Photographs of Environmental Phenomena: Scientific Images in the Wake of Environmental Awareness, USA 1860s-1970s [1. Aufl.] 9783839430859

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Gisela Parak Photographs of Environmental Phenomena

Image | Volume 79

Gisela Parak (PD Dr.) is the director of the Brunswick Museum for Photography, Germany, and teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and at Brunswick Technical University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, at Washington University, St. Louis, and at the GHI in Washington, D.C. Her work focuses on the history and theory of photography, American cultural history and art history of the 19th and 20th century.

Gisela Parak

Photographs of Environmental Phenomena Scientific Images in the Wake of Environmental Awareness, USA 1860s-1970s

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2015 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Charles O’Rear: The All-American Canal, carrying water from the Colorado River, transformed the Imperial Valley from desert to farmland, 1972 © National Archives, College Park MD, 412-DA-548908. Printed in Germany Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3085-5 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3085-9

Table of Contents

Project "Documerica"—the Record of a Missed Opportunity? Forward | 07 Between Science and an Ecological Mandate— Photographs of Environmental Phenomena Introduction | 11 Collecting Visual Evidence—Nineteenth-century Landscape Photography and the Emergence of Science | 35

1. Photography and Geology: Clarence King | 43 2. Photography and the Study of a Civilization's Survival: John Wesley Powell | 59 3. Photography and the late Nineteenth-century Picture Market: Ferdinand V. Hayden | 66 4. Photography and Environmental Inventories: George Montague Wheeler | 74 5. The Visual Language of Science | 80

Agricultural Literacy—Visual Empiricism in New Deal Conservation | 83

1. Mediations of Nature in Government Publications | 89 2. Agricultural Monitoring by the Means of Surveillance | 102 3. Soil Conservation: The Magazine | 111 4. The New Deal's Environmental Vision: Roy Stryker and the Historical Section of the FSA | 119 Depicting Disaster—Environmental Photography under the Nixon Presidency | 137

1. Depicting Environmental Disasters: New Conventions | 140 2. Environmental Photography under the EPA: Documerica's Contradictory Vision | 146 3. Capturing Environmental Problems: The Government as Patron | 152 4. In Search of a New Environmental Pictorial Language | 156 5. Documerica's Collaboration with the EPA: Opportunities and Limitations | 165 6. Photography and Environmental Education | 180 7. US American Foreign Policy and Environmental Diplomacy in the 1970s | 202 Conclusions | 217 Abbreviations | 227 Archival Research and Literature | 229 Acknowledgement | 255

Project "Documerica"— the Record of a Missed Opportunity? Forward

The foundation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on 2 December 1970 marked the beginning of a new phase in American history, in which the state initiated an official program to regulate and restrict economic interests with a view to protecting people and nature. The American public scarcely noticed the addition of a documentary photography department one year into the EPA's existence. The department was intended to raise awareness of the historical significance of the new agency—to illustrate and bear witness to "history"—and, at the same time, serve as a didactic instrument that aided the public's understanding of environmental protection. The story of "Documerica," as the department was called, is a miniature version of an overarching history: its visionary dovetailing of policy and good intentions made Documerica the first known attempt in the world at a systematic investigation of the environment from the perspective of modern environmental protection. Moreover, Documerica photographers developed a visual rhetoric in which technically oriented pictures of scientific value took on an advocatory and preventative dimension. Since the nineteenth century, such pictures had been used in the history of the westward expansion and in American agricultural history. Thus, photography had taken on a supporting role in the efforts of the state to steer economic trends. The photography of Documerica, with its insistent visual language, lead to a break with economic leitmotifs; it inverted the belief in progress that pictures of the technical world conveyed. It also incorporated and gave a visual form to the destruction of the environment—and thus suggested an

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alternative, ecological picture. In the process, the photographs constituted a survey that supplemented administrative records relating to acute environmental damage. They helped enhance the understanding of human intervention in nature by making specific instances and associated change visible and, therefore, graspable. At the same time as this visual inventory revealed aspects and facets of a manifest threat, the project was to a certain extent still a matter of feeling the way in darkness: the consequences of the threat could not yet be predicted in full. Yet the examples of water and air pollution captured in the medium of photography provided clear indications of serious and possibly irreversible damage. However, the instruments for the strict enforcement of a newly introduced legal framework were not yet available in the early 1970s. The photographs explored various areas of concern. Besides acute pollution, these ranged from questions of urbanization and the production and consumption of energy to modern transport infrastructure and food quality. The visual impact of the documentary evidence could have made a timely contribution to an alternative, conservatory approach to the Earth's resources and the development of alternative models for their regulation and distribution. For the Documerica program was at the forefront of cultural critique of the American lifestyle. Its photography brought home in an alarming manner a message that few wanted to hear at this point in time: that there were limits to growth. Yet, instead of serving as a warning signal that might have focused attention on averting even worse outcomes, the visionary program was, after only six years, shut down prematurely. The history of this state project mirrors the emergence of the environmental protection movement and the establishing and institutionalization of organs of state. Subsequent to an initial phase of awakening, innovation, and good intentions, the administrative paperwork was done, following which it appears that virtually nothing of the original, guiding ideas remained. It is not only the teething pains of state environment policy in the United States that can be discerned in Documerica. The project also raises uncomfortable questions about opportunities missed during the ecological turn in the 1970s. In 1972, Limits to Growth was first published and the Stockholm conference was held, an event that contemporaries considered groundbreaking. Forty years on, it is now clear that measures to prevent environmental damage that were then realistic are no longer possible. Humanity is now confronted with limiting and mitigating the effects of climate

FORWARD | 9

change, and the huge societal changes and challenges—the consequences of which remain completely unpredictable—that come with it. The disciplines of history and visual culture, both of which employ methods of looking back into the past and of looking to reconstruct the past, contain within them the latent promise of learning from history and drawing conclusions from past events so as to avoid repeating mistakes already made. In contrast to which, it is the feeling of a missed opportunity that remains. This applies as much to the hugely promising Documerica program as it does to the assessment of the ecological movement in political, diplomatic and economic terms that Dennis Meadows made in 2012.1 What can in fact be learnt from the pictures? That which is repeatedly said of them? That they synthesized the sensibility of the time and embodied—in a similar way to the "Blue Marble" picture of Earth as a "turning point" and symbol—the crossroads of environmental history? It is debatable whether images prove themselves able to act as a sustained influence on human patterns of behavior or on human needs. Are we not secretly fascinated by the aesthetic power of images of environmental devastation on Earth, by their power to shock? Despite their ability to provide points of reference and all the supposed pictorial evidence of various sets of problems, photographs merely evoke the experience of "secondary reception," which seems to favor the blocking out of their content. Given a widespread awareness of rhetoric, intentionally tailored to convince by attempting to deceive, cajole, legitimize or confirm—a rhetoric underpinned by photography—does human perception function so as to preserve a critical distance to the subject depicted by photographic images? This book will not be able to answer most of these urgent questions. Neither will it be possible to relate the instructive implications of historical examples to the role of ecologically motivated pictures widely distributed via the mass media—regarding which there are numerous scholarly works in the areas of communications and media studies. Today, it is impossible to acquire an overview of the full range of diverse intentions that determine the creation and use of pictures, not to mention their rhetorical impact. However, the use of photographs of environmental phenomena in the state apparatus in the United States during the period from 1860 to the

1

Dennis Meadows, "The Limits to Growth and the Future of Humanity," lecture, 4 December 2012, Amerika Haus, Munich.

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1970s provides a significant example, one that presents a fascinating ensemble of continuities with reference to the history of agriculture and technology as well as environmental history. It also has significance for the making of a visual culture at a national level, and the modification of this culture. This book presents the contradictions involved in the attempt to connect photographic images of environmental phenomena with key ecological and economic strands of U.S. domestic policy, and traces the parameters of historical antecedents to the visual culture that emerged in the process. Furthermore, it is concerned with how this process, in the context of the institutionalization of environmental protection during the 1970s, could have led to an overall change in direction. Given the enormous range of visual cultures relating to environmental matters today, it is only possible to bring conceptual clarity to analysis by selecting individual examples that provide specific insight into the underlying intentions of very different actors. In contrast to these individual examples, there is then the relatively homogenous agency of the state, consisting of associated U.S. authorities. It is the intention of this study to take a limited sample in order to contextualize and set out what was expected of environmental protection policy and how these expectations were conveyed visually, as well as to establish how findings originating from within the state apparatus that made use of photographic evidence should be interpreted. Further, it is concerned with the use of photographic "documentation" and how this was used to establish principles and, lastly, what stood in the way of an alternative, more desirable course of development. The goal of the book is to provide an account of ecological guidelines and their historical development with reference to photographic representations. This will illumine the process of the implementation of theoretical approaches to environment and associated models as well as the influence of such concepts on the development of photographic images of environmental phenomena.

Between Science and an Ecological Mandate— Photographs of Environmental Phenomena Introduction

As a functional image, the photographic image of environmental phenomena belongs to a subcategory of technical pictures associated with scientific discourse and assumes a supporting, driving, or even empirical role in the pursuit of the natural sciences. In 2000, the Hermann von HelmholtzZentrum für Kulturtechnik at the Humboldt University of Berlin founded a new department for the study of the technical image, "Das Technische Bild." This development reflects how technically oriented visual culture cannot be considered as consisting of "illustrative representations." Instead, "it is its productive power as a discrete, multilayered element of knowledge production that must be grasped,"1 which in itself assumes a constitutive and, at the same time, constructive function. Having established which, the question arises as to what kind of active influence on the understanding of the environment at a given time can be ascribed to photographic images of environmental phenomena, received first and foremost as a fact-based inventory.

1

Horst Bredekamp, Birgit Schneider, Vera Dünkel, "Editorial: Das Technische Bild," in Horst Bredekamp, Birgit Schneider, Vera Dünkel (eds.), Das Technische Bild: Kompendium zu einer Stilgeschichte wissenschaftlicher Bilder (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008): 8.

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Accordingly, this book presents a history that traces how such pictures became entwined with policy and administrative authorities of the government of the United States, from the perspective of the ecological revolution of the twentieth century. The four great surveys of the West initiated in the 1860s constitute the chronological starting point of the analysis. The period during which these were conducted coincides with that in which the American tradition of outdoor or landscape photography commenced, which provided the ecological movement of the epoch with its defining iconographic model. The direction, orientation, and, in some cases, the pictorial language of these fascinating glimpses of the partially unsettled, "original" expanses of nature during the era of Western expansion distinguish the photography of the twentieth century and have established the genre of landscape photography as a national cultural possession. Scholarly approaches that focus on the section of landscape captured in the image have however neglected the technical and scientific background, the horizons of expectation and the purpose of the commission, as well as associated historical circumstances. In order to strengthen the focus on precisely this utilitarian context, what follows is an introduction to the conceptual features of the photographic image of environmental phenomena: The functional orientation of the photographs is distinguished from ideas of the picturesque and the sublime generally associated with the image of the landscape conveyed in the painting and photography of the nineteenth century. Instead, I define photographic images of environmental phenomena as those produced in order to research in an investigative manner "nature" and "landscape" from the perspective of economic, infrastructure-related, and critical environmental standpoints. The photographs were explicitly related to the framework of an associated scientific—not aesthetic—investigation and its specific topographic, geologic, or climatic line of inquiry. They were understood as carriers of relevant information. As such, photographic images of environmental phenomena reflect the epoch's understanding of nature, in accordance with which—in the sense of the utilitarian outlook of the Gilded age—nature was perceived as natural resources that were freely available to humanity. The introduction of the category "environmental photography" at recent photography festivals and exhibitions reflected a similar mindset,2 though

2

Joanna Lehn (ed.), Ecotopia (Göttingen: Steidl Publishing, 2006); Claude Bail-

I NTRODUCTION | 13

as a category it remained somewhat cloudy. It incorporates the popular science mode of representation termed "nature photography," established by the National Geographic at the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as the critical approaches that photographers are now developing in the wake of the consciousness of global climate change. By contrast to which, the tradition of photographing environmental phenomena as an integral part of state programs reaches far back into the nineteenth century, such that a discrete terminology accentuates the specific orientation of this technically determined, pictorial discourse. As the "pictorialization of the sciences" shows,3 the symbiosis of science and pictorial visualization techniques has taken place over many years, or even centuries—certainly since the modern era and the development of the modern natural sciences, during which time it was drawing that predominated as a scientific aid. From the mid-nineteenth century onward, photography increasingly took its place as an aid to memory, and a medium on which to base models and reconstructions that can be elaborated upon, or for recording observations that might contain the beginnings of an enlightening thesis. The extensive literature on the subject that has materialized in the interim increasingly addresses the interaction between science, the practical application of images, and scholarly approaches to the image, as well as the interference of the one with the other.4 In opposition to a trust in natural scientists and illustrations that serve to verify, the question as to how pictorial techniques of visualization themselves influence the perception of scientific processes of knowledge production has increasingly come to the fore in past years, as has the role that such techniques play in technically determined visual cultures and contemporary conceptions of science.5

largeon (ed.), Imagining a Shattered Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate (Oakland: Oakland University Press, 2005). 3

Bettina Heintz, Jörg Huber, Mit dem Auge denken: Strategien der Sichtbarmachung in wissenschaftlichen und virtuellen Welten (Vienna and New York: Springer, 2001).

4

Martina Heßler, Konstruierte Sichtbarkeiten: Wissenschafts- und Technikbilder seit der Frühen Neuzeit (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2006); see also the annual publications of the study group "Das Technische Bild" produced by the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik.

5

Horst Bredekamp et al., "Editorial: Das Technische Bild," 8.

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Dietrich Meyer-Ebrecht employs the concept of the "visualistic" in outlining the use of visually presented information and the conditions of its production, and the creation of interdisciplinary carriers of information in the context of computer science and the natural sciences—all of which have been studied extensively by today's scholars of visual culture.6 However, the process of the pictorialization of the sciences did not begin with the rise of digital programs for the production and processing of images. Since the early modern era, drawings produced by hand featured in the studies of natural philosophers. Angela Fischel has revealed the importance of drawing for knowledge production during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with reference to the natural philosophers Conrad Gessner and Ulisse Aldrovandi, showing that the products of draftsmanship relating to the study of nature and its forms were capable of communicating knowledge and ensuring its transfer. Drawings should therefore enable findings to be documented, exchanged and, above all, discussed.7 In the process of transferring knowledge by way of images, the consciousness and knowledge of pictorial norms and conventions of representation became hugely significant for the producer of images. Yet it is only in isolated cases that researchers such as Charles Darwin developed their own mode of representation. In most cases, scientists drew on established conventions of representation, which they tailored, adapted, and changed in order to convey their outlook. The place of illustrations in scientific discourse and in the empirical process of discovery cannot therefore be considered as having first become an issue with the application of modern computing technologies. However, with the digital revolution, "dealing in and with images" becomes increasingly common and widespread.8

6

Dieterich Meyer-Ebrecht, "Visualistik. Ein neues Wort für ein uraltes Thema," in Andreas Beyer, Markus Lohoff (eds.), Bild und Erkenntnis. Formen und Funktionen des Bildes in Wissenschaft und Technik (München and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005): 46.

7

Angela Fischel, Natur im Bild. Zeichnung und Naturerkenntnis bei Conrad

8

Andreas Beyer, Markus Lohoff, "Bildhandeln: Eine Einführung," in Andreas

Gessner und Ulisse Aldrovandi (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2009): 8. Beyer, Markus Lohoff, Bild und Erkenntnis: Formen und Funktionen des Bildes in Wissenschaft und Technik (München and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005): 11.

I NTRODUCTION | 15

Nonetheless, a qualitative change had already occurred in the midst of ongoing technological development during the mid-nineteenth century. A phase of pioneering innovation in the field of optics delivered new instruments that enabled access to visual worlds formerly closed to scientists.9 This extension of the human capacity to observe was also accompanied by the adaptation of photographic techniques in the natural sciences such as micro-photography and X-ray photography,10 which further extended the realm of the perceivable, rendering what had been until then invisible visible. With these advances, the scientific process of observation became independent of the capacities of the human eye.11 In the laboratory and in the isolation of individual parameters, photography dispatched with drawings made by hand as a site of reflection in the natural sciences. In an "artificially" generated, technical visual world, the photographic image increasingly replaced the study by the natural philosopher of the object on location, the collection of realia and artifacts, as well as the exploration of topographical and geographical features as a direct, physical experience. In 1850, a call by the Royal Meteorological Society ignited a blossoming of scientifically

9

Horst Bredekamp, Galilei der Künstler: Der Mond. Die Sonne. Die Hand (Oldenburg: Akademieverlag, 2009); Horst Bredekamp, Gabriele Werner, Angela Fischel (eds.), Bildwelten des Wissens: Instrumente des Sehens (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004).

10 See for example Jutta Schickore, "Fixierung mikroskopischer Beobachtungen: Zeichnung, Dauerpräparat, Mikrofotografie," in Peter Geimer (ed.), Ordnungen der Sichtbarkeit: Fotografie in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technologie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2002); Franziska Brons, Horst Bredekamp, "Fotografie als Medium der Wissenschaft. Kunstgeschichte, Biologie und das Elend der Illustration," in Hubert Burda, Christa Maar, Iconic Turn: Die neue Macht der Bilder (Köln, 2004); Franziska Brons, "Das Versprechen der Retina: Zur Mikrofotografie Robert Kochs," in Bildwelten des Wissens: Kunsthistorisches Jahrbuch für Bildkritik 2, no. 2. (2004). 11 On the modernization of sight as a result of the ongoing development of optical instruments, on the use of photography in medical research, and on the differentiation between pre-modern and modern science in the nineteenth century, see Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1990).

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orientated photography; by asking photographic amateurs to support science in capturing and recording the weather, a new genre of "photographs of meteorologic phenomena" emerged12 that became the fastest developing and most publically visible section of science related photography.13 In contrast, accomplished methods of scientific photography developed only gradually.14 Zones of photographs of meteorologic photography were predominantly provided by photographs of clouds and of lightning. Records of lightning demonstrate why such records were not overly successful for a long time: Randomness, the un-predictability of strikes and slow capture times hindered successful records. Furthermore, the problem to set the lenses in advance to an undetermined point in the distance in order to accomplish a sharp image hindered depictions. Nevertheless, photographs of meteorological phenomena promised a classification of phenomena as well making these occurrences graspable. In the context of this extensive stock of visual worlds connected with the natural sciences and with technology, the following study focuses only on a small subsection, with the emphasis being on the photographic image of environmental phenomena and its scientific, technical, economic, and ecological evaluation with reference to certain commissioned photographic studies in the United States. While a rich literature on the history of American landscape painting and the myth of the wilderness exists,15 there are few studies that situate themselves on the interface between visual culture studies and environmental and political history, and that aim at enhancing our understanding of the interplay between the perception of landscapes, concepts of nature, and the history of technology and science. This is despite the obviously fruitful interaction between scientific and technological

12 Jennifer Tucker, Nature Exposed. Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Sciences (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005; Kindle edition, 2013): LOC 2730. 13 Tucker, Nature Exposed, 2550. 14 Tucker, Nature Exposed, 2869. 15 William H. Truettner (ed.), The West as America, Reinterpreting Images Of The Frontier, 1820–1920 (Washington: National Museum of American Art Washington, 1991); William Goetzmann, The West of the imagination (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009); Patricia Broder, The American West: the modern vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).

I NTRODUCTION | 17

developments on the one hand and the emergence of an environmental protection movement that relied on the impact of images on the other. With the publication of works by literary philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, a transcendental understanding of nature developed in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. Nature was considered a spiritual space for contemplation, a cultural possession to be preserved against exploitation by humans. At the same time, George P. Marsh's Man and Nature opened the way for a pragmatic approach that was conducive to practical application and drew on earlier critiques of the exploitation of natural resources. Marsh also made suggestions as to resourceconserving practices that could be conducted under the aegis of the executive arm of the state.16 In both fields of discourse, photographic images of environmental phenomena were received as ambivalent carriers of information that could be interpreted in more than one way, and which precipitated the mediatization of both poles of the debate. Following George Marsh, a school of sustainable forestry and land management developed in the state forestry colleges under Gifford Pinchot and Hugh Bennett. Thus it came to be believed that targeted land management and agro-technical engineering offered an alternative to the exhaustion of the land and its natural resources. The perspective of the transcendentalists on the other hand was drawn upon by naturalists in the preservationist movement such as John Muir, the environmental ethicist Aldo Leopold, whose position was close to that of the soil conservation movement of the 1930s, and the founder of the modern environmental protection movement Rachel Carson. These persons, along with many other authors during the 1950s and 1960s, initiated a lively, oppositional discourse that, ultimately, advocated placing radical restrictions on the American lifestyle. In the midst of all of these varied debates, photographic images of environmental phenomena were instrumentalized in order to illustrate various points of departure and perspectives. The task of pinpointing precisely what fuelled the transnational scientific discourse at the end of the nineteenth century and its visual priming is interesting, highly complex and, in terms of its various aspects, extremely difficult. Exemplary monographs by von Bredekamp, Fischel, or von Bev-

16 George P. Marsh, Man and Nature or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (New York: Scribner, 1867).

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ern have revealed the significance of visualization for the observation of nature during the early modern period, which then grew with the formation of the modern natural sciences. It is not only drawing but photography too that offers a means of representing the visual in a way that offers opportunities for filling gaps—either in knowledge itself, or in the form of the inexplicable—with the products of the imagination. Furthermore, both media are capable of giving cognitive and theoretical aporia a form and gestalt.17 As such, the use of drawing in natural-philosophical studies of the early modern period goes beyond the realm of "scientific naturalism."18 The pronounced break with the acceptance of realistic, explanatory illustrations also provides an impulse for the integration of photographic images into scientific discourse. For, since the presentation of the daguerreotype at the French Academy of Sciences and the expectations it prompted, the theorizing of photography always had to deal with the suggestion of the representation of the objective, of the true-to-life. From 1839 onward the Academy supported the development of photography through the circulation of 230 publications, letters, and reports, which were printed at short notice in the weekly newsletter of the Académie des Sciences. This made an immense contribution to the exchange of knowledge.19 In addition, the theses that the Académie des Sciences published were technically evaluated and the findings published. However, this rich output concerning photography was only available to academy members. For example, in addition to François Arago and J.B. Biot, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt was also present as a representative of the Academy when in 1839 Louis Daguerre presented his invention and captivated his audience with the clarity and perfection of the photographic reproduction of the world that it provided.20 As Laurie Dahlberg has written, photography struck the French scientists as something of a

17 See the chapter on Aldrovani's illustrations of fabulous creatures, "Ulisse Aldrovandi und die Gestaltung der Natur" in Angela Fischel, Natur im Bild. Zeichnung und Naturerkenntnis bei Conrad Gessner und Ulisse Aldrovandi (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2009). 18 Ibid., 12. 19 Laurie Dahlberg, Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of Avoiding Errors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005): 24. 20 Ibid., 24.

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revelation in providing an infallible, automated representation of nature,21 and in the subsequent, the scientific impulse to explore gained an innovative new research medium in photography. However, the status of photography was disputed by other representatives. Humboldt himself preferred drawings and paintings and the botanist and naturalist Paul Güßfeldt contended that an artist's landscape picture was more useful than a photograph, since schooled artists can invest their pictures with significance: "they are in a position to leave the unimportant aside in order to all the more sharply highlight the characteristic," instead of reproducing everything in the same light, as Thomas Richter has remarked pointedly.22 While photography was invariably the subject of controversy during the nineteenth century, the emerging genre of "mountain photography" illustrated the cutting edge of scientific debate from 1842 onward, as far as it related to geology.23 Martin Rudwick provides an account in his pioneering essay of 1976 of the development of pictorial language in the earth sciences as a merging of geological science and visual media.24 Maps, diagrams, slides, cross-sections and, of course, photography were used so extensively in the mid-nineteenth century as the means of communication in scientific exchanges, that it was considered undesirable and pretentious to insist on considering these pictorial carriers of information mere "visual aids."25 The catalogue Die Weite des Eises. Arktis und Alpen 1860 bis heute: Vom Durchmessen des Eises mit der Kamera by the Albertina in Vienna, offered an outstanding and comprehensive overview of how mountain photography, which was also bound up with a contemporary desire for the exotic pictorial worlds obtained through travel photography, emerged as a product

21 Ibid., 26. 22 Thomas Richter, Alexander von Humboldt: "Ansichten der Natur"; Naturforschung zwischen Poetik und Wissenschaft (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2009): 113. 23 On the development of geology as a science, see Martin Rudwick, Lyell and Darwin, Geologists, Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Reform (Burlington, VT: Asgate Publishing, 2005); and Martin Rudwick, The New Science of Geology in the same series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 24 Martin Rudwick, "The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science 1760–1840," in History of Science xiv (1976): 150. 25 Ibid., 149.

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of scientific expeditions.26 Jan von Bevern's dissertation, published in 2012, deepened the analysis of the interplay between visually-led scientific investigation, mountain photography, and geology. Taking the hobby researcher or so-called amateur scientist Aimé Civiale as a case study, von Bevern assessed the requirements for the production of pictures capable of making a contribution to the science of geology. Here, Civiale's pioneering work on Mont Blanc was instructive.27 However, von Bevern turned to Viollet-leDuc's drawing "Les Bossons" for his most impressive example of the interplay between scientific theses and a visual approach.28 Like Fischel, von Bevern traced various kinds of visual approaches. He drew attention to parameters such as stubbornness, creativity, the importance of the right standpoint, flexibility in selecting an angle from which to view the object, chance, the freedom from assumptions in making observations, the complementary role of imagination or fictive reconstructions—all of which are of such significance for the successful incorporation of visual evidence. Thus it was clearly established with reference to photographic evidence in scientific geological investigation, that it was not so much a case of the photography itself taking on the role of evidence, but the constructive questioning of what may previously have been considered static that it triggered, the comparison of the image and one's own powers of perception, the balancing out of individual observations and the all-encompassing assumptions of a given body of knowledge. In working with images, the natural scientist must learn at the same time how to reflect upon images: observations informed to a certain level by visual theory become part of the process of generating knowledge in the natural sciences. In addition to the example of geology's appropriation of photographic images, existing literature on visual cultures in science focused predominantly on two further points of reference: the pictorial works of Charles Darwin and the production of popular pictures inspired by the work of Alexander von Humboldt. It has long been known that the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859 fundamentally changed the outlook of the natural sciences forever. In addi-

26 Monika Faber (ed.), Die Weite des Eises. Arktis und Alpen 1860 bis heute: Vom Durchmessen des Eises mit der Kamera (Wien: Hatje Cantz / Albertina, 2008). 27 Jan von Bevern, Blicke von Nirgendwo (München: Fink Verlag, 2012): 32. 28 Ibid., 92.

I NTRODUCTION | 21

tion to a body of work devoted to the genealogy of the sciences, a much more extensive body of literature has paved the way for analysis of the influence that evolutionary theory had on the popular visual culture of the Victorian period and associated perceptions of science.29 Thus the content of Darwin's works inspired and provoked the international output of the art world of the day, including, for example, Gabriel von Max's anthropoid, allegorical representations of animals, but also darkly romantic reflections on the proximity of humans and beasts—to say nothing of a whole genre of satirical drawings and Darwin cartoons. However, with reference to the gradual differentiation of scientific visual cultures, the breaks in painterly conventions implied in the way Darwin presented syntheses in his drawings are of particular interest. Darwin consciously broke with the received conventions of representation pertaining to the natural sciences and introduced a style based on "random choice, disorder, variation, and imperfection" as a fitting means of conveying the chaotic nature of his theory of evolution. As Larson pointed out, these "illustrations" constituted a radical departure from a naturalistic approach to representation, at the same time as being "notable for what they omitted."30 Just as Darwin's theory of evolution was met with heavy opposition on the part of creationist scientists, his drawings also came in for criticism in terms of the way they supported his theories. Jonathan Smith has reminded us of the hostility and open enmity of John Ruskin, and perceived the root of this opposition to lie in a reaction to Darwin's sketches depicting the gradual evolution of apes into homo sapiens. Smith argued that Darwin's implicit aesthetic practice constituted a direct challenge to the foundations of Ruskin's aesthetic theory and that this was the way that Ruskin understood the situation too.31 In his botanical works for instance, Darwin reduced the colors of flowers to a functional characteristic that attracted in-

29 In relation to which, see Horst Bredekamp, Darwins Korallen: Die frühen Evolutionsdiagramme und die Tradition der Naturgeschichte (Wagenbach: Berlin, 2005). 30 Barbara Larson, "Introduction," in Barbara Larson, Fae Brauer (eds.), The Art of Evolution: Darwin, Darwinism, and Visual Culture (London: University Press of New England, 2009): 9. 31 Jonathan Smith, Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture (Cambridge: University Press, 2006): 2.

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sects and thus ensured the dispersal of the flowers' pollen. The beauty of flowers was therefore not proof of the existence of god but a purposeful characteristic. Smith refered to The Descent of Man as the work in which "Darwin naturalized the human aesthetic sense [...], making our notion of beauty an evolutionary inheritance from animals."32 On the other hand, James Krasner has revealed how nature writers, naturalists, and novelists drew on Darwin's stylistic innovation in portraying nature as the locus of optical illusion and began to describe visual failure.33 Darwin was considered to have found himself as a scientific writer and researcher in a conflict of conscience with no obvious solution: as a communicator of science, his illustrations were meant to awake a vision in the reader that helped him grasp evolution as a plausible concept. However, as a scientist, he was bound by a preference for remaining loyal to truth, which meant recognizing the chaos within the development of nature. But Darwin's solution was to be found in his drawings, in which he portrayed the "unstable form" of a continuously developing nature through the lack of a clear visual form.34 He consciously confused the expectations of his readers by discovering in the representation of the otherness of nature an approximation of his theories.35 In terms of the ways in which they provide scientific and theoretical explanations, Darwin's drawings offered an exciting example, the analysis of which could well contribute to describing the internal process of adjusting conceptualization in relation to observation. After Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt serves as the second most influential figure for nineteenth-century science. As a natural scientist and an explorer of exotic worlds, Humboldt's travel reports and scientific studies, from his Ansichten der Natur, published in 1808, to the fivevolume Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung, helped shape

32 Ibid. According to Smith, Darwin naturalized the human aesthetic sense in The Descent of Man, making our notion of beauty an evolutionary inheritance from animals. 33 See Larson's Introduction to Larson's and Brauer's The Art of Evolution, 3. 34 James Krasner, The Entangled Eye: Visual Perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992): 35. 35 Ibid., 173.

