documented terrain. Comparing two photographs of the of the Devil's Gate made by Jackson in 1870 and Shafer in 2018 taken from a nearly identical location reveal a slippage that disrupts the Romantic pastoral view. While each photograph is printed in high contrast–shadows are deep, velvety black and the sandy middle ground is almost blinding white–Shafer’s print is extremely grainy while Jackson’s is crisply precise. The obvious grain in Shafer’s image works subconsciously on the viewer, drawing attention to the state of flat approximation rather than suggesting Enlightenment escapist ideals. Equally, Shafer's more vertical framing works to undermine the idea that the so-called "gate" marks the threshold to an expansive domain free for the taking (Interview with the artist).

While Jackson's photo participates in shaping the illusion of freedom on the horizon through the possession (theft) of land, Shafer’s print directly critiques the notion that any kind of “photographic truth” can be found on the plane of the photographic print, or at the historical site, prompting the viewer to maintain Squadrito's suspicions. For Shafer, what is present in this construction of nature is not a divine presence, but grains of silver that have been exposed to light to communicate a message.
Names Hill In more recent work from the series, Shafer looks to the mammoth plates of Carleton E.Watkins as an encounter with the very imagery that Americans have come to closely identify with. Using a 4 X 5 camera, a weighty and more difficult to use instrument that is able to capture exposures with breath taking resolution, Shafer photographed a sandhill bluff which runs alongside the Oregon Trail known as “Names Hill,” as well as the geographically near (though exceptionally difficult to access) cliff sides known as “Register Cliff” and “Independence Rock.” On these rock faces settlers, prospectors, and traders carved, or commissioned carvings of their names over ancient petroglyphs made by Indigenous peoples. Shafer’s resulting fiber prints of these marked sites harken back to 19th century stereo card and carte-de-visite photo collections that were commissioned by railroad barons to commemorate the taming of the wild frontier and staking of its resources by white settlers. For Shafer, the marks made by the people moving in and about the space offer brutal testimony to the treachery of their journey as well as the deeply interwoven extractivist ideologies present in the American psyche.