William Henry Jackson's Lens

William Henry Jackson was an explorer, photographer, and artist. He is also one of those most often overlooked figures of the American West. His larger claim to fame involves his repeated forays into the western lands of nineteenth-century America as a photographer. Jacksons life spanned multiple incarnations of the American West. In a sense, he played a singular role in revealing the West to eastern Americans. While others opened the frontier with the axe and the rifle, Jackson did so with his collection of cameras. He dispelled the geological myths through a lens no one could deny or match. His wet plate collodion prints not only helped to reframe the nations image of the West, but they also enticed businessmen, investors, scientists, and even tourists to venture into the western regions of the United States. Prior to Jacksons widely circulated photographs, the American West was little understood and unmappedmysterious lands that required a camera and a cameraman to reveal their secrets and, ultimately, provide the first photographic record of such exotic destinations as Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, and the Rocky Mountains. Jacksons story was long and his life full, as he lived to the enviable age of 99. This biography presents the good, bad, and ugly of Jacksons life, both personal and professional, through the use primary source materials, including Jacksons autobiographies, letters, and government reports on the Hayden Surveys.