I NTRODUCTION | 23

the discourse on knowledge far beyond the borders of Europe.36 Humboldt became the pioneer of the empirical natural science, and his books of natural philosophy received a global audience.37 Questions of geological origins were central to his studies too. Moreover, his adventures provided contemporary culture, both popular and high, with inspiration. The educated classes gained an impression of his travels through the circulation of artistic representations of them. As such, his travels influenced the American landscape painters, something that has been well documented.38 However, in contrast to Darwin, Humboldt was less of a genuinely creative drawer and instead produced numerous artistically decorated maps. In addition to attractive designs, these incorporated an innovative combination of image and text—that is, of geological features and textual explanation. As Thomas Richter has observed, in his diagrammatic nature paintings, Humboldt was able to superimpose, for example, one cross-section of a mountain onto that of another.39 One such chart from the year 1803 directly compares cross-sections of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi volcanoes in a way that breaks free of spatial limitations. This allowed numerous measurements and data to be brought into relation with one another, including height in meters, air temperature and listings of animal and plant life. Since the relationship between image and text takes on a significant role in almost all of Humboldt's works, Richter has characterized Humboldtian science as an empirical science shaped by visuality.40 He provided a portrait of Humboldt, the natural scientist, as someone who considered natural research an art, or as a symbiosis of science, visual art, and poetry.41 Like Carl Gustav Carus, Humboldt treated the pictorial representation of mountains, cliffs, and natural phenomena as visual evidence from which, if the representation

36 Compare Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current. Nineteenth-century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (New York: Viking, 2006). 37 Larson, Introduction in The Art of Evolution, 11. 38 Ostrud Westheider, "Kunst und Wissenschaft. Die Hudson River School und die deutsche Romantik," in Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser et al. (eds.), Neue Welt. Die Erfindung der amerikanischen Malerei (München: Hirmer, 2007). 39 Richter, Alexander von Humboldt, 114. 40 Ibid., 122. 41 Ibid., 130.

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was accurate, conclusions could be drawn about the history of the earth.42 Humboldt made use of visual representations at every opportunity. Ink drawings such as that of a piranha prove that he made his own compositions at the same time as constituting the somewhat clumsy, dilettantish record of an inexperienced drawer. Moreover, in this instance, the sheet of paper was covered with extensive textual explanations, indicating a fairly even weighting of image and text.43 Throughout his travels, the researcher collected, dried and pressed plants, which provided the basis for subsequent illustrations.44 Humboldt commissioned illustrations from many artists, including the French illustrator François Turpin. They used Humboldt's own sketches and observations as points of reference and,45 for the various editions of Vues de Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples Indigènes de l'Amerique (1810-13), Humboldt commissioned 69 such illustrations.46 As a rule, Humboldt generally preferred the sensuous look and feel of landscape painting over the naturalistic representations provided by photography with all their faithfulness to detail.47 The naturalist used his influence to secure financial support for landscape painters such as Johann Moritz Rugendas, Ferdinand Bellermann, Albert Berg, and Eduard Hildebrant, all of whom followed in Humboldt's footsteps in attempting to understand and illustrate scenes from South America. They exchanged letters with Humboldt with a view to capturing the atmosphere of these exotic landscapes as well as to contributing to the completion of detailed, scientific studies. Thus Rugendas provided illustrations for Physiognomie der Gewächse that were to Humboldt's complete satisfaction—because they conveyed only what was considered significant.48

42 Ibid., 169. 43 Ulli Kulke, Alexander von Humboldts Reise nach Südamerika (München: Frederking & Thaler, 2010): 74. 44 Ibid., 12. 45 Ibid., 57. 46 Richter, Alexander von Humboldt. 47 Renate Löschner, Lateinamerikanische Landschaftsdarstellungen der Maler aus dem Umkreis von Alexander von Humboldt (Inaugural Dissertation Berlin, 1976): 17. 48 Ibid., 33.

I NTRODUCTION | 25

These personalities of the natural sciences were and remain internationally renowned. But in view of this, and of the popularity of the increasingly widespread scientific visual culture that emerged in the context of the transnational transfer of knowledge among elites in the natural sciences during the latter half of the nineteenth century, the dynamic and, specifically, the blind spot of American scientific discourse during the same period is all the more noticeable: in the expedition reports of the 1860s and 1870s, there was no theoretical reflection on the role of the image or of the photograph. Indeed, the illustrations, photographs, and reproductions in these publications served for the most part as decoration and, as such, remained trapped in the ideals of the picturesque and the sublime. Nowhere do they achieve anything like the scientific or pictorial qualities of Darwin's drawings or Humboldt's diagrammatic paintings of the natural world. This lack of sophistication simultaneously prompts the overriding question as to the distinguishing characteristics of scientific elites working within various national contexts. The biographies of immigrants and emigrés such as the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz shed much light on exchanges and relations involved in processes of knowledge transfer on both sides of the Atlantic. While trying to make a name for himself as a young scientist, Agassiz became acquainted with Alexander von Humboldt in 1832 in Paris. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.49 Agassiz had already began to oversee an extensive publishing empire in Europe and commissioned a whole raft of illustrators in the natural sciences, some of whom even accompanied him in 1846 to the United States. The publication of his Ètudes sur les Glacier in 1840 established him as an internationally recognized authority in geology; he substantially influenced scholarly opinion on the formation of glaciers and significantly contributed to knowledge of the ice age. The ship he boarded in Liverpool on 19 September 1846 carried the most up-to-date knowledge of the natural sciences in Europe to the Americas.50 Upon arrival, Agassiz was quickly introduced to the cream of American scientists and his comprehensive knowledge celebrated in an almost frenetic manner. Lurie attributed the response to the comparatively undeveloped nature of American

49 Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz. A Life in Science (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1988): 65. 50 Ibid., 119.

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science in the 1840s and the simultaneous consciousness of the potential to make swift advances—not least on the back of Agassiz's discoveries—, as well as to a contemporary utilitarianism that saw the value of science as lying in its capacity to strengthen the nation's economy.51 With the support of his friend, the Harvard botanist Asa Gray, Agassiz received a teaching position at Harvard in 1848. Like so many scientists of the day, Gray's research drew heavily on a collection of realia, acquired paintings or drawings, his own sketches and a range of other sources, including a collection of Carleton Watkins's landscape and nature photography.52 Like Agassiz, Gray was a representative of an empirical science of a Humboldtian cast. The unmistakable motif of manifest destiny and Western expansion play a role in his geological expeditions in the United States.53 But in the interim, a bitterly fought dispute came between the scientists, concerning the implications for religion and the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution. Agassiz publicly registered his opposition to the theory of the evolution of the species in January 1859, prompting lasting controversy among the American scientific elite.54 Asa Gray argued against Agassiz and defended Darwin: a collection of Gray's essays on the matter, Darwiniana, was published in 1860.55 The dispute between Darwin and Agassiz centered on the incompatibility of the theory of evolution with the catechism of orthodox believers. Agassiz perceived Darwin as assuming the status of an interpreter of the divine plan,56 whereas for Agassiz himself, the continuous

51 Ibid., 133. 52 Asa Gray Papers, Harvard University Herbaria, Botany Library Archives, Photographs and Illustrations. 53 David N. Livingstone, "A Geologist by Profession, a Geographer by Inclination: Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and Geography at Harvard," in Clark A. Ellitoo, Margaret W. Rossiter (eds.), Science at Harvard University, Historical Perspectives (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1992): 147. 54 Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 292. 55 A. Hunter Dupree, "Introduction," in ibid., Asa Gray - Darwiniana. Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1963): xiv. 56 Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 85.

I NTRODUCTION | 27

development of all life was proof of the all powerful mind of the creator. He refused to recognize Darwin's theory of evolution.57 While the expeditions into as yet uncharted territory in the "wild west" were economically motivated, the systematic photographic records they generated attest to the blossoming of American landscape photography. As a result of which, photographers such as Carleton Watkins, Timothy O'Sullivan, William H. Jackson, und John Karl Hillers first became well-known. However, as already mentioned, studies by scholars such as Clarence King, John Powell, Ferdinand Hayden, and George Wheeler never incorporated any systematic reflection on the relationship between image and science. The scholars' surveys were punctuated by photographs, including those that they themselves had commissioned. Nonetheless, most of the photographs selected almost seemed to strengthen the myth of the wilderness as repeatedly portrayed in contemporary travel guides. Though the highpoint of American landscape photography directly coincided with the surveys, the vision of nature communicated in the photographs never found a place in scientific reflection in the same way that drawings by Viollet-le-Ducs or Darwin did. But what sort of circumstances and ideas formed the background from which this American visual culture stemmed? And which cultural properties can be recognized? Can these pictures be said to relate to a specifically American scientific discourse and what values are attached in this discourse to photographic images of environmental phenomena? The foundations for the specific direction that American scientific discourse took with reference to the environment during the nineteenth century are to be found in the areas of religion and economy. In the tradition of thought extending from John Ruskin to Thomas Cole and in the American philosophy of transcendentalism, landscape and its visual representation generally possessed a powerfully religious quality; both were interpreted as evidence of a romantic understanding of the world. Ruskin developed his aesthetic theory in the midst of the high point of the Victorian passion for travel in the 1850s and 1860s, as Englishmen and Scotsmen risked their lives in droves attempting to conquer the most dangerous peaks in the

57 Ibid., 255.

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Swiss Alps.58 In Modern Painters, he philosophized in the tradition of Kant on the sky as an infinite expanse of heavenly beauty, and proof of a divine presence: "And if you look intensely at the pure blue of a serene sky, you will see that there is a variety and fullness in its very repose. It is not flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, transparent body of penetrable air, in which you trace or imagine short, falling spots of deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled vestiges of dark vapor; and it is this trembling transparency which our great modern master has especially aimed at and given. His blue is never laid on in smooth coats, but in breaking, mingling, melting hues, a quarter of an inch of which, cut off from all the rest of the picture, is still spacious, still infinite and immeasurable in depth. It is a painting of the air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are near you into those which are far off; something which has a surface and through which we can plunge far and farther, and without stay or end, into the profundity of space."

59

It has of course been established that Ruskin never read Kant.60 Nonetheless, in Ruskin's aesthetic theory, art and scientific discourse merge with one another. According to Werner Busch, Ruskin perceived "a basis for art in the natural sciences," and, in a way that is related to Goethe, Humboldt, and Carus, "views art with the eyes of a naturalist." All of which, remarked Busch, resulted in Ruskin encouraging artists and critics to benefit from the knowledge yielded by optics, geology, meteorology, botany, and anatomy."61 Ruskin did not consider the aim of artistic representations of the world to lie in producing naturalistic illustrations characterized by their faithfulness to detail but rather in the artistic realization of "the truth of the 58 David Robertson, "Mid-Victorians amongst the Alps," in U.C. Knoepflmacher, G.B. Tennyson (eds.), Nature and the Victorian Imagination (Berkley: University of California Press, 1977): 113. 59 John Ruskin, "Of Truth of Skies," (1843/1856) in Werner Busch (ed.), Landschaftsmalerei (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 1997), 283. "Of Truth of Skies" first published in Modern Painters, vol. 1 (1843). 60 George P. Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971): 17. 61 Werner Busch, "Kommentar [John Ruskin]," in Busch (ed.), Landschaftsmalerei, 290.

I NTRODUCTION | 29

perceived."62 Landow also conceded that while Ruskin considered mimesis to be the basis of art, it was elevation and creativity that made art sublime, these being the same aspects that Ruskin cited in arguing against photography.63 This symbiosis of art, nature, and science was missing in Thomas Cole's Essay on American Scenery (1835), a groundbreaking text in the American context. Instead, Cole drew attention to the religious understanding of nature, in addition to the specifically American quality of the wonder of nature and its promotion.64 The influence of religion therefore played a significant role in art historians' analyses of American landscape painting of the nineteenth century. This is true of most interpretations of pictures by Frederic Church, especially where his South American allegories, inspired by Humboldt, are concerned.65 In terms of literature, there emerged with the kindred spirits of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau a view of nature as a physical place of recovery as well as a spiritual space for contemplation in which the individual can reflect once again on his true nature—away from the disruption of modern, civilized society. As such, Thoreau's literary debut in 1848 was widely celebrated for the "authentic" talent it exhibited and the humble lifestyle that Thoreau himself led in that he depended only on essentials.66 Via his later influence in the founding of the preservationist movement and on the nature apologist John Muir, the transcendental conception of nature in the 1890s entered into pictorial symbiosis with photographic images of landscapes and thereby strengthened existing interpretations of the sublime in nature as an indication of divine revelation. At the same time, religion also played a role in North American scientific culture, insofar as the latter was categorically rejected by influential, leading American scientists for religious reasons. As previously mentioned, Louis Agassiz fought against

62 Ibid. 63 Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin, 24. 64 Thomas Cole, "Essay on American Scenery," in John W. McCouberey (ed.), American Art 1700–1960 (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965): 98–109. 65 John Davis, "Frederic Church's Late Career: The Landscape of History," in ibid., The Landscape of Belief: Encoutering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 66 Horace Greely, "A Lesson for Young Poets," in Walter Harding (ed.), Thoreau as Seen by his Contemporaries (New York: Dover Publications, 1989): 3.

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Darwin's theory of the continuous development of species through a natural process of selection.67 As expedition leader on the great surveys and, indeed, of all the scientists on the great surveys, probably the one most involved in the contemporary geological dispute, the deeply religious Clarence King also became a disciple of an aesthetic worldview akin to that of Ruskin. The religious connotations of images of landscapes such as these are echoed in much cited interpretations of William Henry Jackson's The Mount of the Holy Cross.68 The conventions of representation that Jackson followed here can be related to those seen in a wood engraving by James Mahoney entitled Fog-Bow Seen from the Matterhorn on July 14, 1865, which was cut by Edward Whymper and adorns the front cover of Scrambles amongst the Alps (1871).69 Here too, there appeared a cross on the summit of a mountain as a divine sign, the presence of which was confirmed by the explorers who were present—however, not a single person is present in Jackson's photography. While Clarence King also maintained a religious outlook, as Donald Worster has shown in his biography,70 this did not prompt him to deny the existence of processes of geological transformation—something that will be examined in more detail in the first chapter. Thoreau's understanding of nature, which was just as influenced by Humboldt as it is by Darwin, also combined transcendentalism and an empirical approach to science—as Laura Dassow Walls has shown. Thoreau was impressed by the observations of nature in Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist round the World.71 His enthusiasm led to a far-reaching "empirical turn" in his outlook, which not

67 Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 314. 68 Ferdinand Hayden, The Yellowstone National Park, and the Mountain Regions of Portions of Idaho, Nevada, Colorado and Utah (Boston: L. Prang and Company, 1876), table 10 and accompanying explanation. 69 David Robertson, "Mid-Victorians amongst the Alps," in Knoepflmacher, Tennyson (eds.), Nature and the Victorian Imagination, 118. 70 Worster, A River Running West, 314. 71 Laura Dassow Walls, Seeing New Worlds: Henry Thoreau and NineteenthCentury Natural Science (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995): 124.

I NTRODUCTION | 31

only distinguished his subsequent thought from that of Emerson, but from many contemporary European and Anglo-Saxon natural philosophers. Emerson turned explicitly against the empirical perception of the world. Indeed, he would have gladly seen it relinquished in order "to absorb and remake nature into spirit."72 In contrast to which, Walls has considered Thoreau's about-turn a break with the narrative of "rational holism," in which nature is conceived of as a mechanical-organic entity. Instead, Thoreau interpreted nature "as a divine or transcendent unity fully comprehended only through thought"73—a similar position to that of the German natural philosophers of the Enlightenment and their view of nature. Thoreau modified this outlook by integrating it with an empirical science in the tradition of Humboldt und Darwin. This resulted for Thoreau in a synthesis, an idea of "empirical holism" as a model that incorporated the interconnections, taken as given, between the world and isolated phenomena. In short, Thoreau believed that the close study of isolated phenomena would lead to the explanation of general processes.74 The second component—the economy—also had specifically American characteristics and was also linked to a particular current of thought, that of the philosophy of pragmatism. The striving for efficiency and for results seemed to leave no room for aesthetic reflection on nature and its representation in various media. Instead, nature was to be measured and inventoried in order to establish the quantities of mineral deposits and other resources that the nation had at its disposal. This too was accompanied by an ideational relation between the echo of Darwin's theory of evolution in the justification of a socio-Darwinian survival of the fittest on the one hand and the American belief in progress in the latter half of the nineteenth century on the other. As John West has remarked, Darwin's theory was often employed in support of an unregulated capitalism and reduced state in the age of the robber barons.75 Yet, in sharp contrast to such arguments, West also

72 Ibid., 133. 73 Ibid., 4. 74 Ibid., 4. "The second 'empirical holism' was an emergent alternative which stressed that the whole could be understood only by studying the interconnections of its constituent and individual parts." 75 John G. West, "Darwin's Public Policy. Nineteenth Century Science and the Rise of the American Welfare State," in John Marini, Ken Masugi, The Progres-

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discerned the instrumentalization of a Darwinian model in the establishment of a regulated welfare state. Thus, Darwin's theory could have served just as well in undermining the supremacy of capitalism as in supporting attacks by Progressives on the limited capacity of the state—or for that matter, in justifying the state impinging on the private life of American families.76 Behind all of which, John Dewey's voice can be heard and the influence of his philosophy of pragmatism detected—both of which called for a new democratic way of living. In the 1920s, his demands of the state were translated into an understanding of government as a means of communicating and balancing economic aims, technical innovation, and democratic ideals.77 His theory hinged on the concept of growth set out in Reconstruction in Philosophy. Dewey established moral criteria for evaluating growth, according to which he distinguished between positive and negative outcomes for society.78 Thus economic growth was considered worthwhile for a society only when accompanied by an expansion of the critical power of judgment associated with social intelligence and accompanied by appropriate societal models. In the sense of this school of philosophy, the leaders of the four great expeditions of the latter half of the nineteenth century were pragmatists who, as explorers engaged in an expansionary project, came from a background associated less with the refined world of intellectual reflection and more with the American capitalistic model of economy. The landscape must be measured and evaluated in terms of empirically gathered statistics and other data. During the raw days and nights in the field, there remained little space for philosophical observations and explanations. After the expeditions' successful conclusion, the main task was the calculation of reliable prognoses for future economic development. Nonetheless, as Rudwick has pointed out, the continuous development of a visual language in the discipline of geology provided the background

sive Revolution in Politics and Science. Transforming the American Regime (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005): 253. 76 Ibid., 253. 77 Alison Kadlec, Dewey’s Critical Pragmatism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007): 2. 78 Ibid., 46.

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for an exponential increase in the use of visual aids such as maps, graphics, or statistics in empirical studies of a given region during the 1870s, which were in turn translated into the economic management of land and resources. Michael Conzen has emphasized the significance of maps in the United States in representing social circumstances and constructing a vision of national identity. However, with regard to the great surveys, these visual representations were used as the foundations for an economic model. There are no sophisticated observations informed by scientific theory in the reports of the expedition leaders. Where they were concerned with the appearance of landscapes it was only with regard to their picturesque qualities and these conformed to a religious picture of the world. The dialectical division between efforts geared toward generating scientific knowledge on the one hand and a world outlook on the other is most pronounced with reference to Clarence King; Powell developed the science of ethnology and anthropology, Hayden popularized science, and Wheeler completed his report on infrastructure with a military sense of duty. With respect to all of these areas and all of these aspects, photographic images of environmental phenomena have played a role in the translation of various kinds of concerns. One could also say that, as a result of the application of photographic images of landscapes in a wide range of mediatized spheres, the visually driven culture of science has been stretched to the point of dissolution. That is, photographic images of environmental phenomena did not only play a role in the specialization of scientific discourse that I shall describe. They also illustrated the ideology of manifest destiny, the emergence of mass tourism, of a transcendental world outlook and associated visions of nature; they served to support arguments that emerge with the nascent preservationist and conservationist movements as well as with the onset of nature tourism. And above all, their use coincided with economic aims. Further, after 1890, they could be reproduced for the purposes of publicity and thus photographic images of environmental phenomena were quickly incorporated into multi-functional, mass media advertisements and became commercial products in their own right, the ambivalence of which suited them to the greatest possible scope of arguments.

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This book presents political intentions as the framing narrative of photographic images. These intentions help contextualize and explain the photographic image and reveal levels not immediately apparent in the pictorial language of the works themselves. Last but not least, the intentions behind and the conditions for the public circulation of the image are also explained. Chapter One provides the context for the emergence of photographic images of environmental phenomena during the great surveys of the 1860s and 1870s and shows how associated visual cultures were adapted to suit the specialization of scientific discourses during the same period. Chapter Two highlights the significance of photographs in the 1930s for directing and evaluating land management processes and for the rural economy generally, including as a means of shaping attitudes and practices. Chapter Three covers the 1970s and the Documerica project, which was intended to play a decisive role in the state's management of environmental conflicts. This last chapter is specifically concerned with the use of the exhibition format, which was supposed to be the basis for establishing a leading role for the United States in the international, institutionalized environmental protection movement.

Collecting Visual Evidence— Nineteenth-century Landscape Photography and the Emergence of Science

In The Pencil of Nature, the first theoretical reflection on photography, Henry Fox Talbot enthusiastically described a "new art of Photogenic Drawing," whereby, "without any aid whatever from the artist's pencil," light could be applied to a light-sensitive sheet of paper in order to create an image that contained and froze reality.1 The automatic operation by which the image was "impressed by Nature's hand" on the paper was met with boundless enthusiasm among scholars throughout Europe and prompted fierce competition as regards refining photographic methods. The Pencil of Nature—written in 1844—referred to the calotype process that Talbot had developed himself, a method by which treated paper served as a photographic negative. This distinguished the technique from the Daguerreotype, a process named after the inventor and Talbot's French competitor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre.2 It was not only the refinement and the respective virtues of these techniques that excited the era's private scholars. Discussions raged, touting the implications and potential of the new photographic processes. Talbot's 1

Henry Fox Talbot, "Introductory Remarks," in ibid., The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1844), http://www.gutenberg.org /files/33447/33447-h/33447-h.html#toc2, accessed 09/21/2013.

2

The Daguerreotype involved treating a copper plate with a layer of silver, fixing it to a metal plate, and directly exposing it to light in order to create a unique, singular image.

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contemporaries were particularly fascinated by the perfection of the image rendering and the precision captured in the details of the subject. Talbot drew on such properties when alluding to the new technique's usefulness, albeit without knowing exactly what form its application would take: "[…] and though we may not be able to conjecture with any certainty what rank [these pictures] may hereafter attain to as pictorial productions, they will surely find their own sphere of utility, both for completeness of detail and correctness of perspective."3

Talbot's thoughts accompanied the book, illustrating the scope of the technique's application, and presenting a range of areas in which it could be applied: examples included the production of a facsimile of a printed page, the archiving of works of art, the creation of records concerning the conservation of monuments or the realization of more artistic photographs. The book's tenth plate, entitled "The Haystack," pointed to a further possible area in which photography could be applied. Talbot considered the grounds for the expectations that scholars had of the medium to lie in the precision and naturalistic quality of the photographically produced images: "One advantage of the discovery of the Photographic Art will be, that it will enable us to introduce into our pictures a multitude of minute details which add to the truth and reality of the representation, but which no artist would take the trouble to copy faithfully from nature."

4

During the course of the nineteenth century, the photographic technique was destined to provoke animated discussions and fascinate the liberal courts, university scholars and researchers, preempting the way in which nineteenth-century naturalists were to enthusiastically project their visions of what the applications of photography would be. At that time, a lively exchange of correspondence ensued amongst the curious scholars. Photography's outstanding reception and the expectations invested in the technique are well researched with reference, for instance, to the writings and works

3

Ibid.

4

H. Fox Talbot, "The Hay Stack," in ibid., The Pencil of Nature.

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of the omnipresent naturalist Alexander von Humboldt,5 who not only entered into correspondence with both Daguerre and Talbot, but at the same time busily collected photographic images for his own studies and commissioned photographers too. Early micrographs of the Breslau botanist and paleontologist Heinrich Robert Goeppert were to be found in von Humboldt's collection, along with images tracking the orbit of the moon— among astrology's first photographic observations—, documentation of Indian high cultures and a large number of travel photographs from all over the world.6 Humboldt's Kosmos also described the virtues of photographic representations of tropical natural settings as accurate documents of the physiognomy of plants: "Characteristic studies, sketched from the abrupt precipices of Himalaya and the Cordilleras, or in the interior of the Indian and South American continents, with their numerous rivers, and represented by transparencies, in which not the foliage but the peculiar form of the gigantic stems, and their mode of branching, are well set forth, would have an almost magical effect."7 However, the way in which photography fired naturalists' imaginations and influenced the direction of their research remained largely dependent on the form that the alliance between photography and science took in each individual case. In general, photography's use in the scholarly production of knowledge and as a point of reference therein did not tend to go beyond a non-specific passion for collecting and the enthusiast's desire to reproduce the external world in miniature. Despite the new opportunity afforded to scholars of having a precise record of the object of study to hand, photog-

5

See Erich Stenger, "Alexander von Humboldt und die beginnende Photographie," in Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Photographie, Phtotphysik und Photochemie, 31.1932/1933: 54-67.

6

Hanno Beck, "Alexander von Humboldt: Förderer der Photographie," in Bodo von Dewitz and Reinhard Matz (eds.), Silber und Salz: Zur Frühzeit der Photographie im deutschen Sprachraum 1839–1860 (Köln and Heidelberg: Edition Braus, 1989): 44, 46, 47, 50.

7

Alexander von Humboldt, Kosmos: A General Survey of Physical Phenomena of the Universe (London: Hippolyte Bailltere, 1848): 91, http://archive.org/stream/ kosmosagenerals00humbgoog/kosmosagenerals00humbgoog_djvu.txt, accessed 15/07/2013.

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raphy quite often retained the status of a sketch that merely supported the memory of the moment of observation. In this regard, the impact of photography on American sciences is reflected in an article by the American doctor and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes published in June 1859 in The Atlantic Monthly.8 Like Talbot, Holmes entertained the idea of capturing nature in the image that the light created: "Out of the perverse and totally depraved negative,—where it might almost seem as of some magic and diabolic power had wrenched all things from their properties, where the light of the eye was darkness, and the deepest blackness was gilded with the brightest glare,—is to come the true end of all this series of operations, a copy of Nature in all her sweet gradations and harmonies and contrasts."9 Holmes sensed to a certain extent the added value that the naturalness of the photographic image might bring to scholarly endeavors and wrote enthusiastically of the advantages of photographs, given the richness of detail they provided as a record.10 Moreover, nineteenth-century commentators understood photography as an innovative medium that went hand in hand with technical advancement and the renewal of the natural sciences. They even considered it a philosophical, epistemological medium that enabled a new perception of the world and paved the way for new scientific notions and insights. In the epoch of the amateur researcher, the photographic medium contained an educational promise, for almost everyone who acquired the relatively cheap mass-produced stereographs could start out as a researcher of foreign and exotic worlds. Accurate illustrations revealing details and connections that up until then had remained hidden from view were now available to them: travelling to the location in which the object of study could be found was no longer a prerequisite. Thus Holmes suggested the idea of a "visual stereoscopic library," in which "men can find the special forms they particularly desire to see as artists, or as scholars, or as mechanics, or in any other capacity."11 Such a pictorial lexicon of natural phenomena, as well as of eve-

8

Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Stereoscope and the Stereograph," in The Atlantic Monthly, June 1859, Vol. 3., http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/ 1859/06/the-stereoscope-and-the-stereograph/303361/, accessed 09/21/2013.

9

Holmes, "The Stereoscope and the Stereograph," 741.

10 Ibid., 744. 11 Ibid., 748.

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ryday objects, would certainly have had an enormous effect on the emergent expert discourse of naturalists, which had previously been conducted exclusively among private scholars of the upper middle class. But Holmes's proposal went unrealized. Nonetheless, spurred on by Talbot's Pencil of Nature and Holmes's fostering of a general passion for the collection of photographic images and memories, the scientific hunt for previously unobserved and unrecognized laws of nature and the search for hidden connections proceeded apace: despite their known limitations, photographs were predominantly considered a direct reflection and articulation of nature itself. In the American context, this euphoria over technology and the appreciation of the photographic medium emerged at a moment in history in which naturalists were busily pressing forward, under the pressure of the European model, with the exploration and research of the North American continent. In this respect too, photography promised to enter into symbiosis with the work of up and coming scientists and, in particular, with the advances in geology made as a result of the geological surveys during the 1860s. As these expeditions continued and, in the process, the geological surveys became a state institution, they generated a massive volume of photographic documentation. Indeed, the medium had accompanied the surveys from the outset, when the initiators of these scientific endeavors were private persons. Photography, in which naturalists in Europe and the United States had invested considerable hope, was initially to prove itself first and foremost a carrier of geological knowledge. In an emotionally charged nationalist atmosphere, American landscape photography blossomed, linked to the names of Carleton Watkins, Henry William Jackson, Timothy O'Sullivan, and John K. Hillers. All of which are today considered precursors of modernism,12 although in 1982, Rosalind

12 For the beginning of this narrative see John Szarkowski, "Introduction," in ibid. (ed.), The Photographer and the American Landscape (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1963): 3; Weston Naef attributes the first desire to succeed as an artist to Carleton Watkins, see Weston J. Naef, Era of Exploration. The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West, 1860-1885 (Boston: New York Graphic Society 1975): 27; in his introduction, Page Stegner praises Timothy

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Krauss has scrutinized such assumptions for their historical accuracy and she has criticized scholarship that did not take into account the historical context and real circumstances of nineteenth-century entrepreneurial photographers.13 The relationship between photography and science played a major role in shaping the understanding and meaning of landscape photography as an outdoor practice that emerged in the nineteenth century. Photographic images produced in the context of the four geological surveys influenced scholarly debates on the role of the photograph in scientific reports, at the same time as often providing the source of images in popular publications; and, moreover, opened up new channels for the circulation and dissemination of specific ideologies and interests. Additionally, the particular interests of the leaders of the surveys influenced photographic modes of depiction and altered common photographic practices regarding the genre of landscape photography—as well as the understanding of photography among a select, yet diverse group of contemporary American natural historians. In this regard, the period of the geological surveys in the 1860s and 70s, and the visual documents that they generated, are of great interest, as this is when photography began contributing to the process of specialization taking place in natural history. Along with geological debates and the implementation of government land management practices, the rise of the preservation movement also ensued, with John Muir playing a lead role in some of its key achievements, including the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 and Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks in 1890. The general believe, according to which nature was there for man to exploit, which prevailed in the era of expansion, began to be challenged in the outgoing Gilded Age. As a new background, these scientific-technological objectives consequently shaped a new kind of category of image: photographic images of environmental phenomena.

