William Henry Jackson
Perhaps it is not surprising then, that Jackson’s photographs recall works by Gustave Courbet, another famous painter/photographer who was also, not coincidentally, interested in the newly forming field of geology. For example, Jackson’s albumen print, Central City, Colorado, c. 1881 features a scenic hilltop view of a boom city evocative of Courbet’s paintings of Ornans from the 1850s. In the foreground stands a cliché colonizing figure: a miner with pick axe swung over his right shoulder in a smarmy manner, his left foot planted firmly on higher ground to convey his possession and ownership of the space. But the background is just as important in this photo, for in the magnitude of its scale and the implied suggestion of replication on the other side of the horizon, the viewer is led to believe that the wide open mountainous terrain depicted are full of untold resources, ready for the taking, and inextinguishable.