Finding Freedom in the Parting of the Ways

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.

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