O'Sullivan's artistry and framing eye while simultaneously asserting the pictures to be "brutally honest"; see Page Stegner, "Introduction," in Toby Jurovics et. al. (eds.), Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy O'Sullivan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010): 1; in the same collection, Jurovics reflects on Sullivan's artistic skills. 13 Rosalind Krauss, "Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View," in Art Journal 42, no. 4 (December 1982): 313–22.

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The geological expeditions of the 1860s and 70s, caused by the expansion of territories settled in the West, had been placed at the center of the growing national discussion regarding the notion of abundance. Numerous books have argued that, for all its promise, the negative effects of Western expansion on the natural environment far outweighed any positive effects; and Frieda Knobloch has concisely made the case for viewing the colonization of the West as being driven by agricultural concerns.14 During this time, Frederick Turner's "frontier thesis" of 1893 warned his fellow American about the stagnation of unlimited expansion,15 and other contemporaries started a critical discussion regarding the environmental issues involved. In this context, George P. Marsh's 1864 publication Man and Nature described to his contemporaries the warning signals of nature's degradation resulting from extensive deforestation. Marsh entertained an almost apocalyptic vision, but at the same time, combined his dark prophecy with an optimistic faith that disaster could be averted if certain issues were addressed and responded to in time.16 Additionally, Mash serves an excellent example of how economic considerations at the turn of the century mingle with other ways of looking at nature, such as progressivist, preservationist, scientific, and aesthetic. In his understanding of nature, humanity had always shaped the environment, as a result of which, the landscape was continuously altered. This idea allowed him to articulate his unique perception of the interplay of man and nature.17 Marsh's discussion of nature's exploitation, among other influences, prepared the way for a nascent environmental awareness, although the nineteenth-century preservationist understanding of nature naturally differs from modern environmentalism. Predominantly, scholars of the period were molded by a utilitarian understanding of

14 Frieda Knobloch, The Culture of Wilderness: Agriculture as Colonization in the American West (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996): I. 15 William H. Truettner, "Ideology and Image, Justifying Westward Expansion," in ibid. (ed.), The West as America, Reinterpreting Images Of The Frontier, 1820– 1920 (Washington: National Museum of American Art Washington, 1991); Frederick Jackson Turner, History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993). 16 William Cronon, "Foreword: Look Back to Look Forward," in Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh, Loc: 190. 17 Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh, Loc: 1251.

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nature, meaning that man was allowed to exploit the land for his own benefit.18 As a result, extensive studies to identify soils suitable for prospective settlements were conducted during the course of geological surveys, and the insights they offered nourished the emerging fields of conservation and land management, preparing the way for agricultural progress and, ultimately, the transformation of the United States from a rural into a modern—and industrial—society. The geological surveys mapped the land and evaluated soils, mineral resources, water supplies and possibilities for farming. And as their proposals indicate, their agenda reflected a thoroughly utilitarian outlook.19 At this conjuncture of technology, science, industrialization and capitalism, photography played an important role as a mediator of information. Photographs were used for various purposes, often bringing multiple (and conflicting) intentions into play. Photography became a harbinger of environmental data that could be put to work in a form of visual advocacy. Moreover, once photography began to be used in natural history, its potential as a medium for depicting and concisely summarizing complex scientific concepts in the form of visual illustrations became clear, thus meeting needs that had begun to emerge in the 1830s. As Anne Farrar Hyde has pointed out, expeditionist's John Charles Frémont's reports for the years between 1838 and 1842 still lacked the visual language to describe what he had experienced in uncharted territories.20 Michael L. Smith on the contrary has credited explorer Charles Wilke's expeditions as the first to combine scientific and political objectives in the late 1830s,21 and Martha Sandweiss

18 American naturalists Alpheus Hyatt and Alpheus Spring Packard spoke of a "utilitarian age" in 1867. For this quotation see James G. Cassidy, Ferdinand V. Hayden: Entrepreneur of Science (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000): 28. 19 Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976): 17. 20 Anne Farrar Hyde, An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820–1920 (New York: New York University Press, 1990): 2. 21 Michael L. Smith, Pacific Visions: California, Scientists and the Environment, 1850–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987): 13.

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has noted that illustrations became an essential part of Wilke's reports.22 Photography commissioned by scientists would finally offer new form of visual representation that developed into a multifunctional tool for supporting and driving scientific debates.

1. P HOTOGRAPHY

AND

G EOLOGY : C LARENCE K ING

The rise of federal survey photography in the 1860s intertwined with various nationalist and commercial ventures and their pictorial legacy, all of which have been extensively discussed.23 But this also means that visual documents and photographs began to be used for scientific purposes. Stereographs as well as wet plate expeditionary photography fed nationalist feelings and draw attention to the expeditioners' heroism, but, more importantly, created a visual language of its own. The Niagara Falls for example would soon be eclipsed as "America's foremost symbol of nature" by the more spectacular landscapes of the West, depicted by painters and photographers alike in popular series.24 The invention of the collodion process enabled photographers to start focusing on the mountains, vales, rocks, and trees of the West, thus creating a new genre of the geologic sublime.25

22 Sandweiss, Print the Legend. Photography and the American West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002): 292. 23 See Weston J. Naef, Era of Exploration. The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West, 1860-1885 (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975); Sandra Phillips (eds.), Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the present (San Francisco: San Francisco Art Museum of Modern Art, c. 1996); Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publ., 2010); John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Martha A. Sandweiss (ed.), Photography in Nineteenth-century America (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum / New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991); William Irwin, The New Niagara. Tourism, Technology, and the Landscape of Niagara Falls 1776–1917 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 1996). 24 William Irwin, The New Niagra, 71. 25 Naef, Era of Exploration, 21.

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The notion of the geologic sublime does not however fully describe the scientific language developed. Weston Naef has drawn attention to the birth of landscape photography with reference to Carleton Watkins, and the subtle differences in interpretations of nature that emerged as a result of competition between San Francisco-based photographers like Watkins, Weeds, and Muybridge during the years from 1867 to 1873.26 Naef's story of the visual, commercially oriented depiction of Yosemite, like that told by other scholars, neglects the scientific insights that photography supported during the four geological surveys. Federal expeditionary photography of the 1860s and 70s was at a crossroads. On the one hand, national pride was at stake in competition between nation-states in the fields of technology and science. On the other, as a result of the same competition, there was a growing recognition of the scarcity of natural resources manifested inter alia in the emerging preservation movement. Federal expeditionary photography opened the way for a variety of new perspectives on the land. But, as Martha Sandweiss has made clear, the photographic documents produced were "never meant to stand as independent works of art."27 Scholars routinely announce the end of America's great landscape painting tradition in this period, with the decline of the Hudson River school and the loss of interest in the exploration of the West at the turn of the century. While the interest in depictions of wilderness was vanishing, the French school of Barbizon and the birth of Impressionism supplanted realist depictions of nature with avant-garde styles.28 Meanwhile, the blossoming of outdoor photography, which coincided with the four geological surveys of the 1860s and 70s, displaced the painterly genre as the dominant medium of landscape depiction, but at the same time, trivialized the landscape genre by the production of subordinate prints and cheap copies. Finally, debates in political, engineering, and scientific spheres provided a counterpoint to the popularizing tendency of photography, by adding a new layer of meaning to photographic documents produced for scientific purposes.

26 Ibid., 40. 27 Sandweiss, Print the Legend, 184. 28 Barbara B. Millhouse, American Wilderness: The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting (New York: Black Dome Press, 2007): 181.

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On 2 March 1867, the United States Congress authorized the first expedition of the four Great Surveys to explore the regions along the fortieth meridian.29 In the years from 1867 to 1872, four expeditions under different leaders were conducted concurrently to gather knowledge of the as yet uncharted territories in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. The wish to unite east and west coasts by settling the land in between had an effect on this mapping of the land. Clarence King was named the leader of the so-called Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel in 1867, not least on the basis of the skills he had acquired after graduating from Yale by volunteering in Josiah D. Whitney's California Geological Survey in 1864. Officially, his task was to map the region and to explore the prospects for new settlements, as expressed in a letter to King from General Andrew A. Humphrey, chief of army engineers, written on 21 March 1867. In this letter, Humphrey requested that King "examine and describe the geological structure, geographical conditions and natural resources."30 In meeting this challenge, Clarence King explored the area between California and Wyoming, including Nevada, Utah and Colorado starting at Sacramento and then following the fortieth parallel eastwards. Since President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act in July 1862, the vast territories of the West had rapidly begun to lose their status as an uncharted wilderness. The first rails were laid at Sacramento in October 1863, as work begun on the Central Pacific Railroad; the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad in Nebraska commenced soon afterward. The lines were ceremoniously connected in May 1869 at Promontory, creating the First Transcontinental Railroad, and the event was proudly celebrated as a national sensation in the media, illustrated by the news coverage of two photographers commissioned by the rail companies.31 Photography

29 Mary C. Rabbitt, "The United States Geological Survey: 1879–1989," in U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1050 (United States GPO, 1989), http://pubs.usgs. gov/circ/c1050/surveys.htm, accessed 8/25/2010. 30 Records of the Geological Survey, RG 57, National Archives Microfilm Publication M622, roll 1. Quoted after Jurovics, Framing the West, 15. 31 Sandweiss, Print the Legend, 158. Altogether, three photographers documented the occasion: Charles Savage, an independent commercial photographer based in Salt Lake City; Andrew J. Russell for the Union Pacific Railroad, and Alfred A. Hart, the official photographer of the Central Pacific Railroad. Russell's

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of the West has been widely used in advertising and in the promotion of the ideology of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion.32 Just as railroad photographs fuelled visions of the American nation in the heyday of capitalism, the "survey photographers likewise looked to the future even as they documented the very process of exploration."33 Following this aim, Andrew Russell's 1869 The Great West was among the first photo albums created by a photographer commissioned by a railway company, many of his photographs expressing the technological conquest of nature through the act of laying tracks, which itself became a harbinger of civilization. For his surveys in the years 1867, 1878, and 1879, King asked Timothy O'Sullivan to accompany the party, the photographer having already gained a good reputation as one of Matthey Brady's former employees during the Civil War. Rebecca Bedell has convincingly argued that geology and landscape painting were closely allied pursuits in the United States from 1825 to 1875.34 By way of contrast, Robin Kelsey has identified an "archive style" in his study on nineteenth-century survey photography, that is, a style that allowed scope for pictorial innovation at both the institutional level and, simultaneously, at the level of the individual photographer in terms of conveying the geological survey's general agenda.35 But although many of the examples of survey photography seem to have been inspired by the overall intention of the expedition, the differences in individual photographers' approaches are striking, despite their apparent resemblances. Whereas the photographers commissioned by the railway companies were explicitly asked to create images to attract homesteaders to adjacent land units, King's mandate to collect topographic data, for example, significantly influenced O'Sullivan and contributed to a purposive scientific orientation in photography that distinguishes O'Sullivan's work under King's direction from any of his other involvements.

picture appeared in reproduction in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, whereas Savage's version was published in Harper's Weekly. 32 Sandweiss, Print the Legend, 182. 33 Ibid. 34 Rebecca Bedell, The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825–1875 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001): ix. 35 Robin Earle Kelsey, Archive Style: Photographs & Illustrations for U.S. Surveys, 1850–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007): 8.

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Figure 1: Timothy O'Sullivan, Devil's Slide, 1869, Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, Clarence King, geologist in charge © Library of Congress P&P (LOT 7096, no. 31)

In comparison to his fellow expeditionists, King did not invest much effort in marketing images for their commercial value, although he did commission a small number of stereographs. For a devoted natural historian like King, at the forefront of research during the era, the pace of the survey, which aimed at the completion of a "rapid exploration" of "terra incognita," seemed too fast to allow for proper examination and a wider evaluation that would meet his academic standards.36 During the expedition, Timothy O'Sullivan was encouraged to take images that specifically coincide with King's personal interests. In a move that slowed the expedition down, O'Sullivan was asked to observe special rock formations and their surfaces. Furthermore, the photographer was asked to capture multiple views of sites

36 Clarence King, Systematic Geology: Report of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (Washington, DC: GPO, 1878): 4.

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carefully selected to illustrate different geological phenomena. O'Sullivan was allowed the time to find the best vantage points to depict rock formations from different angles, despite the inconvenience of moving around the heavy tripod and technical equipment. This methodology of physically moving around the sites in order to find the best perspective is exemplified in the series Devil's Slide, Utah, created in 1869. Devil's Slide shows a peculiar, extraordinary rock formation. Two massive limestone strata slash the side of a green mountaintop. In the frontal view—which is depicted here (Fig.1)—, the camera is situated so as to emphasize the parallel lines created by the strata, rendering a strikingly geometric composition. For a second view, the photographer stepped to the right. It focused in a little closer and stressed the huge scale of the tectonic bulging, while a third view captured from the left, stressed the surface and structure of the rock formation. O'Sullivan's search for the most illuminating vantage point is apparent in other photographs too, especially in his series on Echo Canyon, from 1869. As in the other series, O'Sullivan captured complimentary views of the gorge. A first view presented the gorge's entrance from the distance, recording its imposing mountain tops. A second view (Fig.2) draws attention to the rock surface's details. The photograph recorded marks of the erosion that shaped the mountain, the rock surface revealing the two separate forces that have molded it: one associated with plate tectonics and the other with a gigantic river or glacier eroding the rock. King must have drawn O'Sullivan's attention to these signs and asked him to record them, recognizing them to be of geologic importance in order to use them later on in arguments supporting the existence of bodies of water that once rushed through the gorge. The photographs provide scope for scientific analysis of the structure of the mountains, a topic that Clarence King as a scholar of natural history, geology in particular, was intensely occupied with. And although O'Sullivan's oeuvre was by no means confined solely to a single field of specialization, the photographs he produced for King reflect King's interest in specific details accordingly. In the process, his photography clearly departed from received traditions of landscape depiction, especially those established with the emergence of tourism and the representations of the West. In searching for different vantage points from which to document sites of geologic interest,

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O'Sullivan's artistic craft and King's scientific eye entered into symbiosis, along with the practice of photography and the formulation of scientific theory; photographic depictions of landscape became geologically grounded at the same time as feeding geological discussions of landscape. Figure 2: Timothy O'Sullivan, Echo Cañon, 1869, Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, Clarence King, geologist in charge © Library of Congress P&P (LOT 7096, no. 13)

Timothy O'Sullivan was not the only photographer with whom King worked. It is very likely that his decision to commission a photographer was informed by his former superior. In 1868, Josiah Whitney published the splendid, photographically illustrated album The Yosemite Book,37 using photographs by Carleton Watkins, who had worked as an independent photographer based in San Francisco since 1861, the year he first visited 37 James Dwight Whitney, The Yosemite Book: A Description of the Sierra Nevada, and of the Big Trees of California (New York: Julius Bien, 1868).

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Yosemite. In these San Francisco years, Watkins's images played a pivotal role in the encounter between geology and photography. Watkins's Yosemite photographs were displayed at New York's prestigious Goupil Art Gallery as early as December 1862, after which many of the most important natural historians became acquainted with the images. Those who could not travel to see them theirselves asked colleagues to send them prints. This handful of specialists became important for Watkins's career. W. H. Brewster of the State Geological Survey visited Watkins in January 1862.38 Later that year, Ralph Waldo Emerson came to see the photographs, and he has been credited with helping to have them exhibited in the first place.39 Louis Agassiz exuberantly praised Watkins's photographs for the wealth of information they provided about nature: "I have never seen photographs equal to these. [They] are the best illustrations I know of the physical character of any country."40 His Harvard colleague Asa Gray started to collect Watkins's photographs of trees and plants.41 Besides being disseminated amongst these renowned scientific fellows, Watkins's photographs were handed around among politicians. It is now common knowledge that Watkins's prints were distributed among Congressmen to canvas their support for the National Park Bill. Frederick Law Olmstead—chairman of the National Park Bill petition—even asked Watkins for his opinion on how best to preserve and enhance the beauty of the Yosemite Valley, after Yosemite became protected as a National Park under Californian State Law in 1864.42 And following the decision, some members of Congress adorned the walls of their offices with his prints.43 Whether or not Watkins's Yosemite photographs were motivated by any

38 Peter E. Palmquist, "Carleton E. Watkins Photographer of the American West," in ibid., (ed.), Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West (Albuquerque: Amon Carter Museum / University of New Mexico Press, 1983): 18. 39 Ibid., 1. 40 Maria Morris Hambourg, "Carleton Watkins: An Introduction," in Douglas R. Nickel (ed.), Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception (San Francisco: Museum of Modern Art, 1999): 10. 41 These prints can now to be found at the Harvard University Herbaria. 42 Palmquist, "Carleton E. Watkins Photographer of the American West," 19. 43 Ibid., 19.

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personal interest of his in seeing the park preserved, his photographs became crucial to the preservationists' battle. Figure 3: Carleton Watkins, Cathedral Rock, c. 1865/66 © New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs (Image ID: 435028)

Josiah Whitney's The Yosemite Book, luxuriously illustrated with 24 prints by Watkins and four by photographer William Harris, provided the first illustrated photo book of the period. In the tradition of European and American illustrated diaries and travel guides, it introduced the reader to the natural history of the Valley, as well as its curiosities.44 Therefore, the selection of photographs focused on spectacular scenery chosen for its picturesque or sublime qualities. The book gave impressions of the Valley's highlights, such as El Capitan, Half Dome, and the Big Trees, motifs that were to be repeatedly reproduced in later travel guides.

44 For the American context see James Mason Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras: The Yosemite Valley (Oakland: Pacific Press Publishing House, 1886).

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Intended as a photo-illustrated guide to popularize Yosemite for the broader public and the emerging tourist market, The Yosemite Book was no scientific treaty, although it did contain Whitney's geological theory on the Yosemite Valley. But despite having a popular orientation, the book disseminated an early critique of the negative impacts of tourism on nature and the commercialization of the Valley. Thus, it helped to advance preservationist thinking, as well as promote the National Parks cause. Working with Whitney had nurtured King's ambitions. In the late 1850s, the discipline of geology moved on apace, amid the turmoil of scholarly debates and personal competition. Whitney's expeditions to Mount Shasta and Mount Whitney, conducted in years 1863 to 1870, were particularly important triggers for King's own interests, prompting the young scholar to enter into the intense debate between Whitney and Muir over theories of geologic origin. Indeed, the discussion of the geological history of origins and the forces that shaped the North American continent and of Agassiz's outline of an ice age, particularly with regard to how all of this squared with the biblical history of creation, dominated American scholarship.45 Though Agassiz's description of glaciation was widely accepted as an explanation for the formation of the Alps, leading geologists Josiah Whitney, William Henry Brewer, John Cotton Dana, and John C. Frémont—all acquaintances of King's—published counterstatements. They doubted that glaciation had shaped the Sierra Nevada and believed that there never had been a glacier on Mount Shasta.46 Whitney's 1863 trip into the area provided him with evidence for his theory of catastrophic origin and led him to conclude that "the valley had been roughly hewn into its present proportions by a dislocation of the earth's crust involving the engulfment of a great block, or group of blocks."47 Whitney believed the "bottom of the valley to have dropped out, owing to some convulsive movements within

45 Rudwick, Lyell and Darwin; and Rudwick, The New Science of Geology. 46 Robert Wilson, The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West (New York: Scribner, 2006): 225. 47 J. D. Whitney, "Geological Survey of California," in Geology, Vol. 1, 1865: 421- 422.

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the earth, associated, presumably, with the upheaval of the Sierra Nevada."48 In 1870, the first of King's own expeditions led him into the Sierra Nevada to explore Mount Shasta and Mount Whitney. Carleton Watkins accompanied the party, as O'Sullivan had already been assigned by the Wheeler survey of 1871. Figure 4: C.E. Watkins, Mount Shasta and Whitney Glacier in California, seen from the crater (Shastina) © U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library (ID. King, 73 kingp073)

Instead of climbing Mount Shasta from the South as Whitney had done in 1862, King ascended from the West and discovered five active glaciers molding the mountain. He quickly published his observations in James Dwight Dana's American Journal of Science and Arts in spring 1871. The publication became widely known as one of the first scientific descriptions of a glacier in American science.49 Moreover, King's claims intensified the scholarly battle over who had actually discovered the glaciers first.50 In 48 Ibid. 49 Robert Wilson, The Explorer King, 224. 50 Ibid., 227. See also François E. Matthes, "Geological History of the Yosemite Valley," Introduction.

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1877, he published his final thesis, which disproved Whitney's theory of catastrophism.51 Watkins's Mount Shasta photographs play scarcely any role in his artistic legacy, but a pivotal one in King's contribution to strengthening the role of photography in providing geology with visual aids. James Gregory Moore has noted that King "was the first to carry out these ideas [of photographic documentation] on a grand scale," making the camera "an indispensable part of the apparatus of field-work in such surveys."52 Though King was certainly a pioneer in terms of the use of photographs in natural history, it seems that he never became an expert in how exactly to make photographs scientifically productive. Despite O'Sullivan's excellent supporting role as a photographer under King's direction, King—like his fellow Americans—remained unaware of the full extent of the benefits that photography offered. As such, contemporary natural historians built pictorial collections without fully utilizing the images in their theories. King for example, did not actually use Watkins's photographs in his 1877 book Systematic Geology. And yet, his December 1871 Atlantic Monthly report on Mount Shasta can be read as though King were recalling his personal memories and observations, using photographs as prompts; or even as direct descriptions of Watkins's photographs. Thus King enthusiastically delineated an icy mountainscape: "Whichever way we turned the great cone fell off from our feet in dizzying abruptness. We looked down steep slopes of névé, on over shattered ice-wreck, where glaciers roll over cliffs, and around the whole broad massive base carved deeply through its lava crusts in straight canons. These flutings of ancient and grander glaciers are flanked by long straight moraines; for the most part bare, but reaching down part way into the forest. It is interesting to observe that those on the north and east, by greater massiveness and length, indicate that in former days the glacier distribution was related to the points of compass about as it is now. What volumes of geological history lay in view! Old mountains uplifted; volcanoes built upon the

51 Clarence King, Catastrophism and the Evolution of Environment, An Address (Sheffield: Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, 1877). 52 James Gregory Moore, King of the 40th Parallel: Discovery in the American West (California: Stanford General Books, 2006): 153.

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plain of fiery lava; the chill of ice and wearing force of torrent, written in glaciergorges and water-carved canon!"

53

Watkins's photographs of Mount Shasta are characterized by their dry, analytical style of depiction, focusing on details of geologic interest. First, the camera approaches the subject from a distance; as the party advances, the summit draws closer. Fields of ice and snow are investigated along the way. Figure 5: Carleton Watkins, Mount Shasta and Whitney Glacier in California, 1870 © U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library (ID. King, 79 kingp079)

The photograph Mount Shasta and Whitney Glacier in California is a study of the forces at play in the mountains. It presents a dislodged ice field, a massive floating glacier. For this view, the photographer positioned himself orthogonally to the gulches in the ice, a promising perspective with regard to establishing an understanding of the floating ice masses but hopeless in terms of classic compositional schemas. The sharp descent of the mountain and harsh separation of blacks and whites are anything but picturesque. As

53 Clarence King, "Mt. Shasta," in Atlantic Monthly 170 (December 1871): 717.

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in many of O'Sullivan's compositions, Watkins positioned a figure to help articulate the dimensions involved. Watkins's photographs emphasize the movement of the snowfields and draw attention to the moraines running downhill, in support of King's thesis of glaciation. One can assert that King's instructions to O'Sullivan and Watkins led to the development of a style of landscape photography significantly different to that seen in The Yosemite Book and similar publications. King and his photographers employed the medium to examine geological details and record spatial relationships, analyzing the structure and surface of rock formations with a view to formulating geological theses. O'Sullivan's photographs constituted a welcome and significant memory aid for King and his observations, which they illustrate and bring to life in accordance with King's scientific areas of interest. On the one hand, King did not include photographs to illustrate his scientific findings. On the other hand, it can be assumed that he was well aware of the possibilities opened up by using photography as a memory aid and a means of supporting his observations, even if the status he attributed to photography as an epistemological medium remains uncertain. Beyond these important functions, King did not take advantage of the medium's capacity to communicate and mediate his insights and theses for the benefit of fellow scholars or the public. As exemplified by King's use of photography, photography played a not inconsiderable role in scientific debates in the latter half of the nineteenth century, particularly as a means of documenting the visual appearance of natural phenomena—even if the function of the photograph as a visual aid had not yet been fully integrated into American academic debates. If used in the public sphere, then it was predominantly outside academia and largely for commercial purposes. King's first publication of the year 1870, Mining Industry, which he co-authored with James D. Hague, provides an example of a book that did not feature a single illustration, although Hague's description of the chemical smelting process and its efficiency, as well as the economic progress it was likely to prompt, attracted members of Congress to vote for and secure funds to conduct further surveys.54 From May 1871 to December 1871, King published seven adventure stories in a series entitled "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada," in Atlantic Monthly, based on his travel experiences and illustrated by woodcuts. In 1872, the

54 Wilson, The Explorer King, 238.

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pieces were republished in book form under the same title. The narrative resembled the form of a popular adventure story or belletristic travel novel, like those of other survey leaders—John Wesley Powell's reports on the Colorado River being a case in point. King developed neither a sophisticated method for the interpretation of photographs nor an aesthetic theory. Catastrophism and the Evolution of Environment (1877) contained no illustrations whatsoever, though Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1871) and Systematic Geology (1878) made reader-friendly use of illustrative photographs that fitted with the prevalent picturesque mode of depiction. And whenever he sought to entertain the general reader in his articles, he resorted to conventional imagery. By the standards of the era, scientific books published by the Governmental Printing Press (GPO) were bestsellers. Colleges, libraries, and welleducated East coast households constituted the main buyers of these publications, though their commercialization was limited.55 Thus, GPO books not only presented a scholarly thesis aimed at fellow geologists but addressed common Americans too, and the Systematic Geology's 809 pages were accompanied by eight, somewhat patchy, colored chromolithographs after studies by Gilbert Manger and eighteen etchings in black and white after photographs provided by Timothy O'Sullivan. Until 1890 and the socalled "halftone" technique, photographs could not easily be reproduced in print—before which, only hand-carved etchings could be printed in numbers required for mass-circulation. Before 1890, it was common practice to attach original prints to the books, especially since the books would anyway only be bought by well-to-do citizens. In general, King was not much interested in popularity and published relatively few reports and adventures stories, concentrating for the most part on "high-quality scientific products," and striving "for excellence over speed."56 Neither did he produce stereographs to be sold commercially in the same quantities as other survey leaders.57 Nonetheless, he continued to make use of the kind of picturesque imagery customarily found in semi-popular literature for his publications, whereas for private use, he appreciated the scientific value of certain pho-

55 John Upton Terrell, The Man Who Discovered America: A Biography of John Wesley Powell (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969): 183. 56 Moore, King of the 40th Parallel, 297. 57 John Jones, Wonders of the Stereoscope (New York: Random House, 1976): 93.

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tographs.For Systematic Geology, some of O'Sullivan's prints were significantly altered to better suit contemporary tastes, shaped to some extent by the images used in contemporary travel literature: Whereas O'Sullivan's original photograph Shoshone Canon and Falls, Idaho shows five expedition members standing on a platform in the foreground, this group of figures is reduced to two in the etching. Whereas in the original photograph, the group does not pose for the camera, the group of figures in the etching is carefully composed. The original photograph presented members of the party at work in the field, engaged in exploration. In the etching, one figure—the topographer with his goniometer—takes measurements. The figure is joined by a joyful observer, at ease, lying down on the ground, contemplating the scenery. Both figures look in the same direction, each captured in a moment of reflection, perhaps upon the sublime in nature. O'Sullivan's original photograph, on the other hand, depicts each member of the party and the topographer carrying out their tasks. The innovative use made of photography for the purposes of geological observation is missing from final publication. The applications of photographic images in the nineteenth-century reports of naturalists, along with further applications to follow in this chapter, point to a fascination with photography that made the medium an important supplement of scientific practice. However, in contrast to the high expectations it had awakened, the role that photography actually played in the production of scholarly knowledge remained ambivalent: it seemed that photography could not necessarily be relied upon to sharpen the focus and was more suited to general description rather than triggering any kind of scientific breakthrough or even being able to communicate one when it occurred. Other expedition leaders and scholars of the geological surveys too remained unable to define or make use of any specific advantage as regards the faithful, naturalistic depictions of nature rendered in the photographic image, at least as far as the nexus between photography and science was concerned.

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2. P HOTOGRAPHY AND THE S TUDY OF A C IVILIZATION ' S S URVIVAL : J OHN W ESLEY P OWELL In 1867, when Clarence King was exploring the Fortieth Parallel, John Wesley Powell received funds to survey the Rocky Mountains region, particularly in Colorado and eastern Utah. A former Civil War general, Powell was the first person to ride the Colorado River, a journey as dangerous as it was adventurous—and, moreover, of great interest to the American public, since the Colorado River then represented one of the last remaining uncharted pieces of American wilderness. In 1870, Powell received a second round of financing to repeat the expedition. The survey of 1871–72 offered the party more time to examine the canyon in more depth. Moreover, this time Powell assigned a photographer to document the scenery. At first, he engaged E.O.Beaman, who quit during the trip and was replaced by James Fennemore. John K. Hillers, who had originally joined the party as a boatman, learnt photography from Beaman and Fennimore, and proved himself a gifted photographer. He became Powell's official photographer and life-long friend. The report on this remarkable trip was published in a series of four articles in Scribner's Monthly during the course of 1875, making Powell a national hero in the eyes of the American readership. This reflects the excitement of contemporaries at learning about the unknown wonders of the West, a response that King's articles had prompted too, as well as the stir that semi-scientific literature caused in the Gilded Age. In this regard, William Cullen Bryant was one of the most important publishers involved in marketing these natural wonders. In 1872, he released the heavy, two-volume edition: Picturesque America, or, the Land We Live In, superbly illustrated by numerous steel- and woodcuts of the most famous touristic sites in the United States.58 Woodcuts had illustrated European travel novels since the 18th century, and woodcuts picturing the American sites of wonder were stylistically similar to those manufactured in Europe. Articles promoting the conquest of the West and its geological wonders were frequently embellished by woods cuts done after the photographs of the four Great Surveys, like for example the article "Photographs from the High Rockies" by John Samson, printed in the September 1869

58 William Cullen Bryant (ed.), Picturesque America, or, The Land We Live In (New York: D. Appleton, 1872).

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issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, containing woodcuts after the photographs that O'Sullivan produced for the King survey. John Wesley Powell though developed a publication strategy that included photographs and was distinct from King's. When his first photographer, E.O. Beaman, left the party in disagreement, Beaman was quick to recognize the opportunity to publish images of the Colorado River, as demonstrated by his article of 2 May 1874 in Appletons' Journal. It contained numerous woodcuts after his photographs, whereas Powell did not publish his version of the story before 1875. Popular articles like these promoted the surveys as a national spectacle and prompted an increase of images. In comparison to photographs commissioned by King, Powell's photographers produced images for a large, nationwide audience. Beaman's and Hillers's stereographs of Powell's Colorado ride were particularly well received. Beaman's Disaster Falls, for example, employs a perspective that pretends to be positioned within the boat, reproducing the river's furious currents for viewers as if they themselves were on the river. One can still feel the sense of danger lurking downstream in the picture. When Powell resigned from his Illinois professorship in 1872 to dedicate himself full time to the surveys, he and Hillers once more departed for the Colorado River to produce a large set of stereographs, which, upon being sold, would enable Powell to pay his mortgages,59 a fact indicating that Powell was conscious about the commercial value of landscape depictions.

59 Terrell, The Man Who Discovered America, 182.

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Figure 6: E.O. Beaman, Disaster Falls, 1871 U.S. topographical and geological survey of the valley of the Colorado River, by J.W. Powell and A.H. Thompson © Library of Congress P&P (LOT 11557-1, no. 14)

Powell became famous as an adventurer. His academic interest though lay in the study of anthropology and ressource-conservating issues associated with the West. In 1874, Powell published Report of the Explorations in 1873 of the Colorado of the West and its Tributaries and, in 1895, a revised edition of Canyons of the Colorado.60 In this latter publication of 1895, he confirmed his scientific intentions: "The exploration was not made for adventure, but purely for scientific purposes, geographic and geologic, and I had no intention of writing an account of it, but only of recording the scientific results."61 Whereas sensational impressions of the Colorado River were not missing from either publication, the official report offered a proper geological thesis. But images used in the books referred to a personal interest of Powell's: the study of Native Americans, presenting portraits, or describing settlements, festivities, and the remains of ancient sites. Hillers, who served as chief photographer in all of Powell expeditions after 1871, 60 J.W. Powell, Report of the Explorations in 1873 of the Colorado of the West and its Tributaries (Washington DC: GPO, 1874). 61 J.W. Powell, Canyons of the Colorado (Meadville, PA, Flood & Vincent, 1895): III.

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was advised to pay special attention to Native Americans' habits and living conditions. As a result, many of his photographs support Powell's ethnological, archaeological, and anthropological observations. In 1879, Powell became the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. Hillers became Powell's staff photographer and followed him into all subsequent positions. As Powell also served as the second director of the US Geological Survey (USGS) from 1881 to 1894 and in this position, commissioned further surveys, Hillers was able to continue producing photographs for the USGS until 1919. Powell edited numerous geological publications, among which, Report on the Geology of the High Plateau of Utah serves as a benchmark at the crossroad of science and photography. The book was illustrated by numerous heliographs, most of them produced by Hillers. In contrast to other publications, the publication's texts explicitly referred to and commentated upon the photographic illustrations, which therefore complemented the text. One heliotype, for example, showed a tufa formation and was carefully described: "This material had been derived from the complete decay of lavas, and consists of aluminous silicate, accumulated as a deposit in the bed of a small lake, where it was consolidated and subsequently eroded."62 Powell's explorations were conducted in accordance with the surveys' overall objective to evaluate the prospects for future settlements. His Report on the Land of the Arid Region, published in 1879,63 provided forceful arguments as to whether or not these regions could be irrigated and served as farmland and pasturage. Immediately after its appearance, the report caused turmoil, as it critically questioned the general belief in the abundance of the West's natural resources.64 Furthermore, it contradicted prevalent assumptions regarding the land's potential for settlement, as Powell shed light on the limits of civilization in the face of the region's aridity. Powell suggested that the government should oversee a system of water supplies to meet the challenge of scarcity. William Culp Darrah has concisely summed up the details of the controversy, recalling that Powell initi-

62 C.E. Dutton, Report on the Geology of the High Plateau of Utah (Washington DC: GPO, 1880). 63 John Wesley Powell, Report of the Special Committee of the U.S. Senate on the Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid Lands (Washington DC: GPO, 1890). 64 Terrell, The Man Who Discovered America, 3.

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ated his 1874 irrigation survey because he was convinced that "the west was arid" and "that it was of immediate and pressing importance that a general survey be made to determine the areas that could be redeemed by irrigation, and that an accurate topographic survey, one based on triangulation from measured baselines, was essential."65 According to Darrah, Powell quietly but persistently campaigned for a land management system that was "adapted to the condition of the arid lands, and which recognized the value of water rights."66 Powell simultaneously doubted and perpetuated utilitarian thinking and his era's conviction that man could control nature. On the other hand, his book started to address limits and bring them to the public's attention. It is for this reason that historian Michael A. Bryson identifies Powell's understanding of nature as one that contributes to a "scientific management of the land," and credits Powell as one of the leading figures to have set the stage for the nascent twentieth century environmental idea.67 John Terrell has pointed out that Powell's objections were partially successful and resulted in a law ensuring that "all lands of the arid regions were to be closed to settlement until they were classified as irrigable or non-irrigable."68 In practice however, the law was largely ignored. 69 William Darrah furthermore has explained how Powell's position as the second director of the USGS gave him the power to tailor the geographic and geologic orientation of the surveys to the "great industrial interests of the country, especially to agriculture and mining, because the results of its work would increase national wealth and benefit a large number of people."70 His interpretation confirms the economic bias underlying the surveys. For Donald Worster however, Powell's tenure in office reflects the increasingly apparent opposition between the demands of development and those of conservation.71

65 William Culp Darrah, Powell of the Colorado (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951): vi. 66 Ibid., vi. 67 Ibid., xi. 68 Terrell, The Man who Discovered America, 251. 69 Ibid., 251. 70 Darrah, Powell of the Colorado, vii. 71 Worster, A River Running West, 483.

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Powell's perception of nature indeed is ambivalent and actually rather complex. As a man of the nineteenth century, he did not fully overcome prevalent stereotypes and clichés regarding Native American cultures. He represented a nineteenth-century polymath with multifarious interests in the environment of the West. Powell was not the first scholar interested in ancient and Native American forms of settlement, but by simultaneously exploring the land as a resource for modern American settlements and researching aboriginal forms of settlements, he pioneered a unique approach to researching the natural environment as the basis of human living conditions. Figure 7: John K. Hillers, Walnut Canyon © National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (NPC 02849800)

Many of the photographs taken by Hillers provide evidence as to how ancient and Native American cultures dealt with the land's severely limited fertility. Powell's interest in the relation between ancient cultures and nature finds expression in a series of Hillers's photographs devoted to documenting how tribes managed to survive in the most challenging of environments. An image in the Walnut Creek series for example shows a panorama apparently devoid of any human traces. But then a second photograph zooms into the creek and finds dwellings built into the slope of the hill, thus taking advantage of the site's natural protection. The photograph manifests Pow-

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ell's and Hillers' search for landmark points that reveal the grid of different sites that together form the ancient cultures' settlements. Other photographs taken by Hillers study how Indian cultures are cultivating the land, taking on the knowledge that has been relayed by their ancestors. And further photographs retrace the connection between different sites inhabited by Indian tribes. In this regard, a view of Montezuma Castle, Beaver Creek depicts the settlement from the distance, revealing the strategic advantage for its inhabitants, who once looked out upon the landscape from an ideal vantage point that simultaneously offered a natural shelter against potential enemies. Photographs such as these indicate that Powell was researching the infrastructure of ancient societies' settlements and the grid of connections between the sites that had once secured the tribes' survival and that still refer to strategic decisions taken centuries ago as to how to handle the natural environment. Powell considered the West as a realm created by human interaction with nature, shaped by centuries of agricultural use, shelter, and human rites—contrary to the commonly entertained, western vision of landscapes as unspoiled wildernesses. Accordingly, Hillers's photographic documentation of landscapes was deeply informed by Powell's three main scholarly interests: geology, ethnology, and land management. Powell's Report on the Land of the Arid Region, however, did not focused on the use of photographs that supported its thesis. Presumably, this is due to the tight timeframe within which the report had to be published—in accordance with the urgency of its drastic proposals.

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3. P HOTOGRAPHY AND THE L ATE N INETEENTH CENTURY P ICTURE M ARKET : F ERDINAND V. H AYDEN Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden's interest in natural history was awoken in 1853, when James Hall, a New York State Geologist, sent him into the field to study geology and collect fossils.72 Subsequent trips to the West from 1856 to 1859, accompanying Lieutenant G.K. Warren and Captain W.F. Reynolds, resulted in his first publications, which won the emerging scholar recognition for the first time.73 In 1867, when Clarence King had just departed for the Fortieth Parallel and John Wesley Powell for the Colorado River, Hayden was assigned to explore Nebraska. His survey was extended in 1868 and 1869 to include expeditions to the states of Wyoming and Colorado. As King and Powell published their reports in Atlantic Monthly and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Hayden met with considerable success in selling photographs. Only one year after the release of Andrew Russell's The Great West, which served as a benchmark for all later visual promotion of the West, Hayden acquired the copyright to 30 out of Russell's 50 prints with which to illustrate his Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery.74 In contrast to King's use of photography as an aid to scientific observations for tackling unexplained phenomena in natural history, Hayden fully embraced the flourishing photographic picture market. Moreover, his depictions of landscape are best understood in connection with the "See America First" campaigns, which promoted renowned tourist travel sites in a way that suggested a preference for American landmarks over the sites of

72 For a detailed biography of the geologist-in-charge to lead these four surveys, see Mike Foster, Strange Genius: The Life of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1994): 3. 73 Ferdinand V. Hayden, Geology and Natural History of the Upper Missouri. Being the Substance of a Report made to Lieut. G.K. Warren (Philadelphia: C. Sherman & Son, 1862); Ferdinand V. Hayden and Fielding Bradford Meek, Paleontology of the Upper Missouri, a Report upon Collections made Principally by the Expeditions under command of Lieut. G.K. Warren, U.S. Top Engineers in 1855 and 1856 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1864). 74 Ferdinand V. Hayden, Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery (New York: Julius Bien, 1870): I.

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the European Bildungsreise or Grand Tour that had been prevalent up until then.75 Hayden contributed to the romanticization of the West by promoting a preference for American natural sites over the Alps to the upper class.76 Bridges, railroad tracks, blasted trails, mines, lumber companies, and settlements, but also natural curiosities served as symbols of the bright future that the West offered—an aspect clearly missing from Thomas Cole's 1835 seminal celebration of American scenery, which on the contrary critically pointed out the deterioration of the environment. Motifs just like Russell's version of Devil's Slide contributed to the iconic imagery of this vision, and were photographed by just about anyone who had the chance. For his first survey of 1867, Hayden hired photographer William Henry Jackson to join the expedition. Landscape artist Henry Elliot was commissioned the following year, and both artists stayed with the survey for several seasons.77 Hayden established yet another way to use imagery of the West that suited his specific purposes. In general, he annotated the photographs with brief descriptions of the geological features depicted, as demonstrated in Sun Pictures of the Rocky Mountain Scenery: "Photograph VIII presents a fine example of these sandstone bluffs, with the evidence of the constant and slow wearing away of the sides by atmospheric influences. At the left, we see the valley of Bitter creek, through which the road runs; at the extreme left are low, rather rounded hills, which gradually ascend for miles, so that they become eventually several hundred feet above the bed of Bitter Creek. It is very seldom that abrupt bluffs occur on both sides of a stream at the same locality except in the mountains where the little streams have cut their way through immense masses of rock-forming gorges or canons. […]. The coal beds which yield a supply of fuel for the roads lie above and below this sandstone."

78

As such, Hayden's style of writing resembles that of a travel guide. He explained what was depicted in the images to the ordinary viewer without

75 Marguerite S. Shaffer (ed.), See America First: Tourism and National Identity; 1880–1940 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); Runte, National Parks, 113. 76 Hayden, Sun Pictures, 5. 77 Foster, Strange Genius, 156 and 169. 78 Hayden, Sun Pictures, 92.

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elaborating any further, with simultaneously stressing the economic prospect of the site. Many of Jackson's related photographs from the years 1869 to 1872 depict the West as an unknown, unspoiled territory, and therefore contribute to the imagery that was typical of the time. Jackson produced a large quantity of mammoth plates and stereographs for Hayden, most of which were intended for commercial sale. Some of these images captured camp life, others focused on the geologic sublime, hunting scenes, beaver dams or bathing scenes. Hayden's most spectacular images however were those taken at Yellowstone. In 1871, Hayden led a survey into Yellowstone, which had just been discovered by a first expedition led by General Henry Dana Washburn and Lieutenant Gustavus Cheyney Doane in the summer of 1870.79 An 1859 expedition into the region led by W.F. Raynolds had offered some of the first insights into its curiosities, along with stories by trappers and gold diggers, but these stories largely remained unfamiliar to the public. The public had to wait until the year 1871 to see Yellowstone's wonders, when N.P. Langford Scribner's Monthly released Hayden's reports in the magazine's May and June issues.80 Images by Jackson illustrated Hayden's Wonders of the Yellowstone and popularized Yellowstone. Additionally, Hayden pursued a mature marketing strategy in that he introduced the park's natural wonders to the American public by selling stereographs and photographic prints at the same time. An album containing a single print entitled The Grotto Geyser was published in 1876 and presented Jackson's photographs, framed by a brief text and a map.81 Moreover, Hayden's The Yellowstone National Park was illustrated by a number of chromolithographic reproductions of watercolor sketches by Thomas Moran.82

79 Chris J. Magoc, Yellowstone: The Creation and Selling of an American Landscape, 1870–1903 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999): 2. 80 Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Yellowstone National Park, and the Mountain Regions of Portions of Idaho, Nevada, Colorado and Utah (Boston: L. Prang and Company, 1876): 1. 81 Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Grotto Geyser of the Yellowstone National Park: with a descriptive note and map, and an illustration by the Albert-type process (Washington: GPO, 1876). 82 Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Yellowstone National Park.

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Figure 8: Henry William Jackson, Scenery of the Yellowstone National, ca. 1872 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USZ62-44164)

Taking up the discussion among nineteenth-century scholars regarding naturalistic versus sensuous representations of natural phenomena, one can say that Hayden was of a definite opinion. Although he praised Jackson's photographs on several occasions, he considered Thomas Moran the official artist of his expedition, as reflected in The Yellowstone National Park. Although Hayden described photography as "the nearest approach to a truthful delineation of nature,"83 he considered paintings and etchings the higher art form and explicitly praised Moran's watercolor sketches and the way their qualities evoked the atmosphere of the scenery.84 Hayden valued these painterly features over accuracy, an attitude that may be considered not so far from von Humboldt's preference for painting over photographs. Shortly after Yellowstone had been declared the first National Park in the history of the United States in May 1872, 85 Hayden led a second survey to the region, seeking to acquire greater knowledge of Yellowstone's geologic and geographic features, but also to assess the potential for further settlement of the Park.86 Due to the valley's promotion and, in particular, the visual dissemination of its point of interest, Yellowstone quickly be83 Ferdinand Hayden quoted after Cassidy, Ferdinand V. Hayden, 228. 84 Hayden, The Yellowstone National Park, III. 85 For further detail on which, see Foster, Strange Genius, 223. 86 Hayden, The Yellowstone National Park, 2.

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came one of America's main tourist attractions.87 Hayden's popular books— embellished by exclusive photographic prints—were the first to offer the park's visual beauty to the viewer,88 and advanced the use of photographs for preservational claims.89 As James Cassidy has highlighted, Hayden was quick to realize the huge interest in imagery of the West and in geological topics. His publication strategy was typical of the late nineteenth-century entrepreneurial orientation toward rapidly establishing a market monopoly. This he achieved in collaboration with Julius Bien, the leading New Yorkbased editor in the field. Further, by promoting and popularizing geological wonders through both image and text, Hayden's publications nurtured a market of illustrated travel guides, and simultaneously promoted popular science. Hayden produced a variety of publications on the same topic, such as his "annual," "preliminary," and "final" reports, as well as bulletins, "miscellaneous" publications, and exquisitely illustrated photography books.90 His writings never adopted the scientific standards articulated in King's Systematic Geology.91

87 David Rains Wallace, Yellowstone (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2001); Ann Sutton, Yellowstone: A Century of the Wilderness Idea (New York: Macmillan, 1972); Richard A. Bartlett, Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1985); Marsa Karl (eds.), A Yellowstone Album: A Photographic Celebration of the First National Park (Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1997). 88 Yellowstone National Park would soon become a key topic in American travel guides and illustrated books, a position it has retained to the present day. 89 Runte, National Parks, XX. 90 Cassidy, Ferdinand V. Hayden, 202. 91 Ibid.

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Figure 9: Henry William Jackson, Crater of the Castle Geyser, ca. 1870 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USZ62-27952)

For this reason, Hayden has been characterized a mediator of science who wrote for the ordinary people and not for scientific experts. Aiming at a different audience and using a language that was "calculated to establish a rapport, leading the reader to visualize and experience the landscape,"92 he integrated photographic imagery into his writings as an aid to the reader's imagination.93 Furthermore, while Hayden has been characterized as an "ardent self-promoter who lost few opportunities to proclaim his multiple talents,"94 his interests as an educator were "too strong [for him] to ignore the growing popular interest in science."95 The great success of Hayden's 92 Ibid. 93 Henry T. Williams (ed.), The Pacific Tourist: Williams' Illustrated Transcontinental Guide of Travel, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (New York: H. T. Williams, 1876). For more popular books see also Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Great West: Its Attractions and Resources (Bloomington, Ill.: Charles R. Brodix, 1880). 94 Foster, Strange Genius, 194. 95 Ibid., 195.

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publications is also due to late nineteenth-century reader's great interest in any intervention in the fashionable science of geology. Hayden has been criticized by his colleagues as lacking scientific rigor,96 a criticism raised when he competed with John Powell over the second directorship of the USGS in order to succeed Clarence King.97 Conversely, he receives praise as a manager of science and, when he succeeded in becoming the USGS's second director, he used his entrepreneurial expertise to secure funding for scholarly research. He also encouraged collaboration among scientists. Hence, Hayden fulfilled an important role in uniting the USGS, promoting science and securing fundraising,98 but he did not develop a vanguard approach in visual terms nor in academic scholarship. Under his direction, William Jackson's photographic concerns were primarily commercial—but indeed, he was highly successful in that. Under Hayden's supervision, Jackson also created an inventory of more than two thousand landscape negatives for the USGS.99 Nevertheless, Hayden improved standards of topographic representation of the West, at the same time as documenting environmental and economic conditions. During the 1873–76 expeditions to Colorado and adjacent portions of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, Hayden's staff employed the latest triangulation technology, providing the most accurate topographic measurements available at the time. Along with numerous statistics and geographic features, these were incorporated into his maps, which charted, evaluated, and visualized the area. Like Powell's written examinations of the arid West, Hayden's "economic map of Colorado"100 provided an account of the land's industrial value. Symbols indicated an array of rich resources, including agricultural land, pasture land, pine forest, cedars, quaking aspen groves, sage and bed land, coal land, and gold or silver districts. While he relied on statistics and written explanations, and reflect-

96

Ibid., 261.

97

Ibid., 129.

98

Cassidy, Ferdinand V. Hayden, xx.

99

William Henry Jackson, Descriptive Catalogue of the Photographs of the United States Geographical Survey of the Territories for the Years 1869 to 1875 (Washington: GPO, 1875, second edition).

100 Ferdinand V. Hayden, Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado and Portions of Adjacent Territory (New York: J. Bien, 1877).

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ed these in graphics, Hayden's topographic visualizations of nature never progressed beyond a certain level of sophistication. This general lack of visual sophistication in comparison to Humboldt's sketches coincided with the general backwardness of American science in the nineteenth century, which itself is explained by the largely missing financial support for scientific endeavors and very few governmental institutions. Since the Antebellum age, American scholars attempted to compete with European standards and as Axel Jansen has explained, the lack of a coherent federal science policy meant their accomplishments were rather limited. The first comprehensive national platform for science was created in 1848, with the establishment of the American Association for the Advancement of Science—not least thanks to the energetic efforts of Alexander Dallas Bache.101 Until the geological surveys of the 1860s, science policy was largely formulated without federal endorsement.102 Bache considered science essential for national development, as a base for cultural and economic growth and prosperity, but also for the creation of a collective national identity. Thus, he reflected a conviction commonly shared by most of his contemporaries.103 Yet, despite consensus as to the general value of science as a driver of economic development, the lack of federal funding and associated lack of dynamism among the emerging academic community had a negative impact on scientific advancement during the mid-nineteenth century. In short, it was up to individual scientists themselves to win legitimacy and financial support for their research and teaching. Collective standards of evaluation and peer reviewing processes were largely missing from these individualistic endeavors, and some scientists yielded to the temptation of promoting a popular thesis that would gain broad attention, at the expense of scientific accuracy.104

101 Axel Jansen, Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century (Frankfurt: Campus, 2011): 238. 102 Ibid., 197. 103 Ibid., 105. 104 Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community, 10.

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4. P HOTOGRAPHY AND E NVIRONMENTAL I NVENTORIES : G EORGE M ONTANGEOUS W HEELER The fourth geological survey into the West was led by Lieutenant George Montague Wheeler. It commenced in 1872 and was terminated in 1879. In contrast to the other three civilian survey leaders, who all had basic scientific interests at the very least, Wheeler primarily fulfilled his orders to identify and chart mining districts and their accessibility, with a principle focus on the creation of maps.105 As H.W. Brands has eloquently pointed out, Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations was to capitalism what Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was to democracy; but it required decades for both capitalism and democracy to evolve and mature.106 During the Civil War, "government became the sponsor of business rather than its foe," and allowed industrial magnates like Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller to gather strength and to "troll for fortune in the troubled waters of the war."107 After the Civil War, these industrial magnates' economic power and political influence was second to none, and continued to expand with the rapid growth of the American population.108 The completion of the first transcontinental railroad served as a landmark accomplishment in the development of capitalism, as it opened up uncharted areas for further settlements.109 Nonetheless, these trends did not go unchallenged and other contemporaries that followed George Marsh articulated their critique concerning the exploitation of nature's resources. As such, Senator Vest in 1872 denounced American capitalism and the exploitation of nature, pleading for the creation of National Parks: "The great course of this age and of the American people is its materialistic tendencies. Money, money, l'argent, l'argent, is the cry everywhere until our people are held up already to the world as noted for nothing except the acquisition of money at the expense of all aesthetic taste and of all love of

105 Doris Ostrander Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler. The Man and the Myth (Athens: Swallow Press / Ohio University Press, 1993): 38. 106 H.W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865–1900 (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2010), Kindle edition 2010: Loc 86. 107 Ibid., Loc 201. 108 Ibid., Loc 151. 109 Ibid., Loc 688.

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nature and its great mysteries and wonders."110 Moreover, as Peter Bacon Hales has made clear, the ideology of Manifest Destiny was followed hard on the heels by the "romance of modernization."111 Pictures of factories, lumber companies, mills, sawmills, and casting houses celebrated the success of capitalism in Northern California and promoted a sense of expectancy with regard to new opportunities.112 Doris Dawdy has shed light on the entanglement of San Francisco's leading capitalists and George M. Wheeler's own financial interests in mapping Nevada's promising mineral resources during the heyday of capitalism after the Civil War.113 Furthermore, Sally Kohlstedt has elaborated upon the economic expansion that absorbed new immigrants into the workforce, and required the intensive training of all kinds of engineering and chemical sector professionals in order to kick start the self-sustained growth necessary for becoming a modern industrial nation, a process that had already begun in the United States in the 1840s.114 By the mid-1860s, smart and ruthless profiteers, among them associates of John C. Frémont, had hired Carleton Watkins to photograph the Mariposa mines in order to attract investors needed to raise capital.115 In the years 1872 to 1874, Wheeler asked the photographers Timothy O'Sullivan and William Bell to accompany his expedition. In accordance with Wheeler's wishes, many of O'Sullivan's images document real estate, facilities, and existing companies founded along the route. In several of his pictures, two different intentions mingle: on the one hand, O'Sullivan captured lakes and rivers in the tradition of the sublime landscape; on the other hand, these images could also be used for the registration of water reservoirs.

110 Magoc, Yellowstone, 63. 111 Hales, "American Views and the Romance of Modernization," in Sandweiss, Photography in Nineteenth Century America, 212. 112 For details of the economic boom after the Civil War, see John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). 113 Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler, 2. 114 Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community, 4. 115 Phillips, "To Subdue the Continent," 18; see also Peter Palmquist, "Carleton E. Watkins Photographer of the American West," 10.

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Figure 10: Timothy O‘Sullivan, Alpine Lake Cerro Blanco Mountains Col., 1874 originally printed in G.M. Wheeler, Report on the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian (Washington DC: GPO, 1889) Plate XII © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USZ6254085)

Wheeler's final report was illustrated with several etchings after O'Sullivan's photographs, and the employment of photographs verifies his understanding of nature as a reservoir of natural resources for mankind to turn into profit. The report's explanatory text did not indulge in the beauty of the landscape, but described it as viewed through the eyes of a pragmatist: "The mountain peaks vary between elevations of 8,500 to 13,000 feet; the vegetation reaching 11,500 feet where observed on the thirty-ninth parallel. The other elements regulating the superior altitude of vegetation being (1) grade of slope (2) mean temperature, (3) relative humidity. The principal timber is of the pine, cedar, fir, spruce, and cottonwood varieties, and may be noticed, in sparsely distributed forests, along the Humboldt, Shell Creek, Snake, and other ranges."

116

116 George M. Wheeler, Report on the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian (Washington: GPO, 1889): 28.

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Beauty does not feature as a category at all; pragmatism and utilitarianism are the order of the day, as exemplified by yet another plate's description: "The Alpine Lake let view (Plate II, a lithograph photographically based and representing a mountain water gem) is typical of the mountain reservoirs so frequently found, more particularly in the glacially carved ravines of the eastern flanks of the Sierra Nevada, and marks also the storehouse of moisture which, emanating from the perennial snow fields higher in the mountains, finds its source as well as the rugged nature of its surroundings nearly at the level of where perpetual snow begins."

117

In his employment of photography as an illustrative means adapted for a presentation of his findings, Wheeler's utilitarian understanding of nature blends the scenery out in favor of an economic evaluation of the land. Watkins's photographs of mines and industrial sites were used as supporting evidence for inventories of mineral resources. Additionally, Wheeler's final report of 1889 made extensive use of tables to indicate and verify the economic value of the land. Whereas he advised Watkins and O'Sullivan to create a photographic inventory of the land's economic value, the publication was devoid of any such illustrations. Like Hayden's reports, Wheeler used maps to visualize the land in accordance with economic criteria and intensively used symbols for the purposes of land classification, and to indicate the land's usability and potential for future deployment.118 Like an advertising-folder, his report listed suitable foods for cultivation and listed where the streams were stocked with trout, or destitute of game "except for smaller varieties as duck, geese, crane, and sage-hens."119 In addition to food, resources such as gold, silver, copper, lead, antimony, iron, salt, gypsum, alum, or cobalt were indicated on the map, along with other mineral resources and thermal springs. Wheeler also mapped locations at which incidents with hostile Indians had occurred.120 After the Wickenburg massacre, General Wheeler viewed Native Americans differently to ethnologist

117 Ibid., 40. 118 Ibid., 17. 119 Ibid., 27. 120 Ibid., 28.

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John Wesley Powell.121 Wheeler did not believe in any friendly commitment on the part of the Native American tribes, nor did he concur with the government's peace-at-any-cost-policy.122 Wheeler's non-specific expertise corresponds to the lack of a specific scientific perspective in the photographs he commissioned. Whereas several of O'Sullivan's photographs produced during the King survey illustrate, and even contribute, to King's geologic orientation, no comparable process takes place in the collaboration between O'Sullivan and Wheeler. In a letter to O'Sullivan, Wheeler advised the photographer to create "sufficiently valuable" visual records.123 The criterion for this value was commercial, rather than any specialized, academic interest. Despite his lack of reflection on photography per se, Wheeler published numerous photographic albums including Photographs showing Landscapes, Geological and Other Features of Portions of the Western Territory of the United States in 1874, which included photographs by both Timothy O'Sullivan and William Bell.124 O'Sullivan accompanied Wheeler once again on the expedition of 1875 into the Colorado area of the San Juan. In his concluding report, Wheeler used O'Sullivan's pictures of a mining district as illustrations and announced that industry had become a permanent feature through "intelligent prospecting" and "serious development."125 Twenty years after he first made them, John Wesley Powell's insistent warnings concerning factors that he believed restricted the settlement of the West were largely ignored by economic ventures to exploit the West's natural resources. Wheeler's report of 1892, entitled "Irrigation in the United States," reflects his con-

121 Ibid., 35. 122 Ibid. 123 Robin Earle Kelsey, Photography in the Field: Timothy O'Sullivan and the Wheeler Survey, 1871–1874 (PhD thesis: Harvard, 2000): 88. 124 George M. Wheeler, Photographs Showing Landscapes, Geological and Other Features, of Portions of the Western Territory of the United States, obtained in connection with Geographical and Geological Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian. Seasons of 1871, 1872 and 1873 (Washington DC: GPO, c.1874), with 44 plates by W. Bell and T.H. O'Sullivan. 125 Wheeler, Report on the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, 101.

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temporaries' boundless desire for continuous expansion, and maintained the economic bias of surveys.126 Therefore, Wheeler's publications are representative of the way in which knowledge of the West's limitations generally fades out. The resulting ignorance of these limitations marks a departure from Powell's attempts to alter governmental land management so that it was based on more rational methods. Whereas Watkins's photographs of the Mariposa mine captured in 1860 supported the capitalists' grip on nature, some of his other images can almost be interpreted as preempting an emerging environmental awareness, picturing the massive effects of water mining on the environment. Among his 1870s mining pictures are views of extensive hydraulic mining operations. His photograph of Malakoff Diggings almost amounts to an exposé of this technique to extract precious metals from the earth by pulverizing rocks using high water pressure.127 Nineteenth-century photographs of the West did lead, in isolated cases, to a critique of the negative impacts of the exploitation of natural resources, as demonstrated by Watkins's photographs on the topic.128 They were not yet explicitly animated by an environmental conscience. But they are situated at the conjunction of a technological optimism, the rise of modern industrial capitalism, and the nascent preservation movement. And, as such, they represent an advancement in the empirical evaluation of the American land that paved the way for new and different insights by disseminating impressions of the West that were previously unavailable to many intellectuals.

126 George M. Wheeler, Irrigation in the United States (Washington DC: GPO, 1892). 127 The effects of wastewater and the ponding of adjacent cities have been described by Sandra Phillips. Phillips, "To Subdue the Continent," 18. 128 Nancy K. Anderson, "'The Kiss of Enterprise': The Western Landscape as Symbol and Resource," in Truettner (ed.), The West as America, 241.

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5. T HE V ISUAL L ANGUAGE

OF

S CIENCE

At the crossroads of science, aesthetics, and technocratic administration, photography won a status as a medium that exercised a far reaching influence on natural scientists, politicians and the general population. The "drawings of light"—as neutral, objective and documentary registration— seemed to embody not only technical progress, but also scientific findings and led to a preservationist understanding of nature. Through its application by Clarence King, it becomes clear that photographs could supplement scientists' observations and, in this sense, fulfil a mediating function that made these observations accessible by visually translating them. In certain cases, photographs even played a supportive role in bringing scientific insights to light. Photographs played a considerable role in a production of geological knowledge, but King for example never reflected theoretically on how pictures underpinned or supplemented his theses. Apparently, his ambition to advance the scholarly field in which he worked left him no time to digress into the field of aesthetics. None of the other survey leaders explicitly reflected on the role of the photographic medium either, although they all busily marketed the numerous visual works they commissioned and, in this way, well knew how to make use of the mediated qualities of their nature shots. Rather than The Pencil of Nature revealing the laws of nature, the passion of explorers and researchers for collecting visual materials found its way into numerous side channels such as tourism, investing American national sentiments with greater self confidence, and the promotion of natural curiosities and sites of natural beauty. These were areas in which the market for pictures expanded greatly during the nineteenth century. The importance of photography for the further development of the natural sciences is therefore debatable, given that there was in fact very little assessment made with regard to the photographic works produced during the course of the geological surveys, despite the excellent examples presented that approve the symbiotic relationship between science and photography. Indeed, photography remained in the background rather than the foreground of the latest explorations. Nonetheless, something unique did develop out of the intimate symbiosis between the conquest of land, the obsession with technology, the researching of the North American continent's natural landscapes and the rise of the

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sciences. It would be a mistake to describe this merely as a new mode of producing illustrative representations of nature. The massive pictorial program of the geological surveys was itself a reflection of the acknowledged value of pictures for the exchange of information and (scholarly) communicative processes. At the same time, photographic archives along the lines of that which Holmes proposed were understood as repositories of potential facts that could be made available to research programs long after the USGS itself became established. In this regard, the institutionalization of the USGS in 1879 had a significant impact. Whereas in the first half of the nineteenth century, explorations into the Western territories are informed by the ideology of Manifest Destiny, the interest in the West in the latter half was principally driven by their economic concerns, photographs serving to assist in the assessment and exploitation of natural resources. Beyond Powell's studies of the arid lands, the orientation of the surveys shifted towards a broader interest in the environmental conditions of the land, a new age of soil science, including irrigation and soil quality. The first specialized hydrographic survey on water supplies was commissioned in October 1888, followed by the federal "Irrigation Surveys." When the USGS was evaluated in 1903, the committee came to the conclusion that "work of scientific research on the part of the Government should be limited primarily to utilitarian purposes and that research in pure science on broad and general grounds should be within the scope of private institutions."129 The evaluation of industrial developments, land reclamation and soils were the new, key objectives of the surveys. The first specialized soil survey of in 1899 mapped 720,000 acres and further federal units surveyed the land and its climatic conditions. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Weather Bureau was founded in 1894 as another division that contributed to research on soil chemistry. Although none of these later surveys used photography as an essential research tool in the same way as previously, the gathering of visual data persisted and even expanded. In 1921, a photographic unit was established in the Topographic Branch, and received increased funding in 1927.130 In 1929, the Hoover administration increased its support for all related scientific agencies relat-

129 Mary C. Rabbitt, "The United States Geological Survey: 1879–1989," http:// pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1050/first.htm, accessed 5/10/13. 130 Ibid.

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ed to agriculture and conservation. Therefore, not only do the four Great Surveys become entangled with geology and the specialization of science in the Gilded Age: they also prepared the ground for the great technological debates on environmental conditions of the twentieth century. American utilitarianism shifted from a focus on the idea of western expansion towards land management. John Wesley Powell and his colleagues served as catalysts for the integration and institutionalization of irrigation and land management into government policy and initiated scholarly debates on soil quality and water resources. Photography and other forms of visualization played an important role in this empirical surveying of the land as key sources of information. Large numbers of photographic images were commissioned by administrative units to advance the technocratic administration of the land, its water supplies and mineral resources. Photography was not discussed for its aesthetic features, but because of its naturalistic depiction of the land. This new type of informational imagery differs from images of "Ingenieursfotografie"131 or "Industriefotografie,"132 as it did not document technological achievements such as buildings, or the construction of industrial sites, neither was it situated at the heart of scientific knowledge. Instead, photographic images of environmental phenomena were commissioned with a distinct purpose: to advance soil science and theories of land management. When anchored in these debates, it can be established that the importance of photography's integration into the sciences goes beyond Martin Rudwick's thesis of the creation of a new geologic visual language.133 Beyond the mediation of geology, photography became an almost universal tool for the visualization and dissemination of information in various disciplines. Thus, at the turn of the century, the photographic mediation of scientific information filled what had until then been a significant gap in visual representation.

131 Hans-Dieter Nägelke (eds.), Konstruktionen und Katastrophen: Staatliche Architekturfotografie aus den Beständen des Architekturmuseums der Technischen Universität Berlin 1860–1918 (Berlin: Jaron Verlag, 2009): 6. 132

Ulrich Pohlmann (ed.), Industriezeit: Fotografien 1845–2010 (Tübingen: Wamuth Verlag, 2011): 7.

133

Martin Rudwick, "The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science 1760–1840."

Agricultural Literacy— Visual Empiricism in New Deal Conservation

In 1962, an exhibition entitled The Bitter Years was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, recalling the experiences of the 1930s and photography commissioned by the New Deal administration. Under the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, federal programs such as the Resettlement Administration (RA) of 1935 were founded to deal with the natural calamities of the 1930s, to resettle farmers and to distribute federal aid and subsidies to those who had lost their means of living due to droughts and erosion. The so-called Historical Section was attached to the RA's Information Division in order to document the Depression and to depict rural America in a time of hardship and humanitarian disaster. In 1937, when the RA was transferred to the Department of Agriculture and renamed Farm Security Administration (FSA), this Historical Section was maintained and even expanded, and in 1942 transferred to the Office of War Information (OWI). Whereas reviews of RA/FSA photography at the end of the 1930s often referred to the program as governmental propaganda charged with sensationalism,1 this critique vanished with the reconstruction provided by the

1

Mark Adams, [Untitled Article on the FSA], 1940: 5, LOC P&P, RSP, Reel 7, Professional activities, Part H Writings by others, 1935–71; Maren Stange, "'The Record Itself': Farm Security Photography and the Transformation of Rural Life," in Pete Daniel, Merry Foresta, Maren Stange, and Sally Stein (eds.), Official Images: New Deal Photography (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987): 1.

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1962 exhibition, which met with almost universal euphoria. RA/FSA photography won its famous reputation, in spite of its most prominent subject: the depiction of suffering farmers. Documenting the circumstances of the 1930s, the photography prompted feelings of sympathy for its subjects, thus creating a common feeling among citizens and transgressing political boundaries—a feeling that it generated both from a contemporary standpoint and in retrospective. Nonetheless, the varied history of reception of the RA/FSA photographs is of great importance, as it reveals different subliminal political intentions that sought to steer public opinion by employing photographic images. In 1962, at a highly charged moment of time when American involvement in Vietnam shifted up a gear and became a large-scale military operation, the Cold War grew darker yet at the dawn of the Cuban missile crisis and, amid emerging anti-nuclear sentiments, The Bitter Years recalled the FSA's legacy, remembering the nation's rural past. What ignited this revival of FSA photography at a moment of time in which forward looking debates were just about to lead to the coining of the term "post-industrial society," and bid farewell to rural America?2 Curator Edward Steichen, a veteran of both World Wars, charged the exhibition with patriotic sentiment for a great nation that stood together in a time of crisis and attempted to introduce a younger generation to this unique American attitude: "I believe it is good at this time to be reminded of those 'bitter years' and to bring them into the consciousness of a new generation which has problems of its own, but is largely unaware of the endurance and fortitude that made the emergence from the Great Depression one of America's victorious hours." 3

Like his controversial 1955 exhibition The Family of Man, The Bitter Years represented Steichen's method of arranging photographs with a view to

2

Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society: Tomorrow's Social History: Classes, Conflicts and Culture in the Programmed Society (New York: Random House, 1971).

3

Edward Steichen, "Foreword," in ibid., (ed.), The Bitter Years 1935–1941: Rural America as seen by the Photographers of the Farm Security Administration (Garden City New York: Doubleday, 1962).

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communicating his own political convictions.4 Recalling the ideals of the New Deal and tying them in with Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" concept, which begun as a domestic program under the Kennedy administration to address education, medical care and social insurance programs, the exhibition attempted to evoke the feeling of the 1930s and transfer it into the 1960s. In his foreword to the show's catalogue, Rexford Guy Tugwell, Undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture under the Roosevelt administration, underscored the era's sense of collectivity in pointing out the New Deal's social agenda: "[…] we intended not only to bring the resources of government to the assistance of those who were distressed or starved out but to make certain that never again should Americans be exposed to such cruelties."5 Tugwell highlighted how the New Deal tied federal aid into the social contract and stressed photography's role in witnessing a special time in American history.6 Roy Stryker, the then chief of the Historical Section highlighted the alliance between "victims" and visual mediation as a form of photographic contract: "Far from being intruders on the pathetic privacy of their subjects, the photographers became the understanding friends and interpreters of the migrants, the sharecroppers, the unemployed, the dispossessed, and brought back the philosophy and reac-

4

For further discussion of this contested show and the use of Cold War rhetoric see John G Morris, "'The Family of Man' as American Foreign Policy," in History of Photography 29 (2005); Jean Back, The Family of Man 1955–2001: Humanismus und Postmoderne: Eine Revision von Edward Steichens Fotoausstellung (Marburg: Jonas-Verlag, 2004).

5

Rexford Guy Tugwell, "Foreword," in Edward Steichen (ed.), The Bitter Years (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1962): iii.

6

"It was clear to those of us who had responsibility for the relief of distress among farmers during the Great Depression and during the following years of drought that we were passing through an experience of American life that was unique. At least we hoped it would be unique; and we intended not only to bring the resources of government to the assistance of those who were distressed or starved out but to make certain that never again should Americans be exposed to such cruelties. It seemed important to record the incredible events of these years; and the best way was to photograph them." Rexford Tugwell, in Steichen (ed.), The Bitter Years, iii.

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tions—as well as the face—of the people and their home places; the nature of the land, as was its contours. They explored the need for conservation of human and natural resources, studied cause and effect."7

For both Tugwell and Stryker, photography served as a natural ally of politics by promoting a national contract for the poor, a function, to conjure a feeling of cooperativeness that was also asserted by other reviews.8 Figure 11: Arthur Rothstein, Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USF34-004052)

7

Roy Stryker, in Steichen (ed.), The Bitter Years, v.

8

Editorial "The Lean Thirties," in Harvester World (February/March 1960), RTP FDR LIB HP, Professional Papers, Box 25, Folder Roy Stryker.

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For The Bitter Years, Steichen chose images that depicted the scale of human disaster most vividly, among the show's 208 images Walker Evans's unique portraits of Bud Field's sharecropper family in Alabama, Dorothea Lange's famous Migrant Mother, Dorothea Lange's Tractored out and Arthur Rothstein's Dust Bowl. The show re-employed the emotive portraits of poverty stricken farmers that already characterized the display of FSA photographs at The First International Exhibition in San Francisco in 1938, and which had led William Stott to his characterization of 1930s documentary photography as focusing on the sitter's facial features in order to evoke feelings of sympathy and compassion.9 Figure 12: Dorothea Lange, Power farming displaces tenants from the land in the western dry cotton area. Childress County, Texas Panhandle, June 1938 © LOC P&P (LC-USF34- 018281-C)

By 1962, reviews generally focused on the role of Stryker as an educator who taught students, photographers, administrators, and the public to see a

9

William Stott, Documentary Expression in 1930s America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, l973).

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common America,10 but only rarely remembered the initial perspective of the agency as an agricultural, economic and social survey. The notion of Stryker's individual significance merged into a cult of personality, in accordance with which, the story of a genius, a "great teacher [and] trenchant critic," was reiterated.11 While the tragedy of extreme poverty was directly reflected in these images,12 and contributed most to the Historical Section's legacy, other aspects of the RA/FSA's visual archive were neglected. Like most reviews on the photography of the FSA, The Bitter Years' emotive visualization of nature and the selection of images did not draw attention to the environmental aspect of the calamity, which was the original intention behind the setting up of the Historical Section. Images such as Rothstein's and Lange's do serve as testament to the photographers' unique skills and artistic craft, not to mention their being in the right place at the right time; but they make us forget that RA/FSA photographers operated within the context of an overarching government policy. They were hired to record aspects of resettling farms, to account for the situation of cities and farms, and accompany and mediate the New Deal administration's attempt to solve the period's environmental and humanitarian disaster. Other federal agencies, like the Tennessee Valley Project and the Civilian Conservation Corps, also maintained photographers to document their accomplishments, but due to the often minor 'artistic quality,' they are seldomly mentioned in literature. On the other hand, the majority of RA/FSA assignments did not call upon artistic skills either, but applied photography as a means of mediating political programs and supporting various ways of managing the crisis in conservational terms. The images had a high value and played an important role in the advancement of scientific communications, as a continuation of what was demonstrated in the previous chapter. They were frequently used as illustra-

10 Paul Vanderbilt, "Proposal," 7 February 1963: 2, RTP FDR LIB HP, Professional Papers, Box 25, Folder Roy Stryker. 11 Werner J. Severin, "Cameras with a Purpose: the Photojournalism of FSA," in Journalism Quarterly, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 14: 192, RTP FDR LIB HP, Professional Papers, Box 25, Folder Roy Stryker. 12 Jean Back, "Vantage Point: The Bitter Years Reconsidered," in Françoise Poos (ed.), The Bitter Years. Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2012): 6.

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tions in administrational manifestos and bulletins, but even more importantly, the production of photographs was enhanced by the tremendous expansion of all scientifically related departments of federal administration. In fact, the Roosevelt administration sought to make photographs productive on several levels: in the context of education, of public relations, and of agricultural sciences. As complementary visual mediations of nature, the majority of FSA photographs were used to support the enforcement of government soil conservation programs.

1. M EDIATIONS OF N ATURE IN G OVERNMENT P UBLICATIONS As has been argued in the preceding chapter, landscape photography gained momentum during the four geological surveys of the 1860s and 70s, at the same time as the natural sciences diversified and natural scientists started to recognize photography as a scientific tool that they could use to elaborate upon the subject of their studies. Photographic material helped scholars to verify their insights and disseminate them among peers and the public. Moreover, photography helped to advance the emerging debates of the 1920s, particularly those concerning land management and conservation. By the turn of the century, extensive, multilayered investigations with different objectives were undertaken in various areas. For example, the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, a subdivision of the USDA, had been concerned with the quality and condition of soils since its inception in 1901. Its soil experts warned the White House as early as 1908 about the dangers of soil erosion, particularly in the Great Plains, as a result of agricultural overproduction. By the end of the 1920s, major soil surveys had been commissioned.13 A report of 1927 serves as typical of the scope of governmental operations, its stated aim being to establish "the fundamental principles which underlie soil genesis, soil development, soil productivity, management, and crop adaptation."14

13 U.S. Bureau of Soils, Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Soils (Washington, DC: GPO, 1927): 25. 14 Ibid., 1.

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The Roosevelt administration was not the first to recognize the seriousness of worsening agricultural conditions. Since the Hoover administration, the number of trained experts serving in conservational units steadily increased. However, the surveys were not intensified before the end of the 1920s, following Hugh Bennett's 1928 publication Soil Erosion: A National Menace, to which Congress responded with the authorization and installation of soil conservation stations in 1929. New Deal policy more or less consolidated upon existing soil conservation tendencies. At the same time, the new environmental awareness also prepared the way for a rigid rebuilding of the landscape.15 Almost all of the high ranking politicians and representatives of the time alluded to the topic of soil conservation, such as FDR in his inauguration speech on 4 March 1933,16 or USDA director Henry Wallace.17 Additionally, contemporaries (and the Roosevelt administration) officially conceded that the Dust Bowl was a man-made calamity: "Tenancy has contributed to soil depletion; soil depletion has in turn contributed materially to the expansion of tenancy and the further impoverishment of tenants and croppers."18 Nature was now to be understood as a sensitive dynamic system, modified by human action that directly impacted on the standard of living of rural Americans. With a functional, yet dynamic understanding of nature, FDR considered the environment a "field for human action, inextricably linked with the human community, economy, and system of values."19 At the same time as daily newspapers and weekly magazines started to use photographic illustrations far more extensively, the visual persuasiveness and power of photographic images, and their potential to influence public opinion, were not lost on politicians. Newspaper articles by govern-

15 Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003). 16 http://www.inaugural.senate.gov/swearing-in/address/address-by-franklin-d-roos evelt-1933, accessed 9/27/12. 17 Henry A. Wallace, "Foreword," in Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men: Yearbook of Agriculture (Washington DC: USDA, 1938). 18 U. S. National Resources Committee, Farm Tenancy (Washington DC: GPO, 1937): 6, LOC P&P, RSP, Reel 11. 19 Henry L. Henderson and David B. Woolner, "Introduction," in ibid., (eds.), FDR and the Environment (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005): 1.

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ment representatives such as the Great Plains Committee's 1936 publication, entitled The Future of the Great Plains, the USDA's 1938 Agricultural Yearbook, and the USDA's 1941 Soils and Security,20 extensively relied on and increasingly employed photographic illustrations that were generated by the New Deal's photographic agencies. A manuscript on governmental public relations was clear as to the success of FSA photography via the media: "The unusual effectiveness of Resettlement photography is due to its emphasis on the 'human element.' Very few of its release fail to make individual tenant farmers and their children poignant symbols for the whole of farm depletion."21 Figure 13: Avoca vicinity, New York, August 1935. Steep hillside fields were torn apart and bottom lands buried by silt when torrent of rainfall rushed down the slopes during the New York flood of July 1935. Photo by Ritz and Stafford, Soil Conservation Service © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USZ62-17127)

20 Great Plains Committee, The Future of the Great Plains (Washington DC: GPO, 1936): 50. 21 James L. McCamy, "Governmental Publicity. It's Prestige in Federal Administration," [manuscript]: 1. LOC, Stryker Papers, Part H Writings by Other, 1935–1971.

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Strengthening official rhetoric through the use of visual records was an appealing idea, but in order to obtain the appropriate imagery, representatives relied on the assistance of visual experts. Under the Roosevelt administration, this interplay between politics and photography culminated in the creation of vast photographic archives. The most famous of these collections was undeniably the "Historical Section" of the RA and FSA. Jack Hurley, the biographer of this unit, has noted that existing subdivisions' practices aiming at documenting achievements were consolidated through the creation of this photographic agency.22 Nevertheless, photographers employed by the Historical Section in subsequent years worked under other New Deal divisions too, such as the Soil Conservation Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Civilian Conservation Corps, all of which maintained their own photographic units.23 As a consequence, New Deal ideology was refracted through the contents of various photographic archives and the agencies with which these archives were associated, as well as numerous individual styles of photography. Further, photographs migrated through these collections, as copies of various photographic documents were transferred to other administrative units.24

22 Hurley, Portrait of a Decade, 38. 23 Furthermore, photography produced under the Tennessee Valley Authority belongs

to

the

genre

of

architectural

photography

or

so-called

"Ingenieursfotografie," as it basically documented architectural buildings such as bridges, cabins, administrative buildings, and streets facilitated by federal grants and constructed within employment-creating schemes. Neil Maher has written on photography's agenda under the CCC to establish an image of community, masculinity and healthy outdoor activity. See Neil Maher, Nature's new deal: the Civilian Conservation Corps and the roots of the American environmental movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 24 This circulation of photographers through different federal units is referred to on some of the index cards in the FSA OWI files hosted at the LOC.

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Rexford Tugwell's Use of Photographs One of the brains behind President Roosevelt during the election campaign was Rexford Tugwell, who was appointed Undersecretary to the USDA after the election. Not only did Tugwell crucially influence the creation of New Deal programs; he played a central role in the foundation of the Historical Section of the RA. A former professor of economics at Columbia University, Tugwell had lectured and published on economics and agricultural problems long before embarking on a political career.25 As a member of the government, he became the ideologist of the New Deal, promoting the New Deal program's social and agricultural agenda in the newspapers. His articles were intended to educate ordinary Americans as to the basic facts of agriculture and the economy. Photographic illustrations greatly enhanced the impact of these manifestos, and Tugwell's very first official political publication used photographs from government sources, even before the Historical Section of the RA was established. It was his former assistant Roy Stryker who had instilled Tugwell with a sensibility for the power of photography as a supplement of factual texts. At Columbia University, Stryker had gained a reputation as a visual expert, teaching elite students to draw on direct experience and analyze the nature of American economics first hand. He therefore took students on field trips, as well as supplementing their experience with visual substitutes, of which Stryker was a keen collector. A first product of this fruitful collaboration between Tugwell and Stryker was the 1925 publication American Economic Life and the Means of its Improvement, which was heavily illustrated with photographs, many of them captured by photographer Lewis Hine.26 Hine, along with Jacob Riis, had invented the tradition of a socially committed documentary pho-

25 Rexford Tugwell, "Reflections on Farm Relief," reprint from Political Science Quarterly (New York: Academy of Political Science, 1928) in RTP, Speech and Writing Files 1928–1931, Box 53, FDR LIB HP. This notion of a general shift in industrial life was further deepened in a Today article of 28 April 1934, entitled "America's Dream." 26 Rexford Tugwell, Thomas Munro, and Roy E. Stryker, American Economic Life and the Means of Its Improvement (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925).

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tography in the United States at the turn of the century, using photographs to raise awareness of the bad living conditions of immigrants, the homeless, unemployed, and unskilled labor or social minorities. In this regard, historian Marcus Graeser has pointed out the significance of photographic images for the social welfare movement in the Progressive era, and has argued that photographs played an important role in mediating reformers' claims as a means of communication that could connect the middle class and the poor, and influenced public opinion.27 Riis's photographs in particular are considered to have immensely impacted on political legislation, in respect of which, Riis's public engagement and his lectures illustrated with lantern slides depicting social distress are widely referred to.28 American Economic Life, a survey of American citizens and their economic situation, took a different line of visual mediation. The book outlined different income group categories and took into consideration skills, ethnic background and region. Instead of aiming to evoke an emotional response or directly engaging in social advocacy through the dramatization of individual cases, its photographs provided information on these different groups, and how they were distinguished from one another. The photographs were not selected in order to evoke sympathy, but in order to depict different milieus. Rather than displaying the suppressed "other half," to quote Jacob Riis's famous book title,29 American Economic Life adopted a visually supported, social science approach, using photographs as empirical data and a solid basis for formulating legislation and creating suitable aid programs. One can further say that the book thus prepared the ground for modern legislation informed by empirical science in order to optimize the results of federal aid. It is to be considered as an attempt to integrate scien-

27 Marcus Graeser, "Visuelle Strategien und Bildabstinenz: Varianten im Verhältnis von Soziologie und Sozialreform in den USA und in Deutschland 1890-1920," in Christiane Reinecke and Thomas Mergel (eds.), Das Soziale ordnen: Sozialwissenschaften und gesellschaftliche Ungleichheit im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2012): 38. 28 Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989): 170. 29 Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the Tenements of New York (New York: Scribner, 1901).

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tific guidelines and visual information into government policy as a vision of modernity that underscored Tugwell's understanding of photography. Roosevelt's chief ideologist was not only interested in statistics on the economic background of American workers, but also in the condition of American land as an essential source of income for the majority of the country's inhabitants. Many of Tugwell's articles and writings were concerned with agricultural problems and related topics. He described how improvements in chemical fertilizers and the mechanization of agricultural labor increased farm efficiency, but also shifted the balance of supply and demand, putting additional pressure on tenant farmers attempting to make their living on smaller farm units.30 Tugwell's discussion of the transformation of agricultural economics provoked by the shift from a rural towards an industrial society also attracted the attention of his contemporaries. In 1937, Russell Smith's study Men and Resources raised concerns over declining resources and mankind's ability to deal with associated challenges.31 Tugwell sought to establish a model of scientifically informed land management as a way out of the crisis, advocating governmental control of public lands and advising on new cultivation practices.32 His articles made an understanding of complex economic models accessible to common citizens. As Tugwell as the public face of the New Deal aimed at compensating low income groups, he was the object of harsh criticism and derided for introducing a socialist model in the United States. But for him, government adjustment programs in the agricultural sector were essential for the regulation of the market on a longterm basis in the face of growing international competition.33 Tugwell's preoccupation with agriculture as a central pillar of American strength and prosperity throughout much of the twentieth century did not preclude him from developing an understanding of nature other than as an

30 Rexford Tugwell, "The Planned Use of the Land," in Today, 30 January 1934: 6, in RTP, Speech and Writing Files 1934, Box 56, FDR LIB HP. 31 Russell Smith, Men and Resources: A Study of North America and its Place in World Geography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937). 32 Tugwell, "The Planned Use of the Land," 7. 33 Rexford Tugwell, "Nature and Agricultural Adjustment" (Address at the Annual Farm and Home Picnic, Brookings, 29 June April 1934): 5, in RTP, Speech and Writing Files 1934, Box 56, FDR LIB HP.

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exploitable resource. However, he considered scientific land management and modern conservation an antidote to the abuses of the past.34 A pragmatic utilitarian, Tugwell did not subscribe to a transcendentalist or preservationist understanding of nature; though, he did declare the man-made destruction of nature a threat to human living conditions. On the contrary, he emphasized an ethical perspective, such as that expressed in an article published in Today on 22 June 1935: "Ruthless profit-motive exploitation of farm and forest has taken their toll on our land. With no new areas to turn to, we face a serious problem of conservation." 35

Figure 14: Rexford Tugwell, "No More Frontiers," in Today, June 22, 1935: 2 © RTP, Speech and Writing File 1935-1937, Box 57, FDR LIB HP

34 Rexford Tugwell, "On Soil," w.d.: 2, in RTP, Speech and Writing Files 19321933, Box 55, FDR LIB HP. 35 Rexford Tugwell, "No More Frontiers," in Today, 22 June 1935: 3, in RTP, Speech and Writings File 1935–1937, Box 57, FDR LIB HP.

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Under the rousing title No More Frontiers, the article pushed for a radically different use of American farmlands in the light of the exhaustion of new open lands, rebutting the well-known frontier thesis.36 Tugwell's careful selection of photographs guides and supportes his main argument. The draft article shows that Tugwell initially intended the article to be illustrated with an image of a dust storm, emphasizing the destructive forces of nature.37 The published article however only presented two pictures of the calamity, and, in addition, prominently displayed an aerial view of cultivated land.38 It featured a view of technologically improved farmland as the basis for a solution to the crisis. The photograph and its caption anticipate the article's concluding argument: "Scientifically terraced and planted, America's rich farm land will resist the ravages of chemical exhaustion and wind and water erosion which now threaten large portions of it in the West."39 Rather than alluding to current bad conditions, the cover photograph was selected for its capacity to reinforce the collective hope that proposals for a way out of land degradation evoked. This mode of empowerment, following on the back of governmental guidance, was the subject of most of Tugwell's important papers that were to follow,40 most of which were illustrated with further photographic evidence with a view to constructing a future vision.41 Most of Tugwell's publications from the period between 1933 and 1935 contain photographs depicting soil erosion. Many of the images hail from the soil units of the USDA, before images by RA/FSA photographers were available, due to the late inauguration of this agency in May 1935. The aim of introducing resource-conserving practices and of envisioning agriculture improved by modern technology, of pointing to a way out of the crisis that would secure a future for American farmland thus was at the root of Tugwell's motivation in initiating the Historical Section of the RA/FSA.

36 Rexford Tugwell, "No More Frontiers," [manuscript]: 1, RTP, Speech and Writings File 1935–1937, Box 57, FDR LIB HP. 37 Ibid., 1. 38 Rexford Tugwell, "No More Frontiers," 2. 39 Ibid., 2. 40 Rexford Tugwell, "America's Land," (Washington DC: GOP, 1936), LOC P&P, RSP, Writings by Others, Reel 10. 41 See Theodor Jung, Improper Land Use and Soil Destruction, Garrett County, Maryland. Sept. 1935. LOC P&P, FSA OWI, Lot 1366, catchphrase "gullies."

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Hugh Bennett's Use of Photographs Hugh Bennett as the director to the Soil Erosion Service (SES), was one of the most important persons to influence federal soil conservation. After earning a bachelor of science in chemistry and geology in 1903 and joining a soil survey to Tennessee, Bennett accepted an offer to work at the USDA's Bureau of Soils headquarters. With the creation of the SES in September 1933, in 1935 renamed the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), Bennett became the director of the department and was therefore leading the institutionalization of soil conservation policy after Roosevelt's swearing in. Bennett created realizable conservation programs and, furthermore, adapted and intensified already existing conservational initiatives, such that they became an essential part of the New Deal.42 By the 1920s, the previous century's topographic and cartographic surveys had detached a qualitative measuring of agricultural fertility. The straightforward charting of water and mineral resources made previously gave way to scientifically informed land management. In the 1910s and 1920s, large-scale soil surveys were conducted in response to the increasing importance of agricultural land management; however they were not accompanied by systematic photographic explorations.43 These new soil surveys led to the acquisition of empirical data necessary to assess opportunities for resettlement, among them also photographs, but before the 1920s, photographic material was mainly understood as a tool to document projects: photographing construction sites and the current status of projects, drawing upon more or less static and inflexible forms of architectural photography. Bennett's 1928 Soil Erosion: A National Menace was one of the period's most provocative books to address soil erosion, namely as the

42 For a detailed description of major tendencies of the 1920s conservational movement and President Hoover's point of view see Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 22. 43 For more background see J. E. Dunn, Reconnaissance Soil Survey of the Central Southern Area, California (California: United States Bureau of Soils, California Agricultural Experiment Station, 1917); Douglas Helms, Anne B. W. Effland, and Patricia J. Durana (eds.), Profiles in the History of the US Soil Survey (Iowa: Iowa State Press / Blackwell Publishing Company, 2002); Ethan Arlo Norton, Soil Conservation Survey Handbook (Washington DC: USDA, 1939).

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"biggest problem confronting the farmers of the Nation over a tremendous part of its agricultural lands."44 Soil Erosion was not Bennett's first work on conservational issues, but it consolidated upon the position he had taken in preceding debates and reflected the significant shift in orientation taking its course at the time. His 1921 The Soils and Agriculture of the Southern States was still situated at the intersection of geological classification and the nascent soil movement,45 while it was designed to improve agricultural efficiency by collating the findings of scientific agriculturalists so that farmers could apply them. Photographs supported the suggestions made, by sketching the best way to cultivate southern lands. Figure 15: Hugh H. Bennett, Soil Conservation (New York, London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1939): 70 and 71

44 Hugh H Bennett and W. R. Chapline, Soil Erosion: A National Menace (Washington, DC: USDA, 1928): 23. 45 Hugh H. Bennett, The Soils and Agriculture of the Southern States (New York: Macmillan, 1921): iv.

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Bennett used photographs to curtail more general discussions by showing the effects of erosion, and also to introduce preventative methods. His Soil Erosion: A National Menace maintained this method of visual demonstration, but increased the number of alarming images and now also underscored erosion's social impact. Bennett's major book promoting the role of conservation in New Deal politics was the voluminous Soil Conservation of 1939, in which he intensified his approach to using illustrations, the book elaborately illustrated with images identifying, for example, the chemical structure of soils in order to suggest appropriate modes of cultivation. He criticized the nineteenth-century idea that the productivity of American soil was limitless and inexhaustible, as this "erroneous appraisal of the land resource" accounts "for much of our costly steep-land tillage, overgrazing, and failure to defend vulnerable soil from the ravage of erosion."46 Aside from offering a glimpse into the past and the abuse of American soils, the book advocated steady and permanently productive agriculture through the application of conservation methods. Bennett believed that this could only be accomplished "by coordinating the knowledge of many sciences [such as physics, chemistry, and biology, economics and sociology, climate, soils, ecology, geography, geology, and engineering] toward a common objective."47 Rexford Tugwell and Hugh Bennett were instrumental in having the topic of agricultural depletion and soil erosion confronted through the New Deal policy. Though their individual perspectives on economic preconditions varied, Tugwell and Bennett were largely in agreement as to the orientation and consolidation of the ideas that underpinned the New Deal's social agenda. However, while Tugwell principally argued for relief programs to provide livable conditions for the people, Bennett developed an understanding of nature that came close to that which Aldo Leopold formulated at the end of the 1940s. Nonetheless, Bennett's economic paradigm was representative of the ideas that were continuing to emerge among contemporaries: "Certain factors of an economic and social character also influence the use of land. Men who farm the land must make a living. That is their most realistic and immediate concern. Economic need is a powerful factor in determining how they use the land, a factor that usually outweighs

46 Hugh H. Bennett, Soil Conservation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939): vi. 47 Ibid., ix.

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less urgent considerations of conservation. Social patterns likewise are land use factor."48 Bennett here refers to an essential idea on the interplay of mankind and nature that anticipated the 1972 environmental bill of rights enforced by the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. He confessed that inferior soils provided extraordinarily tough living conditions for man and threatened his existence, an idea that pre-empted the even more radical conclusion in 1972: that nature's depletion posed a global menace to humankind. The New Deal's conservational policy amounted to but one—albeit pivotal—step toward an international reassessment of environmental politics in the 1970s—photographs by the RA/FSA and federal departments dedicated to soil quality making the interdependency of soil erosion and economic conditions even more obvious. The prominence given to photographs in the news and the public realm at large, along with the contribution they made to forming and influencing public opinion, certainly borrowed directly from the persuasive and emotional function of images. It is for this reason that administrative staff in soil agencies highly valued photographic supplements and argued to commission professional photographers.49 Bennett highlighted the demand for photographs, especially for use in the press: "What we need, and this very badly, are good pictures such as newspapers and magazines can use and such as will strike a novice square in the face, knocking him off his feet with the tragedy of soil wastage shown by the picture itself even without a title."50

In other writings, Bennett even went a step further and insisted on the necessity of using visual mediation for the purposes of establishing a set of conservational ethics: "Education is a prerequisite of conservation. It is essential to develop an intelligent public understanding of the value and importance of natural resources in terms of

48 Ibid., 313. 49 Hugh H. Bennett, "Letter to H.O. Hill," [Director Regional Office Texas], 22 June 1934, NARA TR, RG 114. Soil Conservation Service Circulars, Filed orders, and memorandums, 1933-1957, Box 1. 50 Ibid.

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individual and national life. Only out of such an understanding will the impetus to act arise. Many of the techniques through which the process of education is advanced are familiar. They include the diffusion of information through radio broadcasts; through the printed word—in official publications, newspaper and magazine articles, textbooks, and so on; through visual media, such as exhibits and motion pictures; through the integration of soil conservation subject matter in school curricula; through direct contact with individuals and groups interested in the movement; and so on. […] But the people close to the land—the men and women who use the land day in and day out as a source of livelihood—want to know more than the need for conservation; they want to be shown how to conserve. The answer to this demand is the demonstration. In the last five years, large-scale demonstrations of good land use and conservation have been remarkably effective in giving farmers an opportunity to explain, criticize, and learn modern conservation farming methods." 51

Bennett's emphasis on the educational potential of photography corresponded with the tradition of using agricultural exhibitions to teach illiterate farmers about improved and more sustainable methods of crop cultivation. The SCS for example used the format of a mobile exhibition to disseminate the latest agricultural know-how. As a mobile information box, the photographs and artifacts toured the nation sheltered in a lorry, a collaboration between the SCS and Northern Pacific Railroad.

2. AGRICULTURAL M ONITORING BY THE M EANS OF S URVEILLANCE Soil conservation surveys were accompanied by photographic investigations prior to 1933. Before the 1920s, these photographs were predominantly intended to document technical aspects of construction works and as such refer to the genre of architectural photographs. Before the 1930s, they, in very few instances, recorded soil conditions and investigated and evaluated resource-conserving practices in the process. By 1935, a field of scientifically informed photography that supported conservational approaches was cultivated. Since the utilization of aerial photography in 1934, an agricultural reconnaissance campaign was mounted and used "as a basic for

51 Bennett, Soil Conservation, 317.

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surveys, to obtain information by air photo interpretation, and as base for program planning and administration."52 Scientists were quick to praise aerial photography's potential in all fields of the natural sciences, particularly in geology and for mapping purposes.53 Aerial photography applied in geological and conservational research relied upon the kind of photogrammetry used in architecture and construction as a technique for measuring the land's features. Photo-optical measurement of uneven surfaces required intensive post-production processes, and difficulties encountered in accurately translating three-dimensions into a graphic, two-dimensional format led to a flood of manuals explaining how to compensate for optical distortions and adjust vertical lines.54 Nevertheless, the integration of aerial photography into soil conservation significantly improved the methodology of scientific appraisal that framed government policies. The April 1935 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act provided for the extension of aerial surveys in order to reflect its new position as an essential component of New Deal politics. By 1935, numerous subdivisions with a conservational mandate had been

52 Henry W. Dill, Worldwide Use of Air-Photos in Agriculture (Washington DC: GPO, 1967): 20. 53 A.J. Eardley, Interpretation of Geologic Maps and Aerial Photographs (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1941): iii. 54 James Warren Bagley, Aerophotography and Aero surveying (London: McGraw-Hill, 1941); Cecil Augustus Hart, Air Photography Applied to Surveying (New York: Longmans, Green, 1943); Harold Theodore Uhr Smith, Aerial Photographs and Their Applications (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1943); Talbert Abrams, Essentials of Aerial Surveying and Photo Interpretation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1944); Armin Kohl Lobeck, Military Maps and Air Photographs: Their Use and Interpretation (London: McGrawHill, 1944); American Geological Institute / Committee on Education, Outstanding Aerial Photographs in North America (Washington DC: American Geological Institute, 1951); Frank Walker, Geography From The Air (London: Methuen / New York: Dutton, 1953); Victor C. Miller, Photogeology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961); National Research Council / Highway Research Board, Photogrammetry and Aerial Surveys (Washington, 1966); J. A. E. Allum, Photo geology and Regional Mapping (New York: Pergamon Press, 1966).

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attached to the SES/SCS, most of which employed or commissioned photographers. Such units included the Land Utilization Program, the Hill Culture Division, the Nursery Division, the Dry Land Farming Unit, the Sedimentation Studies unit, and the Demonstration Projects unit.55 In addition to Sherman Fairchild, an independent entrepreneurial photographer commissioned with federal assignments, several photographers were employed on a regular basis within the soil conservation staff, such as George Britsch, Henry C. Noll, Carl B. Brown, Ross A. Williams, Francis X. Oxley, L. C. Gottschalk, Orville Blake, and SCS chief photographer Richard Mawhinney.56

55 The National Archive's Finding Aid offers insights into these voluminous photographic collections such as RG 114-CT (Records Relating to Soil Conservation Reproduced by the Soil Conservation Service Photography Laboratory), RG 114-SSWR (SSWR Photographs Relating to Work Project Activities of the Sedimentation Studies Division, 1935–46), RG 114-SF (State File of Photographs of Conservation Projects, 1936-58), RG 114-SS (Sedimentation Studies 1935–46), RG 114-LUP (Photographs of Land Utilization Projects in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas), RG 114- DL (Dry Land Farming in Montana, North and South Dakota and Wyoming 1935–39), RG 114-CT (Records Relating to Soil Conservation Reproduced by the Soil Conservation Service Photography Laboratory)—just to give an idea of the scope of archival documents. The bulk of photographs contained in these collections were taken from 1933 onwards, although

some

photographs

also

precede

this

date.

The

main

collection of the USDA's aerial photography is stored in its Aerial Photography Field Office (APFO) in Salt Lake City, Utah (Joshua Sky and Leslie A. Morrissey, "Sources for Historic Aerial Photography and Maps of the United States", http://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/nr346/Readings/HistoricSources.pdf, accessed 9/19/12). In addition to which, almost all of the conservational regional offices house photographic collections as well, though these have not been considered in this study (Photo Division, National Archives College Park). 56 Index card, old finding aid RG 114-CT: 3, NARA PD.

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Glenn Fuller's Conservation Surveys One particular interesting collection of photographs offering insights into the workings of visual soil surveillance and how photography was integrated into administrative activities is given by the Glenn Fuller photographic collection, stored at the National Archives. Fuller had been employed by federal soil conservation agencies since 1922 when, in 1933, he became a soil erosion specialist for the SES. He organized demonstration projects and later on coordinated the service's nationwide reconnaissance erosion survey. As a soil expert, Fuller created the procedure for mapping and indicating factors such as soil type, slope, and erosion using traditional cartographic methods.57 In 1935, he traveled the three states of Washington, Montana and Utah to supervise the survey and, in the absence of trained photographers, to take pictures of his own. Fuller's integration of photographic data into the mapping of soils was indicative of the impact that photographic surveillance had on soil erosion research—and land management more generally. In 1935, the SCS responded to the urgent demand for better maps with a specific program of soil mapping with the objective of locating and assessing the lands affected by erosion, so that remedial action could be taken. Fuller was commissioned to create an inventory of physical land features with a view to taking action and restoring the degraded soil.58 He documented the sites photographically,59 choosing vantage points carefully in order to give the most accurate impression of the state of the ground. The sites' geographic location was provided in accompanying captions. Furthermore, sites were categorized according to the level of erosion: for example, class R damage was due to sheep grazing, the information also provided by the captions. By 1935, the Soil Survey Section had prepared a comprehensive reconnaissance survey to create an accurate inventory of physical land features. Simultaneously, aerial photographs at all USDA agencies became ever more important: in 1937, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration

57 Index card, old finding aid, NARA PD, RG 114-GF. 58 NARA PD, RG 114-GF, Photographs of Soil Conservation in Washington, Montana and Utah taken by Glenn L. Fuller, 10/2/1935 – 10/24/1935. 59 Index card, old finding aid, RG 114-GF, NARA PD.

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(AAA) started putting photographers in the air in order to keep track of compliance with federal directives, the latter being a condition attached to receiving subsidies.60 Figure 16: Soil erosion map © National Archives TR, RG 114, Chief Division of Research—Soil erosion investigations charts, maps and stencils 1930-1933, Box 1

Furthermore, the AAA standardized map scale and altitude in 1937 to ensure that the data gathered was comparable.61 In the context of the SES/SCS, aerial photographs were exploited to assess the benefits of new methods of irrigation, plowing or maintaining the contours of fields as preventive means against soil erosion. Fuller's photographic studies linked the data retrieved at ground level to that gained via the reconnaissance surveys. His use of aerial mapping meant that meticulous studies of single

60 Mark Monmonier, "Aerial Photography at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration: Acreage Controls, Conservation Benefits, and Overhead Surveillance

in

the

1930s,"

in

Photogrammetric

Engineering

&

Remote Sensing 68, no. 12 (December 2002): 1. 61 U.S. Soil Conservation Service, Aerial-photo Interpretation in Classifying and Mapping Soils (Washington DC: GPO, 1966): 1.

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sites on the ground could be combined with views from the air, enabling the detection of broad patterns of erosion across large geographic areas. Aerial photographs enabled accurate topographic maps on the nature of soils to be drawn up faster than a dependence on calibrations made on the ground allowed, even taking into account the skilled labor involved in transforming an aerial photograph into a map.62 According to Henry W. Dill of the Economic Research Service, in order to "plan, oversee, and sustain efficient agriculture," it was the task of empirical soil science to "compile statistical information and maps showing distribution, pattern, and geographic location of land use, soils, and other data."63 In addition to field surveys, samples, cartographic maps, mail questionnaires, and personal interviews, Dill mentioned different types of photographs as essential tools for collecting the data that the rigorous new soil science required.64 The merging and translation of photographic data from both the ground and the air also led to the emergence of a new class of experts.65 As a consequence, numerous handbooks point to the advantages of aerial surveillance as a means of defining the "boundaries of soil units, or the land-forms corresponding to them, and the land classification boundaries that are derived from both," at the same time as acknowledging the limits of photographic reconnaissance and the need for additional field trips: photographs could not be used to "actually identify soil types, but rather to locate changes in the land-surface patterns that may be relatable to differing soil properties."66 Ideally, the photographs would corroborate the findings of the soil

62 The steps involved in translating aerial photographs into maps were accurately described by the handbooks of the time. Frey explains how aerial photographs were used to fulfill research objectives in 1967 in USDA departments, see Henry Thomas Frey, Agricultural Application of Remote Sensing (Washington DC: USDA, 1967): 2. 63 Dill, Worldwide Use of Air-Photos, 1. 64 Ibid., 1. 65 For an explanation of how aerial photographs were used in the interpretation of soil conditions, as well as of how the photographs were transformed into graphic maps, see Cecil Augustus Hart, Air Photography Applied to Surveying (London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1940). 66 Leslie Paul White, Aerial Photography and Remote Sensing for Soil Survey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977): 31.

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units, but changes in soil patterns could also happen without any visible alteration of the surface.67 Soil identification was a major objective for administrative soil units, and one that required a laborious process of gathering and collating data, and comparing it with other sources of information.68 Its importance was reflected in political support for the awarding of further grants. Despite its constraints and the need for caution in the interpretation of its results, aerial photography provided an essential tool for the classification and plotting of each agricultural parcel of land, and Glenn Fuller requested detailed soil erosion maps based on aerial photographs on all of his monitored demonstration areas. He then would synthesize the outcome of the aerial surveys with the results of other surveys made from the ground.69 The overarching purpose of these complex, time consuming and resource intensive efforts is discussed in a letter-exchange referring to a project concerning new possibilities for farming and settlements at the Everglades, in which officials justified the commitment to conducting aerial surveys on the basis of how the American people would benefit from the results: "Many thousands of dollars have been wasted and the hopes of many good people blighted, their savings squandered because they were misdirected in their settlement on soils entirely unsuited for the purpose desired, or on soils, in some cases, practically worthless for agricultural purposes. There are areas of good soils and in close association there are areas of land practically worthless for farming; but each type of soil has its particular capability for use. The farmer of the future in this region

67 Ibid., 33. Later on, technological improvements extending beyond visual recognition offered more advanced tools that used ultrasound as a new way to determine the density of soil. 68 Charles E. Kellog [Deputy Administrator for Soil Survey], "Foreword," in United States Soil Conservation Service, Aerial-photo Interpretation, ii. 69 Glenn Fuller, "Memorandum to all Regional Directors; Re-Detailed Soil Erosion Survey Maps," 4 April 1935, NARA TR, RG 114, Soil Conservation Service Circulars, Filed orders, and memorandums, 1933–1957, Box 1.

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should be directed to good soils and should use these soils for the crops to which they are adapted."70

This confession suggested that targeted government regulation was necessary to guarantee proper use of natural resources, but moreover, it suggested that a proper—and timely—examination and evaluation of lands be provided for in the future, if potential settlers were to be prevented from establishing their businesses in areas unlikely to support a secure outcome. The broader argument of the memorandum is of interest too, because the memorandum as a whole not only verifies the government's concerns, but simultaneously suggested applying the newest technology available in order to deal with them and to monitor the area in question through intensive aerial photographic surveys.71 Permission to carry out aerial photographic surveys over this particular part of the Everglades was granted on 16 August 1939.72 Thus, the debate indicates a fundamental shift in the approach to land management within the administration.73 A second voluminous special collection of photographs gathered by regional experimental farm research units and kept by the SCS shows how the use of photography in the context of conservation science varied.74 Photographs in this record group were used to research natural phenomena and transformations in soil structure as part of biological and conservational

70 W.E. Hearn [Inspector Southern Division], "Memorandum for Dr. S.H. McCrory," February 12, 1937: 2, NARA TR, RG 114, Records of the Soil Conservation Service Office Files of Dr. Bennett Relating to Research 1933– 1951, Box 1, Folder 2. 71 Ibid. 72 Hugh H.Bennett, "Memorandum to All Assistant Chiefs," 16 August 1939, NARA TR, RG 114 Records of the Soil Conservation Service Office Files of Dr. Bennett Relating to Research 1933–1951, Box 1, Folder 2. 73 [Letter to H.H. Bennett], "Plan for a Demonstration Area for the Everglades Region of Florida," 3 August 1939, NARA TR, RG 114, Records of the Soil Conservation Service Office Files of Dr. Bennett Relating to Research 1933– 1951, Box 1, Folder 2. 74 NARA PD, RG 114-CS Records of the Soil Conservation Service, Photos Relating to Soil Erosion Experimental Farm Research, Investigation, & Educational Activities, 24 Boxes.

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field studies.75 As functional images, these photographs were meant to document different stages in ongoing experiments and to depict the outcome of experiments to improve measures taken in order to prevent soil erosion. Figure 17: Fuller survey © National Archives PD, RG 114-CS, Records of the SCS, Photos relating to Soil Erosion Experimental Farm Research, Investigation & Educational Activities, Kansas 1930, Box 3

Other photographs in the same group might meticulously describe a gully's course, and the degree of its erosion, and be accompanied by captions referring to specific geographic segments, locations, and plots. Once again, photographic studies made on the ground were meant to be supplemented by aerial mapping such as that undertaken in the context of the Fuller survey. Photographs in this collection show the formation of gullies and the effects of rainfall on soil erosion. Interpretative captions provided rainfall in inches and related this data to the degree of erosion witnessed. As such, 75 As functional images, with a special focus on conservational details, these specific types of technological images confirm the notion of a discrete field of scientific imagery, as distinct from the tradition of landscape photography.

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the collection reflected the long term efforts of federal farm bureaus in seeking to establish the optimum height of terraces in order to avoid the suspension of rock and soil in rainwater.76 These visual sources confirm the growing importance of photography as visual means of verification and stress the role of photography as a tool of demonstration, evaluation and research in the nascent science of conservation. By the mid-1930s, individual photographic studies became a crucial component of research that prompted insights into soil conservation. The images also led to the fostering of agricultural literacy, both on the level of educating farmers and the public, but also of supporting the exchange and transfer of knowledge among experts.

3. S OIL C ONSERVATION : T HE M AGAZINE Due to the multilevel, experimental orientation of photographic observation as applied in the soil conserving sciences, the integration of visuals into conservational science generated a whole variety of further photographic images, besides to those produced by individuals such as Glenn Fuller. By 1935, conservational and preventative measures and methods had become key to the work of all agricultural branches of the New Deal and led to the creation of a massive photographic archive and special departments to enforce the illustration, mediation and investigation of soil issues with the help of visual media. The USDA started collecting images relating to all manner of conservational issues and started to construct a huge photographic archive. But most of the photographs in it lack copyright and textual descriptions, so that it is almost impossible to relate them to specific investigations and intentions.77 The SCS only maintained a photographic laboratory for the reproduction of photographs, maps, and charts and no discrete

76 NARA PD, RG 114 CS, Box 3. 77 United States Soil Conservation Service Southwest Region photographs, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; United States Soil Conservation Service, Photograph Collection, Special Collections Department, Iowa State University; The US Soil Conservation Service Photograph Collection, 1930s– 1940, A Register of the Collection at the Utah State Historical Society.

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photographic division.78 It was largely reliant on borrowing photographers from the FSA, though it occasionally commissioned photographers in special cases. The SCS's eager interest in and extensive use of images is instead better reflected in Soil Conservation, the agency's administrative bulletin, founded in 1935. Soil Conservation obtained its photographs from various sources, including the photographers it commissioned, the magazine's authors or larger photographic collections such as those belonging to the USDA. Photographs became an integral part of the magazine's format and may show sketches from the field, long term observations, or visual evidence that verified the research presented. Photographs supported the flow of knowledge and served as tools to circulate and to disseminate information, documenting findings, thoughts and to elucidate phenomena. Whereas other agencies' photographs—including the FSA's—were preponderantly displayed at agricultural fairs as educational aids, Soil Conservation magazine was read by and written for experts, government officials and the interested public. The magazine was only available upon prepaid subscription and its circulation was low.79 Nonetheless, it supported a network of conservation experts and provided a source of information that the government drew upon, making it quite a remarkable niche publication. An early instance of science communications, Soil Conservation invited experts on the topic of soil erosion to showcase their ideas.80 Its first issue, launched August 1935, presented a surprisingly advanced understanding of conservation, ecology

78 NARA TR, RG 114, Records of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, 1875–2002. 79 The magazine described its agenda as follows: "The matter contained herein is published by direction of the Secretary of Agriculture as administrative information required for the proper transaction of the public business. Soil Conservation seeks to supply to workers and cooperators of the Department of Agriculture engaged in soil conservation activities, information of especial help to them in the performance of their duties, and is issued to the free by law." Soil Conservation, June 1938: 273. 80 Gilles Mora, "The FSA's Documentary Style: From Reportage to Vision," in Gilla Mora and Beverly W. Brannan (eds.), FSA: The American Vision (New York, 2006); Daniel et al. (eds.), Official Images.

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and the environment, pre-empting Aldo Leopold's significant writings published at the end of the 1930s. On the visual level, Soil Conservation transgressed common modes of illustration and printed unconventional photographic images for scientific purposes. Photographs visually demonstrated the effects of such practices as "strip cropping" and "field stripping;" and the "before" and "after" function of photographic depiction—as a characteristic means of 1930s propaganda—was applied to demonstrate the effects of government programs. Photographic field sketches aided the understanding of processes and served as learning aids; in the context of visual memoranda or scientific dairies, they also helped track the efficacy of conservational measures.81 In addition to the discussion of preventive methods of soil protection, Soil Conservation started to adopt a broader environmental orientation toward associated issues, including those relating to wildlife. Kenneth Davis, Associate Information Specialist at the SCS, debated the effects of functional, man-made landscapes on wildlife. His article emphasized the importance of retaining pristine natural areas as habitats, whether as nesting sites or food patches, and entertained the prospect of a more organic relationship between nature, game, and humanity.82 Photographic illustrations presented silent and hidden waste lands, such as a tender view of a bird's nest and a picture of inconspicuous food patches at the corner of fields.83 The captions point to the importance of conserving these areas through proper land management and advocate leaving fallow

81 Harold G. Anthony, "Erosion Defenses withstand Pounding of Record Rains," in Soil Conservation, September 1936: 41–3. 82 Kenneth Davis, "Protecting Fin, Fur, and Feather in Coon Valley," in Soil Conservation, December 1936: 113. 83 In the 1930s, bird photography was still an emerging genre, as long exposure times precluded images of flying birds. Common nineteenth-century hunting and game scenes were slowly modified by photographers such as Eliot Porter, one of the first acknowledged bird photographers, the artist being rewarded with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941 to capture as many species as possible. See Eliot Porter, "Photographing Birds," in US Camera Magazine 3 (March/April 1939): 18–21. Matthew Brower, Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American Photography (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

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land for wild animals.84 A memorandum of March 1935 furthermore highlighted the commitment of the SES to all issues of wildlife conservation as "an integral part of its broad program for erosion control and better land utilization."85 The SES reacted by establishing a special unit in charge of the conservation of such wildlife areas.86 Figure 18: Kenneth Davis, "Protecting Fin, Fur, and Feather in Coon Valley," in Soil Conservation, Dec. 1936: 110 and 113 © Soil Conservation Magazine

Statements such as this point to a lively conservational debate breaking out among experts in the mid-1930s. Moreover, the articles expressed a new perspective on photographic modes of depiction that differed significantly from approaches to scientific photography of the nineteenth century. In the 84 Davis, "Protecting Fin, Fur, and Feather," 110. 85 Hugh H. Bennett, "Memorandums to Regional Directors," 22 March 1935: 1. NARA TR, RG 114 Soil Conservation Service Circulars, Filed Orders, and Memorandums, 1933–1957. 86 Hugh H. Bennett, "Statement of Wild-Life Conservation Activities of the Soil Erosion Service," 18 February 1935, NARA TR, RG 114 Soil Conservation Service Circulars, Filed orders, and Memorandums, 1933–1957.

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September issue of 1937, W.C. Lowdermilk, assistant to the director of the SCS, elaborated upon the emergent mode of organic thinking in government conservation in an article on basic "Ecological Principles." Here, Lowdermilk emphasized his conviction that sustainable, soil-conserving agriculture had to be based on the principles of applied ecology.87 His article encouraged the study of nature's regenerating forces as exhibited in the soil, and he called for a new form of land-use planning which he described using the terms "vegetative engineering" and "ecological engineering."88 Lowdermilk addressed three main principles: (1) the restriction of cultivation as far as possible to flat lands and gentler sloping lands; (2) the conservation of soil fertility and (3) the application of sustainable methods of farming and soil erosion prevention.89 Thus, Lowdermilk appealed for a new ethic of sustainability (as distinct from the paradigm of utilitarianism), which bear a striking resemblance to Aldo Leopold's ideas, and particularly those found in articles for the Wisconsin Agriculturalist and Farmers from 1938 to 1941. In these seminal writings, Leopold advocated the study of relationships between specific plants and how these contributed to fertile soils. Thus, he envisioned a natural balance of plants, animals, soils, and human needs that would lead to an organic understanding of nature. Indeed, Leopold's 1942 article "Biotic Land-Use" formulated and synthesized the era's most advanced concept of conservation. Therefore, he is not only said to have promoted a love of nature that would defend against nature's reduction to its functional utility,90 but also to have shifted in his allegiances: away from the preference for Gifford Pinchot's utilitarian philosophy of resource conservation that his training as a Yale Forest School student had instilled in him, and toward the camp of John Muir, who understood nature as a sanctuary to be preserved for aesthetic or philosophical reasons.91 In "Biotic Land-Use," Leopold abandoned a utilitarian under-

87 W.C. Lowdermilk, "Ecological Principles," in Soil Conservation, September 1937: 54. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle, "Foreword," in Aldo Leopold, For the Health of the Land. Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings (Washington DC: Island Press, 1999): 4. 91 Ibid., 14.

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standing of nature in order to introduce a notion of the land that included the whole ecosystem: soils, water, plants, and wild animals.92 This perception of the land as an organic whole led to the acknowledgement of the interdependencies of all animate and inanimate forms of life.93 Accordingly, when he applied his thinking to land-use, he pleaded for the favorable treatment of plants and animals in order to conserve the land.94 Thus, Leopold formulated his land ethic of maintaining the ecological balance of nature that became famous with his Sand County Almanac later in 1949.95 Leopold pointed to the interrelatedness of organisms and their environment, establishing "the essence of an ecological attitude" in the late 1930s, as historian Susan Flader notes.96 It is far less commonly known that besides Leopold, Hugh Bennett, SCS director, and Wellington Brink, editor of Soil Conservation, expedited a new understanding of conservation, attracting an impressive circle of expert contributors to the magazine. For this dissemination and agglomeration of expertise, the employ of photographs was essential to support the spread of knowledge. The shifted understanding of ecology put forward and its assisting use of photographs can better be explained by John F. Preston's article "Woodland, a Part of the Farm Plant," on commercial lumbering and its visual impact.97 The article's first image shows how the woods were utilized, with workers piling up the raw material and the product of their labor: cut wood.

92 Aldo Leopold, "Biotic Land-Use," in ibid., For the Health of the Land, 199. 93 An according understanding of nature as an ecological circle in that humanity was only one element, albeit one that threatened the existence of other species, was introduced by Paul Sears in 1935. See Paul Sears, Deserts On the March (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935): 3. 94 Leopold, "Biotic Land-Use," 199. 95 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949): viii. In addition to the writings of Aldo Leopold, Paul Sears's Desert on the March (1935) and This is our World (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937) are among the most influential ecological books of the time. 96 Susan L. Flader, "A Biographical Study of Aldo Leopold: Thinking like a Mountain," in Forest History, 17, no. 1 (April 1973): 15. 97 John F. Preston, "Woodland, a Part of the Farm Plant," in Soil Conservation, December 1936: 117.

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On the next pages, a second photograph stressed the aesthetic beauty of the forest, independent of its commercial value. This view of the forest obviously coincides with Gifford Pinchot's understanding of the woods as an organic entirety. Figure 19: John F. Preston, "Woodland, a Part of the Farm Plan," in Soil Conservation, Dec. 1936: 117 and 119 © Soil Conservation Magazine

Historian Char Miller has described Pinchot as a "transitional figure," who started to adopt a broader understanding of nature within the context of 98 governmental land-use methods. His characterization of Pinchot's function as an intellectual bridge and the development in his thinking can also be found in the way Pinchot used photographs to underline his theories, such as in the two-volume A Primer of Forestry (Part One was published in 1900 and Part Two in 1905) that were richly illustrated. Pinchot presented several of the preservationists' core ideas, including reference to, for exam99 ple, the forest "as an organic whole," and concluded with illustrations that show the effects of distinctly destructive methods of lumbering. In his The 98 Ibid., 3. 99 Gifford Pinchot, A Primer of Forestry, Bulletin 24, Division of Forestry, US Department of Agriculture (Washington: GPO, 1900): 3.

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Fight for Conservation, Pinchot announced his ethical imperative for landuse management and reminded the nation that it must not exhaust the natural resources that will secure American prosperity for future generations; thus, the importance of conservation was stressed throughout.100 Soil Conservation adopted different modes of depiction—resulting in an aesthetic altogether different from that of the tradition of sublime landscape photography, its functional images serving as learning tools in the study of plants and species. Sometimes, photographs were used to reinforce and demonstrate biological classification, but generally writers for Soil Conservation maintained an amateur style of depiction that did not rely on the modes of photographic plant description developed by German photographers attached to scientific institutions such as Karl Blossfeldt, Ernst Fuhrmann, or Alfred Renger-Patzsch, the photographers of the Neues Sehen.101 With all these experts initiating, inspiring and synthesizing debates, the magazine offered an important internal mouthpiece for the exchange of expertise and information: a process in which photographic illustrations played an important role, and not least with regard to the demonstration of biological and ecological interdependencies. The collection of photographs compiled by the SCS had a broad orientation and represented the thirst for knowledge that informed the work carried out by government soil units, which in turn empowered conservational photography. Even in the face of critique of the New Deal's agricultural engineering and the associated belief in being able to scientifically manage the land in order to make it productive, a pro-active, ecological understanding of nature emerged in the department of the SCS, marking a departure from the paradigm of abundance and unlimited yield increase. Photographs played a major role in the agricultural debates of the 1930s by mediating evidence, both at a political and scholarly level. However, most of the applied photographs relied strongly on external textual explanations. Soil Conservation employed photographs both as visual aids and, even more importantly, as educational aids aimed at knowledge transfer

100 Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1910): 3. 101 Wiebke von Hinden, Ernst Fuhrmann: Fotoregisseur. Die Pflanzenfotografien des Auriga-Archivs. Zivilisationskritische Tendenzen in der Fotografie der Neuen Sachlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003).

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between administrative staff and conservation experts. The magazine used various approaches to visual media, often deferring to each author's specific use of images. Some authors used field sketches as memory aids for conservational observations; others used photography for the long-term monitoring of developments and as confirmation of improvements: elsewhere, photographs were used for studies in plant classification or as tools to establish specific differences or details. These various ways of seeing enabled the SCS to establish a visual episteme that helped conservationists to understand nature. Photographs supported this process by supporting observations and enabling the sharing of insights with others; textual explanations contextualized the images, translating their "visual evidence" for the viewer.

4. T HE N EW D EAL ' S E NVIRONMENTAL V ISION : R OY S TRYKER AND THE H ISTORICAL S ECTION OF THE FSA Besides the Historical Section's duty to support the New Deal agencies' accomplishments in resettlement and its advocacy of the revitalization of soils through documenting flood damage, the Dust Bowl, erosion and exploitive methods of farming, Roy Stryker did not have a distinct interest in soil science or in conservation. His primary interest was related neither to economics nor to agriculture. A book proposal on agriculture and conservational expertise consisting predominantly of photographic documents, as a sequel to American Economic Life, never materialized.102 On the other hand, the proposal leads us to the notion of a historic memory created by photographic documents that was of great importance to both Stryker and Tugwell. In this regard, Stryker's manuscript Still Photography offers an early, modest outline of the function of photography in government policy: in the context of the Information Division, still photography was called upon to "bring these facts [of rural poverty] before the public" as part of a larger

102 Roy Stryker, "Project for the Publication of a Pictorial History of American Agriculture" [1940], LOC P&P, RSP, Professional Activities 1912–71, Reel 6.

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educational program.103 Therein, Stryker perceived photographic mediation as having a single goal: "the sole purpose behind Resettlement photography has been a simple and unspectacular attempt to give information. The task has been to confront the people with each other, the urban with the rural, the inhabitants of one section with those of other sections of the country, in order to promote a wider and more sympathetic understanding of one for the other."104 In contrast to this unsophisticated definition, the written agenda of the Historical Section, calls for a much more ambitious objective: "As Chief of the Historical Section of the Division of Information, under the general supervision of the administrator, to exercise broad powers of discretion and authority for the purpose of directing the preparation of an accurate comprehensive economic historical and sociological study of the underlying causes, objectives, programs and achievements of the Resettlement Administration. To direct the activities of investigations, photographers, economists, sociologists and statisticians engaged in the accumulation, selection and compilation of reports of field data, statistics, photographic material, vital statistics, agricultural surveys, maps and sketches necessary to make accurate descriptions of the various introductory, progressive and concluding phases of the Resettlement Administration, particularly with regard to the historical, sociological and economic aspects of the several programs and their accomplishments. In cooperation with the various Divisions of the Resettlement Administration and other Government agencies, to collect, analyze and prepare for presentation and preservation such information pertinent to the history, objectives and achievements of the Resettlement Administration as he shall determine to have value as an addition to the scope of general knowledge for the benefit of the Government, schools and colleges, and the general public. To combine all the foregoing specific duties in preparation and supervising the preparation in one unified form of expression, a complete representation of the aims, objectives, administration–its origin, establishment and function, and also so to maintain this record, and supervise its maintenance, so that at all times it may be in current form in order that there may be available for the use of other Government agencies schools, colleges and the

103 [Stryker, Roy]: "Still Photography": 1. LOC P&P, RSP, Professional Activities 1912-71, Reel 6. 104 Ibid., 2.

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general public, a complete and coherent record of the Resettlement Administration."105

As this memo indicates, the Historical Section was not only intended as an educational photographic service, but considered a centerpiece of intensive research in agriculture and economics, merging the expertise of different disciplines related to the social sciences, bringing together statistics, textual records, and photographs. Moreover, the document confirms Tugwell's intention to promote empirical social data as a guiding light for political decisions, and to draw upon the power of photographic documentation in pushing for the accumulation of knowledge within the New Deal framework. In the light of this document, Stryker's position on specific photographic assignments becomes much clearer. Stryker was extremely interested in the potential that photographic lenses offered in terms of relaying experience of the world and facilitating the study of all aspects of American everyday life in a state of flux. In the instructions he gave to photographers, Stryker reminded them of the general need to take pictures relating to a wide range of environmental issues, including mining, lumber industry, highways, and hydropower. These guidelines were supported by concrete suggestions, for example to consider the "character of the soil," "testing for minerals in the soil—phosphates, lime, potassium," and "spreading phosphate, lime, manure."106 Another shooting script suggested examining farmland and aspects of agriculture, and other institutions and New Deal agencies like the American Forestry Association, the SCS or the USDA requested specific images.107 The preliminary itineraries of these organizations and

105 [Tugwell, Rexford]: [Letter addressed to Roy Stryker], n.d., FDR LIB HP, RTP, Professional Papers, Box 25, Folder Roy Stryker. 106 Roy Stryker, "General Notes for Pictures Needed for Files. FSA 1939," LOC P&P, RSP; Correspondence 1924–1972. Reel 1. 107 LOC P&P, RSP, Shooting scripts from FSA Regional Offices and Other Government Agencies, 1936–42.

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institutions gave instructions and listed topics and motifs to consider.108 Other papers elaborated the requirements of different forms of photographic documentation according to the purpose for which they would later be used. Photographers were therefore reminded of the different agendas of various governmental units: "The major distinction between the land utilization program of the Resettlement Administration and the land use purchase activities of other federal agencies such as the Forest Service, Biological Survey, etc., is that the Resettlement land program is primarily concerned with social and economic results of improper land use. The Forest Service and the Biological Survey are interested in preserving land in order to save natural resources. The Resettlement land program is buying up land primarily to help local people obtain a better livelihood and to remove the cause of excessive costs in local government."109

According to these many-sided applications, the paper suggested different modes of photographic depiction and restressed the general difference between the programs: "Photographs to illustrate forestry and wildlife conservation need to show only such things as trees, animals, eroding lands, etc. Photographs which properly illustrate the resettlement land program should always show a connection between poor land and poor living conditions."110 But despite all these requests for photographs, epistolary correspondence between Stryker and Arthur Rothstein shows how Stryker focused on the historic dimension of incidents rather than a depiction of fresh ecological devastation. During the 1937 Mississippi Flood, a couple of photographers were sent to different states along the Mississippi. When sending Rothstein to New Orleans to await the flood's tide, Stryker stressed his desire to document on

108 Erl Bressman, "Notes for John Vachon," 13 April 1940; W.a.: "Suggested Itinerary for Russell Lees Pacific Northwest Trip – 1941." Both: LOC P&P, RSP; Professional Papers. Shooting scripts from FSA Regional Offices and Other Government Agencies, 1936–42. 109 W.a. [Roy Stryker]: "Notes on (good) land use photographs," w.d., LOC P&P, RSP, Professional Papers, Shooting scripts from FSA Regional Offices and Other Government Agencies, 1936–42. 110 Ibid.

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the impact and long-term effects of the flood rather than to depict the incident: "it looks very much like the flood is going to hit New Orleans in about another week. I do not think it advisable for you to spend time trying to get flood pictures. Later on, we may try to get aftermath pictures. The newspapers will cover the flood quite adequately, but once the flood is over, the aftermath no longer seems to be good news. However, this type of picture is quite important to us."111 Stryker's assessment emphasizes the importance of witnessing transformations and environmental changes rather than capturing newsworthy events alone. Moreover, the imaginative, visionary chief of the unit encouraged his photographers—as far as he could—to leave aside aspects of photographic assignments he did not consider so valuable. When Russell Lee was commissioned with a special assignment for the USDA Information Service that required pictures of insects and pest surveys, Stryker simply recommended not spending a "great deal of time on it," adding his own suggestions instead.112 Yet his instructions also confirm the notion of the 'human element' as special photographic emphasis of the FSA. When sending Rothstein on an assignment to explore the conditions of timber country, he advised him to "watch for opportunities to photograph struggling families trying to make a living among the stumps."113 Thus, the farmer's portraits refer precisely to the environmental condition witnessed, as summarized in another of Stryker's writings:

111 Roy Stryker, [Letter to Arthur Rothstein], 23 January 1937, LOC P&P, RSP, Professional Papers, Shooting scripts from FSA Regional Offices and Other Government Agencies, 1936–42. 112 Roy Stryker, [Letter to Russell Lee], 27 September 1937, LOC P&P, RSP, Professional Papers, Shooting scripts from FSA Regional Offices and Other Government Agencies, 1936–42. 113 Roy Stryker, [Letter to Arthur Rothstein], 6 June 1937, LOC P&P, RSP, Professional Papers, Shooting scripts from FSA Regional Offices and Other Government Agencies, 1936–42.

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"The unfailing emphasis on people characterizes Resettlement photography, whether they are presented as American types or as human beings visibly affected by environmental conditions."114

An even more important document conveys Stryker's thoughts on photography's historical dimension: "I assume, and I hope correctly, that the task of the social historian is to collect the fugitive items of a period and arrange them in what seems to him a logical pattern. This pattern must take some form from language—words, the most important tool with which a modern society has to work."115

As such, Stryker's definition of photography has little if anything to do with propaganda: "My purpose here is to suggest that in photography, the historian has, if he will accept it, a new edge to this tool. I must go further and say that he has no choice but to accept it. A young generation, right in his heels, is being conditioned by the picture magazine, the photogravure, the newsreel. Until recently there has been ample excuse for the neglect of photographic raw materials. With the exception of a few collections, such as the Brady collection, there has been little that the social historian could use. But within the last decade new equipment and new materials hardly dreamed of even at the turn of the century have stimulated a crop of new photographers. And an exciting product is coming from their cameras—a potent raw material from which to compound new histories. One senses on all sides a growing consciousness of this powerful and stimulating medium of expression. A new material for the loom of the historian is in the making." 116

Having outlined his methodology, Stryker introduced visual history to government policy: he encouraged his photographers to study aspects of modern, rural, industrial, or everyday life of 1930s America and quite

114 Roy Stryker: "Still Photography," w.d.: 3, LOC P&P, RSP, Series II Part C Section I United States Government, 1936–62. 115 Roy Stryker, [Untitled Note], 21 December, 1939, LOC P&P, RSP, Professional Activities 1912–71, Reel 6. 116 Ibid.

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bluntly asked his staff photographers to forget about administrative perspectives. Assignments focused narrowly on agricultural history and conservation studies gradually lost their significance for Stryker, and his refusal to implement official objectives paved the way for quite unconventional photographs that soon attracted praise for their expressiveness. Stryker's enthusiasm for visual history mingled well with Tugwell's model of visually supported social sciences. The FSA's Green Legacy: Perspectives on Conservation and the Historical Section Though the Historical Section of the FSA did not have a specifically conservational focus, but a broad socio-economic orientation, its photographers were asked to fulfill administrational requests for functional images and created environmentally sensitive photographs that reflect some of the ecological discussions of the time. Nevertheless, many of its assignments reflected a broad understanding of environment-related topics, lending themselves to a distinctive mode of depiction. Arthur Rothstein's 1940 assignment in Nevada, for example, explored some of the state's historical sites.117 It documented former gold, coal, and copper mining towns, along with their surrounding landscapes, and mixed these industrial landscapes with impressions of rural sheepherding and cattle ranching. In a time of cultural flux, several of Rothstein's images recall the great masterpieces of the nineteenth century landscape tradition, such as those by Andrew Russell. But whereas Russell's photographs celebrated the arduous work of track-laying in the wilderness and, as such, the conquest of nature, Rothstein's photograph presented an eerie harmony, the reconciliation of infrastructure and the surrounding landscape. Yet the assignment also documented the formerly prosperous mining towns in decline. Moreover, through the juxtaposition of different impressions, the actual condition of the region was submitted to visual scrutiny. Although there was no written evidence that would indicate an environmental inten-

117 LOC P&P, FSA OWI, LOT 0342.

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tion on the part of Rothstein,118 a raw image of a copper mine at Ruth points to the ecological impact of mining. Figure 20: Arthur Rothstein, Copper pit. Ruth, Nevada, March 1940, LOT 0342 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USF34-029892-D)

By systematically exploring America's past and confronting its memory from the perspective of the present, Rothstein's photographs allude to the photographer's acute awareness of the significant structural changes that had taken place once the pioneering days were over. In documenting abandoned towns and exhausted mines, Rothstein's photographs tracked the ongoing process of transformation, as reflected in these forgotten places. The pictures manifested the decline of the West but, moreover, they registered the subliminal socio-economic condition of formerly important parts of country. The assignment very well demonstrated how Rothstein implemented the FSA's "historic" agenda, and visually grasped the modification of America's agricultural and economic heritage. Rothstein's execution of

118 Arthur Rothstein Papers, LOC, Manuscript Division; Jack Delano Papers, LOC, Manuscript Division; John Vachon Papers, LOC, Manuscript Division.

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his assignment serves as a prime example of the intended symbiosis of photography and social and cultural study. On the whole, the administration did not intend the agency's work to go that far. A much more conventional undertaking is to be found in an assignment to Greene County, Georgia, for which Dorothea Lange was chosen in July 1937. As in other assignments, Lange captured impressions of the harsh reality of farm life during the droughts, as farmers attempted to manage the crisis, some of which feature among the most emblematic of FSA images today. But, unlike most of these iconic images, several of the photographs resulting from the Georgia assignment stick closely to conservational perspectives. Figure 21: Dorothea Lange, Tomarack stump is blasted. Bonner County, Idaho. October 1939 LOT 0437 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USF34021966-C)

The photographs for example depicted common ways to make the bare stump land productive, like blasting the stumps: an incredibly timeconsuming method of continuing to cultivate the land and seeking to improve productivity. Another image from the same assignment recorded the

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preventative measures that farmers took to avoid further soil erosion: the use of wooden barriers to keep the earth from blowing away. On a large scale, Lange's pictures captured a distressed landscape and documented the situation of Greene County at a time when the region received federal support for remedial measures. As historical documents, these photographs depict agricultural habits and provide a raw impression of the laborious work that went into rural life, the reality of resettlement strikingly far from any high gloss advertisement. Figure 22: Russell Lee, Pears rotting on the ground. Placer County, California. There was no market for these hard pears this year, nor has there been much of one for the last ten years. Better methods of refrigeration make it possible to ship a softer pear east and the war has closed the European markets. Dec. 1940 LOT 0367 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USF34-038516-D)

Yet another example of a photographic approach characteristic of the historical dimension of FSA photography was provided by Russell Lee's Placer County assignment of December 1940. Placer County was a former gold mining region and, as in Rothstein's assignment, Lee captured the legacy of gold mining on the eroded landscape. One particularly stunning image

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encapsulated the whole historic background in one shot. Lee focused on fruit farming, the county's current source of income. Many of the assignment's images depicted flourishing fruit orchards on gentle rolling hills, but beyond this peaceful scene, the assignment studied economic conditions and their effects on the county, as demonstrated by a photograph showing rotting pears under a tree. The photograph's subliminal message has to be comprehended by an accompanying travel diary entry. Jean Lee, Russell's wife, who joined him on many of his trips to the field, recorded the story of the community. Fruit farmers in Placer County had been comparatively wealthy, their high quality peaches securing them a steady income. When the market was transformed in the 1930s by technical improvements such as refrigerated vans, which made longer travel distances possible without spoiling the fruit, new export possibilities emerged. On the down side, Placer County lost its monopoly over the pear market as demand for a different fruit, more suitable for refrigeration, increased—a fruit that could be shipped to distant parts of the world. Communities growing this type of fruit improved their position in the market, whereas Placer County's farmers lost their businesses.119 As this captivating photograph indicates, Lee studied the landscape affected by changing economic conditions, drawing attention to the external forces that determined crop cultivation. His photograph summed up and created a symbol of contemporary market mechanisms and underlying economic forces by pointing out the bitter outcome of changing economic situations, an approach which perfectly resonated with the overall socioeconomic orientation of the Historical Section, but remained distinct from the emotional directness of other RA and FSA icons. During a 1939 Tennessee assignment, photographer Marion Post Wolcott depicted the scenery surrounding a copper mine. The photographer attentively registered the transformation of the landscape and how it became denuded by the sulfuric acid fumes. What at first glance looks like typical erosion is revealed in the series of photographs as the impact of copper mining, and its negative influence on the natural environment.120

119 Jean Lee, "California," November 1940, LOC P&P, Referential Files of the FSA, LOT 367. 120 LOC P&P, FSA OWI, LOT 148.

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Wolcott showed explicitly how acid fumes from a smelting plant poison the landscape around the plant, resulting in treeless and gullied hills. Figure 23: Marion Post Wolcott, Copper mining section between Ducktown and Copperhill, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded land. Sept. 1939 LOT 1481 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USF34-052177-D)

In this case, there is written proof that the photographer was very conscious of the process she witnessed, because Wolcott wrote down her impressions, along with the history of the region, on hotel letter paper: "The acid, a by-product of the smelting of copper, escaped from the smelter plants for years in the early history of the company and destroyed all vegetation from miles around, making the Copper Basin a barren, eroded valley without grass, trees or weed of any nature. Great gullies were washed out, travel off the highways was all

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but impossible and finally land owners about the smelter plants filed suits for damages to their property. "121

In the end, Wolcott's raw description of the fate of Copperhill and its surroundings gave way to a corporate success story, as the photographer reported that the company managed to transform the yellow fumes into sulfur acid that could be sold. Nevertheless, her assignment came close to a contemporary study of the impact of toxic chemicals on the environment. Figure 24: Russell Lee, Treeless country. Williams County, North Dakota. Oct. 1939 © Library of Congress P&P (LC-USF342-T-030750-A)

Russell Lee, one of the younger photographers employed by the FSA, seemed to have been particularly interested in the topics of erosion and conservation. A series of landscape photographs generated by his Williams County assignment of 1939 documented the way in which he observed

121 Marion Post Wolcott, "Copperhill," in LOC, P&P, Referential Files of the FSA, LOT 1481.

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different landscapes. Through shooting a series of landscape views, Lee revealed the land's formal structure to the viewer. Accompanying captions described the characteristic features of the sites, in this case, the "treeless county." The photographer's editorial view identifies the degradation of the landscape, and drew attention to the traces of erosion in the foreground. Two other views entitled "badlands" and "grass" showed similar forms of devastated lands. The careful use of word and image to document the lay of the land proved Lee a patient and attentive observer of different forms of landscapes. Denis Cosgrove has explained how pictorial modes of representation such as maps not only illustrate and depict geospatial structures, but also reflect certain understandings of space.122 James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State has further elaborated on the intersection between the imaginary, representation and political power, with regard to the use of cadastral maps in forest science since the nineteenth century as a means of securing government and political power. For Scott, the cadastral map introduced a visual episteme that distinguished pre-modern states from modern states by mapping subjects and real estate, the maps becoming a visual tool for establishing geospatial order and overcoming pre-modern "blindness."123 As a synoptic vision, they underpinned what Scott calls the ideology of "high modernity"—a faith in never-ending economic progress—and, as such, the maps facilitated the technocratic planning of settlements and agriculture.124 As a conceptual, albeit "unscientific" practice, this ideology has determined spatial order along visual lines, including the "miniaturization" and abstraction of social order in organized cities, farms, villages or fields.125 The way in which the New Deal dealt with the agricultural crisis of the 1930s may at first glance fit Scott's characterization of high-modernist ideology. One can easily argue that the grounds for high modernity, the era's subliminal belief, were prepared in the New Deal era, during which

122 Denis Cosgrove, Geography & Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008): 3. 123 James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998): 2. 124 Ibid., 4. 125 Ibid., 4.

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the need for the synergy of the map as visual representation, architectural vision, and social order arose. As pointed out, the New Deal agricultural reforms were closely connected to the introduction of aerial reconnaissance in the 1930s. Photographic surveillance fostered agricultural productivity and the geometrical patterns of remodeled, role model farms can be considered representations of imperial-style governance on national territories. Employed in surveillance, photographers provided data as a basis for the implementation of the administration's ordering of space: the administration's rule over both citizens and the natural environment entailed a new form of social vision. Therefore, in agreement with Scott, one could argue that the aerial view's representation of land revealed the Roosevelt administration's way of seeing, managing and governing the natural environment, and thus followed the cadastral map as yet another, rigorous form of synoptic vision. Yet this characterization of the politics of the New Deal era would be far too simplistic. Scott asserts that the "utilitarian state could not see the real, existing forest for the commercial trees" and that its view of forests was abstract and partial.126 He points to jargon such as narrowing, simplification and tunneling as characteristic of high modernity's technocratic vision of regulating and cultivating the land.127 As such, his thesis might well require bypassing an essential part of the New Deal's conservational practices, and the different uses made of visual data such as in the case of the Soil Conservation magazine and of the FSA's Historical Section. Both units conducted extensive research on soils, plants, and the basic chemistry of farming, and were empowered by the meticulous gathering of neutral visual data, which in turn provoked a more complex understanding of nature and ecology. These examples of as yet largely unconsidered visual documents demonstrate the emergence of a new philosophy regarding the environment during the New Deal era that was supported by visual documents, albeit to varying degrees. Alongside the soil units, FSA photographers developed a critical perspective from which to study contemporary, transformative influences and factors that necessitated a multiperspectival analysis of the land. Such analysis incorporated evaluation, quantification, demonstration,

126 Ibid., 13. 127 Ibid., 11.

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and documentation. In visual terms, new photographic practices extended into uncharted territories, leading to an incredible range of new approaches to surveying the land, yielding visions that coincided with the most advanced voices of the time, such as Leopold, Bennett, and the writers of Soil Conservation magazine. While the emotional impact of photographs was drawn upon in official presentations such as the exhibition of 1938, political announcements or the photographers' photo-essays and writings,128 photographic images also played a pivotal role in conservation debates. On the one hand, we might be tempted to agree with Samuel P. Hays in pointing out that these visual representations of man-made landscapes reflect a belief in scientific management and evoke visions of an abundant future.129 On the other hand, functional imagery supported soil science and assisted with the development and awareness of new understandings of nature. Intended both as visual studies and not only serving the purposes of legitimating political agendas, these observations were not burdened with representational duties, but the product of critical investigations geared toward producing new, productive synergies between politics, photography, and conservational or even environmental ideas. As has been illuminated, Stryker's introduction of photographic cultural studies and his impulse to create historic documents that recorded the incidents and the atmosphere of the time for future generations helped to define the orientation of FSA photography.130 On the other hand, most of Stryker's contemporaries had a significantly different approach to photography,

128 James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941); Walker Evans, American Photographs (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1938); Dorothea Lange and Paul Schuster Taylor, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939). 129 Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: University Press, 1959): 2. 130 For more details see Paul Vanderbilt, "Proposal," Feb7, 1963: 1. Vanderbilt was a member of the FSA staff in the 1930s and the curator of the iconographic collection at State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison in the 1960s, RTP FDR LIB HP, Professional activities, Box 25.

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either perceiving its role as "true" evidence, or as the stuff of government public relations exercises—something that is nowhere better documented than in James McCamy's manuscript of 1939.131 Thus, the New Deal administration's integration of all forms of empirical data gradually leads to the integration of scientific "objectiveness"— understood as photographic truth—into the mode of governance. Photography contributed to social sciences as a means of evaluation and empirical data acquisition, and it was used to justify federal programs to citizens. Tugwell's American Economic Life served as the role model for this approach, photographs helping to create categories, attributions, classification, and subsequent analysis. There never was one single, homogenous archive to represent New Deal policy, but instead numerous photographic archives compiled by various administrative subdivisions. Therefore, the New Deal's photographic archives are to be considered an essential element in a modern democracy's vision of governance founded upon the empirical sciences. The New Deal's social agenda led to the introduction of conservational standards to restrict and generate responsible ways of agricultural production, a fact that is not sufficiently emphasized by Samuel Hays's Gospel of Efficiency nor Sarah T. Phillips's This Land, This Nation. Both works confirm the perpetuation of the dogma of efficiency throughout the 1930s, with professionals attempting "to protect the supply of the nation's natural resources while harvesting those resources for sustained economic growth."132At the end of the 1930s, the prevailing understanding of nature that underscored federal programs remained ambiguous. Historian Paul Sutter has asserted that technocrats such as Bennett integrated soil conservation concerns into Roosevelt's administrational agenda, while scientists such as Paul Sear "popularized an ecological critique of agricultural expansion and mechanization."133 On the one hand, vanguard conservationists such as Leopold started to criticize the New Deal's rigid transformation of

131 James L. McCamy, "Governmental Publicity, Its Prestige in Federal Administration" [manuscript]: 4, LOC P&P, RSP, Part H Writings by Other, 1935– 1971. 132 Phillips, This Land, This Nation, 5. 133 Paul Sutter, "New Deal Conservation: A View from the Wilderness," in Henderson and Woolner (eds.), FDR and the Environment, 96.

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the landscape and perpetuation of economic adjustments.134 On the other hand, the latest technologies such as aerial views were integrated into conservational programs, following Gifford Pinchot's "wise use" theory in order to ensure a new balance between nature and agricultural production.135 And as has been demonstrated, the new environmental ethic was visually fortified, with photography operating on the levels of education, monitoring, scientific research and, additionally, with the advocacy that formed the environmentally-concerned perspectives of the 1970s. Usually, surveys of American environmental history use the New Deal era as an example of a period of aggressive landscape transformation. The history of environmentalism only begins with critical writers such as Aldo Leopold and Paul Sears. As this history of soil science agencies has shown, the conservational practices and environmental ethics developed within the framework of these programs were much more diverse than previously recognized and gave rise to the newest technological-scientific ideas of resource-conserving agricultural practices. Related programs were to varying degrees reliant on photographic material and visuals became an essential part of research activities for multiple reasons. Photographic images had played an active role in guiding geological, agricultural, conservational and environmental debates since the turn of the nineteenth century. Since the New Deal, photographic images were purposefully used to advance agricultural literacy, by building alliances between photographers and internal administrative experts as regards social conservation, in order to address and inform a broader public on the topic of resource conservation. Thus, by seeking to create a common conservational conscience, the notion and intention of documenting or illustrating the work of federal agencies and their programs does not give enough credit to photography's influence in actively and persuasively mediating a new understanding of nature.

134 The New Deal's aggressive approach to conservation work provoked the creation of the Wilderness Society in 1935, with Aldo Leopold among the founders. See Paul Sutter, "New Deal Conservation," 89. 135 Henry

Thomas

Frey,

Agricultural

(Washington, DC: USDA, 1967): 2.

Application

of

Remote

Sensing

Depicting Disaster— Environmental Photography under the Nixon Presidency

Since the 1930s, photography had gained a well-acknowledged status as a means of examination and communication in the natural sciences and its applications, in particular regarding new techniques of observation and control of land management facilities. Visualizations of the 1930s, however, preponderantly underscored positivist notions of a scientific management of nature. With the environmental calamities of the late 1960s, photographers had to deal with an alarming level of environmental damage, which prompted other styles of depiction and a new alignment of photographs. Most often, the resulting images did not leave much hope that the devastation wrought could be easily rectified, as was perhaps the case in the technological promise of the 1930s. It is for this reason that a new genre of environmental photography emerged. Moreover, this shift in orientation coincided with dual and often paradoxical perceptions of nature that increasingly diverged from one another. While The Bitter Years exhibition of 1962 implied the romanticization of the nation's rural past, by the 1960s, the landscape had been irrevocably transformed by industrialization. Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind and Perry Miller's Nature's Nation had just examined cultural assumptions and associations that nature had taken on in American history,1

1

Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); Perry Miller, Nature's Nation (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967).

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but these books did not take into account what was actually happening in the country in front of the people's eyes. In 1975, William Jenkins would shed light on a new development in photography, which he described as "new topographics." The phrase suggested a lose agglomeration of photographers, who dedicated themselves to photographing the creation of American suburbia and the transformation and urbanization of the land.2 Jenkins did not refer to any ecological intentions though, when drafting the show,3 but Finis Dunaway has reminded us about the connection of the New Topographic exhibit as a part "of a larger field of environmental, intellectual, and political discourse that sought to create new forms of ecological citizenship,"4 though associated photographs were not originally intended to represent, or actively further environmental thinking. Moreover, in a period of environmental disasters, the New Topographics' distanced, neutral observations of architectural developments would be anticipated by more sensational, environmentally-concerned and –committed imagery. The collective celebration of Earth Day for the first time in 1970 has frequently been considered a point in time at which the nascent environmental movement reached maturity, visually accompanied by those powerful symbols of global environmentalism, NASA's "Earthrise" and "Whole Earth" photographs.5 In contrast to these iconic images,

2

William Jenkins, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (Rochester, NY: International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, 1975).

3

Britt Salvesen, "New Topographics," in Landesgalerie Linz, New Topographics: Texte und Rezeption (Salzburg: Fotohof edition, 2010): 24.

4

Finis Dunaway, "Beyond Wilderness. Robert Adams, New Topographics, and the aesthetics of ecological citizenship," in Greg Foster-Rice and John Rohrbach (eds.), Reframing the New Topographics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010): 14.

5

The "Earthrise" photograph was captured by the Apollo 8 crew in December 1968 and presents the earth partially obscured by the moon's shadow, whereas the "Whole Earth" picture was captured by the Apollo 17 crew on 17 December and presents the whole globe. See Denis Cosgrove, "Contested Global Visions: One-World, Whole-Earth, and the Apollo Space Photographs," in Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84, no. 2, (1994): 270–94. For a

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other imagery that raised the public's environmental awareness has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. But with a focus on the American context, pictorial conventions within media coverage of the three major illustrated periodicals on the US market—Life, Fortune and National Geographic—significantly drafted the emergence of environmental photography and created a photographic language intended to jolt the American public into taking a closer look at environmental issues. At the end of the 1960s, media representatives recognized that pollution issues and the human impact on nature would become the major topic of the 1970s.6 Following the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1968, spills, leaks, smog and other forms of pollution prompted new photographic styles of depiction. During the formative years of 1968 to 1972, media coverage of deterioration in environmental conditions expanded massively.7 Illustrated magazines were major shapers of public opinion that made such incidents public knowledge and influenced the way in which ordinary Americans visualized them. In 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) founded its own visual unit, attached to the department until 1977, and its governmentcommissioned photographers pursued to establish visual strategies, but also to generate new research foci. As a result, varying motivations and multifarious styles emerged as part of a new visual iconography with divergent framing intentions that underpinned photography's underlying agendas.

description of how the NASA photographs became icons that influenced contemporary perceptions see Vicki Goldberg, The Power of Photography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991): 57; Andrew G. Kirk, Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalogue and American Environmentalism (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2007): 41. For background on the environmental counterculture movements see Andrew G. Kirk, "Technology. The Whole Earth Catalog and Counter Culture Environmental Politics," in Environmental History 6, no. 3 (July 2001): 374–394. 6

Peter M. Sandman, "Mass Environmental Education. Can the Media do the Job?" in James A. Swan and William B. Stapp (eds.), Environmental Education. Strategies Toward a More Livable Future (New York: Sage Publications, 1974): 207.

7

Sandman, "Mass Environmental Education," 208.

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1. D EPICTING E NVIRONMENTAL D ISASTERS : N EW C ONVENTIONS Whereas countercultural organizations such as Greenpeace were pioneers in terms of environmental campaigns, for the majority of the American public, such campaigns only came to public attention as a temporary provocation. Instead, most citizens became acquainted with environmental problems by watching television or reading one of the high-circulation commercial magazines of the time. In particular, Life magazine shaped a visual agenda and language for environmental communication in the late 1960s. After David Brower left the Sierra Club in 1969, the organization abandoned its exquisite Exhibition Format Series that he had initiated and, during the 1960s, had powerfully advocated for a preservationist approach.8 In the early 1970s, the club established a new format, entitled the "Sierra Battle Series," which relentlessly addressed menaces caused by oil spills as well as mercury or lead poisoning. These campaigning books were not illustrated at all. After the signing of the partial nuclear test ban treaty in 1963, the "Greater St. Louis Committee on Nuclear Information," founded by Barry Commoner and his wife, Louise Zibold-Reiss, changed the name of its magazine from Scientist and Citizen to Environment and shifted its focus to the problem of environmental pollution. The magazine was one of the first to adopt an explicitly environmental orientation, but it had no strict visual editorial style. In the years from 1969 to 1971, Environment increasingly employed photographs, beyond its punchy cover design. Yet the magazine always pursued a strong scientific orientation, such that the most important environmentalists and academics of the time offered their perspectives on

8

Finis Dunaway, Natural Visions. The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005): 170-193;

 5HEHFFD 6ROQLW ‫(ޖ‬YHU\ &RUQHU ,V $OLYH‫( ޖ‬OLRW 3RUWHU DV DQ (QYLURQPHQWDOLVW and Artist," in Alan C. Braddock and Christoph Irmscher (eds.), A Keener Perception. Ecocritical Studies in American Art History (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009); Robin Kelsey, "Sierra Club Photography and the Exclusive Property of Vision," in Gisela Parak (ed.), Eco-Images. Historical Views and Political Strategies (Munich: RCC Perspectives 2013, no. 1).

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problems ranging from heavy metal poisoning to features on the effects of lead, mercury, DDT, and asbestos.9 The magazine published scientific reports with the aim of providing information, but did not exploit any kind of visual angle. When photographs were included, they illustrated the broader argument by visually documenting individual case studies.10 In contrast to which, Greenpeace, founded in 1971, immediately employed visuals in its demonstrations, performances, advertisements, and posters, all which were geared toward achieving a high media impact. Greenpeace did not maintain a magazine until 1987, and early visual selfrepresentations nurtured a myth of green pirates on the high seas making opportune raids aimed at public companies. Early photographic records therefore portrayed activism as a form of both adventure and community: Greenpeace members in a small rowboat trying to stop gigantic whalers. Images were carefully chosen to maintain an impression of David's struggle against Goliath.11 At the turn of the 1960s, these grassroot organizations had not yet developed various attention-grabbing forms of visual environmental communication. By 1968, all major newspapers started to report on environmental disasters in special photo-essays. The first calamities that provoked media responses were the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1968, the burning of the Cuyahoga River in 1969, and the LA and New York air inversions, a topic regularly reported on since 1966.12 When these incidents happened, daily newspapers still used single black and white photographs and usually drew upon

9

Special Edition "Asbestos," Environment 11, no. 2 (March 1969); special edition "Mercury: A New Pollution Problem," Environment 11, no. 4 (May 1969); special edition "DDT on Balance," Environment 11. no. 7 (September 1969).

10 In 1970, Environment started to attribute a more important role to photographs. A special feature of eight pages of photographs in the April 1970 issue coincided with Earth Day and, since 1970, Environment started to print fullformat image pages, many of which were quite iconic. 11 Early photographs of the groups' action are to be found at Karl Sturmanis, The Greenpeace Book (Vancouver, BC: Orca Sound Publications, 1978) and Robert Keziere, Greenpeace (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972). 12 A list of major incidents between the mid-1960s and 1970s can be found in Kirkpatrick Sale, The Green Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993).

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traditional photojournalist conventions, such as those that Arthur Rothstein—who was working for Life—described. Taking up Henri CartierBresson's famous notion of a "decisive moment,"13 Rothstein elaborated upon how to look out for and capture "newsworthy events,"14 giving examples such as the crash of the passenger airship Hindenburg, and to express emotions or focus on moments that provoked empathy. The photographic coverage of environmental disasters initially tended to pursue a similar strategy, but progressively developed other modes of depiction. Early environmental photography tended to focus on the moment and the drama implicit in the event, by presenting, for example, a wall of fire on the river and firemen standing on a bridge seeking to extinguish it on the occasion of the Cuyahoga River burning. Later depictions referenced the aftermath of a given incident. Because it was difficult to visually represent the impact of pollution, photographers started to use indicators such a man's hand turned black by the oil slick on the Cuyahoga River. Images printed in the LA Times to illustrate the Santa Barbara oil spill made the connection between the oil slick on the water and the drilling platform in the background, while an Associated Press photograph showed a floating boom dropped on the water in an effort to stop the heavy, amorphous mass from expanding. Images such as these marked a shift in newspaper illustration, away from capturing the most sensational moment in time towards a mode of description that represented the legacy of environmental disasters. These photographs captured a moment of suspense, when the threat that a given disaster posed could be experienced, but it was difficult to depict and to foresee the long-term effects of toxic discharges. On 23 August 1968, Life magazine ran a fourteen-page photo-essay on the pollution of the Great Lakes. The photo-essay, entitled "Blighted Great Lakes: Shocking Case of Our Inland Seas Dying from Man-Made Filth," opened with a sensational color photograph.15 Amidst green bushes and trees, snow-white foam clouds floated on a river like miniature icebergs. The photograph, master-

13 Arthur Rothstein, Photojournalism: Pictures for Magazines and Newspapers (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1970): 12. 14 Ibid., 125. 15 Alfred Eisenstaedt (photo.), "Blighted Great Lakes: Shocking Case of Our Inland Seas Dying from Man-Made Filth," in Life, 23 August 1968.

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fully captured by Life-photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, juxtaposed the fresh greens of the surroundings with the radiant whites of the foam layer, almost 15 inches high. The water reflects the foam mountain: environmental degradation assumes an aesthetic of its own, the bright colors and contrasting tones of the photograph recalling positive landscape depictions. On the pages that follow, the essay presented further images of sites where effluents were released into the waters. The high definition resolution of Eisenstaedt's photographs almost sculpturally describes the artificial pulp floating on the water's surface. In the case of a picture showing a drain into Lake Superior, the water has become a substance resembling wet concrete. An aerial photograph revealed a gigantic "glob of beer foam" that had been released into Lake Erie and, once more, Eisenstaedt's detail-rich aesthetic stresses the physical mass of the muddy white mess. The article further highlighted this impression by providing splendid color photographs of the Great Lakes that provide an impression of their unspoiled condition when explored in the early seventeenth century. Images of dead fish, closed beaches, and picnic sites, together with further picturesquely discolored spills provided alarming visual impressions of water pollution in the Great Lake area. Eisenstaedt's photographs chosen for the article are particularly convincing, as the photographer assumes various perspectives that collectively articulate the nature of the contamination. Besides panoramic views and aerial surveys, he incorporates details and enlargements of polluted water surfaces into his reportage: a macro view depicts gases that emerge on the water's surface. In the concluding statement, author Richard Woodbury summed up these depressing images as "a point of no return": the contamination of US waters had become so severe that it was a threat to man's quality of life.16

16 Richard Woodbury, "Sewage gushes on, but something is being done," in Life, 23 August 1969.

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Figure 25: Alfred Eisenstaedt, "Blighted Great Lakes – Shocking Case of Our Inland Seas Dying From Man-Made Filth." © Life, August 23, 1968: 36

Figure 26: Martin Schneider, "Is this the Air You Want to Breathe?" © Life, February 7, 1969: 40 & 42

Figure 27: Gordon Young, "Pollution, Threat to Man's Only Home," photography by James P. Blair © National Geographic, Vol. 138, No. 6, Dec. 1970: 754

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Color proved to be an essential feature in those depictions. In an article, introducing air pollution and rhetorically asking: "Is this the air you want to breathe?"17 photographer Martin Schneider depicted different kinds of air pollution, such as smog in Washington DC. The images rely on the technical accomplishment of color photography: it is the yellow fumes that saturate the air and could not have been identified as air pollution in a black-and-white picture. Other images in the report show how emissions from a plant create a mushroom cloud that contrasts sharply with the surrounding landscape. The text refers to the plant as "Little Hiroshima," and the emission cloud captured in strange, bluish tones clashes harshly with the yellow corn underneath. The different textures of foggy fumes versus chiseled grays increase the picture's visual impact. Yet another Life feature of June 1969 represented the fledgling genre of environmental pollution by its most famous images: the depiction of suffering creatures, in particular images of baby seals or oil-clotted sea-birds.18 In these features, Lifephotographers like all other photojournalists employed a persuasive style of depiction that is light on information, but exploits sympathetic feelings for the suffering animals. In "Regarding the pain of others," Susan Sontag has elaborated on the function of photographs of war victims with reference to Edmund Burke's diction of the sublime and Roland Barthes' notion of "shock-pictures." Sontag comes to the conclusion that images of atrocity and human suffering also provoke visual curiosity.19 Yet the sublime—according to Burke—can also consist in emotions of terror, danger, and pain mixed with emotions of delight.20 Photographs of environmental disasters too are marked by precisely this ambivalent, double-sided notion of the sublime. Images of dis-

17 Martin Schneider (photo.), "Is this the Air You Want to Breathe?" in Life, 7 February 1969. 18 David Snell, "Iridescent Gift of Death," in Life, 13 June 1969. 19 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003): 13. 20 Edmund Burke, "How the Sublime is Produced," in ibid., On the Sublime and Beautiful (New York: Collier & Son, 1909–14 / The Harvard Classics, vol. 24, Part 2) and ibid. "Of the Sublime," http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html, accessed 5/31/2012.

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torted landscapes evoke feelings of disgust at the same time as containing a shock element akin to that inherent in effective forms of entertainment. As visual spectacles, they externalize the horror inherent in the scene contemplated by the viewer, triggering mechanisms similar to those that have meant earthquakes, floods, and other natural calamities that always have attracted human's curiosity. Illustrated articles published by Life from August 1968 to June 1969 helped to mediate and create environmental consciousness, as did a special issue of National Geographic, devoting 42 pages to the topic of environmental pollution that coincided with the foundation of the EPA in December 1970.21 At National Geographic, an article by author Gordon Young was prefaced by a NASA "Whole Earth" photograph, its alarming headline incorporating a by then ubiquitous slogan: "Pollution, Threat to Man's Only Home." In contrast to Life's features, the article provided a global perspective and pointed to examples of pollution from countries other than the United States, such as Germany, Japan, and Great Britain. Photographs by James P. Blair further developed photography's environmental language. Just as in Life's article, seabirds coated in oil, baby ducks stranded in algae fields, dead fish, and trash floating on the Potomac, together with images of air pollution, all became part of the vocabulary used to stress environmental degradation. As in Life, National Geographic made use of color to enhance the images' message.

2. E NVIRONMENTAL P HOTOGRAPHY UNDER THE EPA: D OCUMERICA ' S C ONTRADICTORY V ISION Besides these major national calamities, numerous other incidents of air and water contamination stemming from industrial plants, mills, or landfills heightened the ecological awareness of American citizens, calling attention to by the media coverage. By the 1970s, newspaper reports increasingly disseminated information about these disasters and their effects on human health and habitat. Brought to light by the media, these accidents moreover

21 Gordon Young, "Pollution, Threat to Man's Only Home," in National Geographic Vol. 138, No. 6, December 1970.

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posed a challenge to the perceived efficacy of government action—and enhanced the influence of environmental groups on public opinion. Although President Nixon was far from being an eager conservationist—he is in fact remembered for his pro-industrial politics—he knew at this juncture that he could not ignore public pressure and the growing consensus as to environmental issues.22 On 10 February 1970, he promised in his Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality to restrict the depletion of nature's resources and called on the nation to collaborate in protecting the environment.23 In December 1970, the EPA was founded to control and administer environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and as such, constituted the first federal effort to prevent nature's devastation. These laws marked the first steps towards the institutionalization of environmental policy. Political representatives sought to limit pollution with fledgling programs, but their positive intentions often clashed with the demand for economic growth, and during its formative years, the EPA was criticized for delaying the enforcement of its own laws.24 On its first anniversary, a photographic department was attached to the EPA that ran for six years. "Documerica" engaged about 80 photographers who took roughly 22,000 images in 166 assignments from 1971 to 1977 in order to visually document federal attempts to regulate the impact of environmental damage and improve American living conditions. In contrast to the visual mandate of the commercial illustrated magazines, Documerica's role as a federal agency attached to the EPA was to mediate government action. Photographers were asked to proactively investigate the circumstances surrounding the most pressing environmental topics of the 1970s. This involved close collaboration with regional EPA officers who had the best knowledge of local problems. Like the FSA's Historical Section, which

22 Bruce J. Shulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Da Capo Press, 2001): 30. 23 Richard Nixon, Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality, February 10, 1970, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2757 #axzz2jHhAKku3, accessed 10/31/2013. 24 Marc K. Landy, Marc J. Roberts, and Stephen R. Thomas (eds.), The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990): 36.

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had prepared the ground for Documerica, assignments intended to generate images for the purposes of illustrating government public relations material. At the same time Documerica photographers were advised to transgress a simple-minded understanding of documentation. In most cases, Documerica photographers entered the scene at a very different moment of time, after incidents with a high environmental impact had already occurred. However, Documerica's photographic agenda encompasses more than a monitoring of cleanup operations: the unit attempted to develop a cultural perspective on long-term effects. These multiple intentions and motivations influenced the various pictorial languages of resulting images many of which possess comparable qualities to the pictures of photographers such as Alfred Eisenstaedt and James P. Blair. Life magazine's graphic editors obviously chose the most iconic and attention-rising photographs, Alfred Eisenstaedt's pictures concerning water pollution being a case in point. Documerica assignments, on the contrary, were never published widely, and the message communicated rarely resulted from one single image, but from the sequence of the series. Technical unevenness supports the impression of the visual inferiority of Documerica images. The details and bright colors of Eisenstaedt's high definition color photographs of water pollution are unmatched by most Documerica photographs. Documerica images captured on 35mm were often partially blurred, with flatly defined tones, especially where any significant distance between the camera and the object of the picture is concerned. And there are further stylistic differences. Eisenstaedt's photographs benefit from enthralling contrasts between different materials, colors, and details that underscore physical qualities. He also embedded points of interest in larger landscape sceneries. Documerica photographers often isolated their subjects and presented narrow framings. A closeup of a tube spilling sewage, for example, was not as visually exciting as an image that shows how a pipe discolors an entire expanse of water. Moreover, the homing in on specific information only of relevance to the immediate physical environment left the viewer disoriented, unsure as to the geographic location of any given site. Two exemplary assignments, on the Cuyahoga River and the Santa Barbara oil spill respectively, specifically highlight Documerica's unique approach to photographic images of environmental phenomena, as distinct from that of commercial magazines. For these assignments, Documerica

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photographers mediated governmental approaches to restore the landscapes, but even more importantly, these commissions generated long-term cultural studies that consciously shared to some extent the approach of the FSA's Historical Section. In 1965, the New York Times identified the Cuyahoga River as the most polluted river in the United States.25 During the industrial revolution, the city of Cleveland served as a major force of industrialization, with companies based there severely polluting the river, which also serves as Lake Erie's main water supply. Since the nineteenth century, parts of the river had frequently caught fire, but the infamous fires of the year 1969 brought these issues to national attention. The magnitude of the Cuyahoga River incidents directly contributed to the enactment of the Clean Water Act, and a major cleanup had been financed by the government and voluntarily contributing companies to restore some level of water quality.26 In July 1973, Documerica photographer Frank Aleksandrowicz was commissioned to document the river's condition. Aleksandrowicz's photographs pinpoint the spills and identify the major polluters, including Republic Steel, DuPont, Harshaw Chemical Company, and the City Pump Station. Stylistically, his photographs do not differ from other Documerica images in terms of the way in which they pinpoint on specific details, focusing on the discolored waters. The method of research applied, however, marks a new point of departure as the assignment attempted to bring to light the multifarious history of the area and the changes that had taken place, particular since environmental initiatives had been enforced. In 1974, President Ford signed a Bill that led to the creation of the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, which incorporated the very same section of the river between the cities of Akron and Cleveland that had been most heavily contaminated. Attempts to establish a recreational park in the Cuyahoga Valley date back to the 1930s, but the decisive vote for rehabilitation came after the 1969 fires. Aleksandrowicz's assignment of 1973 primarily captured signs of leakages. For his 1975 assignment, he was given new instruc-

25 John H. Hartig, Burning Rivers: Revival of Four Urban-Industrial Rivers that Caught Fire (Burlington, Ontario: Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management Society, 2010): 70. 26 Ibid., 73.

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tions as to what to depict and look for. This time, the photographer focused on the revitalization of the abandoned Ohio-Erie Canal. The assignment explored the recovery of the ecosystem, as it is re-appropriated by nature. Numerous images depict wild flowers and remote stretches of the canal where plants thrive undisturbed. The photographer seeks to provide evidence of the success of the government's restoration program. However, this mediation of an idyll implies a rather short memory. The captions that accompany images from the 1975 assignment describe the riverbanks of the Cuyahoga River depicted as having been "bypassed by industrial development" and hence "almost unchanged."27 Other images provide a quite contrary impression. Some feature old cars that have been used to fix the riverbanks. Other captions declare the river a "largely unspoiled"28 paddlers' paradise. Elsewhere, boy scouts and couples stroll along the lake's beaches, and announce that the Canadian geese have found a new home. The images celebrate the region as a natural sanctuary, both for humankind and other species. But the photographs also recall the history of the area, which was settled by Indians prior industrialization. Thus, Aleksandrowicz's findings combine positive and negative examples, all of which are geared toward a broad cultural study of the area. A second good example of the attempt to photographically create cultural environmental studies is given by Documerica photographer Charles O'Rear. Whereas Life's reportage of the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 presents oil slick and perished animals, Charles O'Rear in 1975 studied Californian coastal developments and the environmental impact of Californian settlements, engaging with the coastline's overall structural change.29 Several iconic photographs relate to the danger posed by drilling platforms and oil derricks to human settlements, by juxtaposing these facilities with a background of captivating views of recreational areas: idyll and menace appear cheek by jowl, accompanied by a suggestion of the clash between

27 NARA PD, RG 412, 412-DA-15552. 28 NARA PD, RG 412, 412-DA-15621. 29 The time of this assignment and O'Rear's approach coincide with Lewis Baltz's and Robert Adams's studies of the development of suburban sites and industrial parks, both photographers publishing a major photo-book the very same year.

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the needs of civilization on the one hand and the desire for untamed nature on the other. Figure 28: Charles O'Rear, Sunbathers at Huntington Beach, and an oil platform offshore. Major housing development is under construction, 05/1975 © National Archives (412-DA-15032)

In November 1972, the state of California passed the Coastal Zone Conservation Act, restricting coastal development to within 1,000 yards of the shoreline as a nature protection measure. Accordingly, several of O'Rear's photographs explore the remaining semi-wilderness of Californian inlands. On the one hand, O'Rear depicts the high pressure for future land seizure, as 84 percent of the state's residents live within 30 miles of the coast. The assignment tracks real estate purchases and the construction of new townhouses, simultaneously juxtaposing these developments with views of pristine state beaches, hinting at the inevitable consequences of further pressure for land. The threats to California's coastlines are addressed through depictions of settlements and through the announcements of future oil processing ventures; quite often the captions provide this information and insofar jar with the views of beautiful landscapes. These two assignments exemplify how Documerica photographers shifted environmental photography's advocacy function to research and

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picturing long-term developments. Moreover, these case studies shed light on the divergent intentions of the media and Documerica. Despite politicians' original desire to use photographs in public relations material, this kind of investigative research accounts for the greater part of the agency's assignments.

3. C APTURING E NVIRONMENTAL P ROBLEMS : T HE G OVERNMENT AS P ATRON Documerica was marked by an ambivalent and contradictory policy. From the beginning, political representatives expressed their wish to use photographs to publicize government action in a favorable light and pressured Documerica's director to circulate, display and publish images. On the other hand, the department did not generate enough attention to distribute a significant number of its photographs—only about a half dozen journalistic reports used Documerica photographs to stoke the environmental debates of the 1970s. Two exhibitions were the only major events where Documerica images were widely seen by the public. And this was so, despite the fact that one of the major goals of the agency was to make Documerica photographs freely accessible to journalists, as well as to the public, via one of the first computerized databases. Initial expectations of Documerica ran high, as it was intended as a successor to the FSA's Historical Section of the Depression era, which by the mid-1960s had gained an almost legendary reputation. 1970s representatives directly adopted the idea of a photographic archive that mediated and monitored the federal administration's activities. Given its role in the enforcement of environmental policy, it is not surprising that one of the participating photographers billed Documerica "an environmental FSA."30 A press release introduced Documerica as "a new federal program for documenting the environmental movement in America."31 The EPA's first direc-

30 Bill Gillette, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," 8 December 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0032. 31 Environmental News, 25 November 1971: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1, File 3.

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tor, William Ruckelshaus, expressed representatives' desires and intentions to create this visual memory of environmental enforcement, noting: "It is important that we document that change so future generations will understand our successes and our failures. Project Documerica will record what we do as individuals and as institutions."32 In subsequent years however, Documerica was criticized for not being as successful as its forerunner. Despite lofty expectations, Documerica was ultimately limited to depicting what the government achieved. Documerica's director, Gifford Hampshire, and the commissioned photographers, on the contrary, quickly decided to progress beyond the "dull"33 task of mediating such federal successes as the building of sewage plants, and started to broaden their photographic mandate, inspired by the forerunner of the FSA as well as the knowledge of environmental problems provided by regional EPA officers. In short, there were as many formulations of the agency's role in "documentation" as there were contributing photographers. For some representatives, "documentation" meant the illumination of federal environmental measures for public relations purposes—a legacy of the 1930s; for others, the photographic service served educational purposes. For several photographers, the priority was to document the most pressing threats to habitats at risk, and communicating associated chains of cause and effect. There was no one dominant ideology behind the photographic program, but rather many opinions of what environmental photography might be. In its early years, Documerica assignments corresponded closely to the EPA's six main concerns: water and air pollution, solid waste management, radiation and pesticide control, and noise abatement.34 Despite these explicitly defined areas, Documerica director Gifford Hampshire encouraged photographers to look for topics outside the EPA's charter.35 An unwritten rule of his directorship was to grant permission only to projects that included detailed proposals, proactively submitted by the photographers. Hamp-

32 William Ruckelshaus as quoted in Press Release of the Environmental News, 24 November 1971: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1, File 3. 33 Gifford Hampshire, "Documerica: Guidelines for Photographers," January 1972: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0002. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid.

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shire repeatedly quoted scientist Barry Commoner's first law of ecology: "Everything is connected to everything else." Thus he encouraged photographers to create visual connections between polluters and their impact on human health and the environment.36 In practice, however, he did not necessarily explain this slogan, nor did he sufficiently outline his expectations as to how to draw these connections photographically. His role in influencing photographers (in anything like the same way that Roy Stryker did) has consequently been disavowed.37 Recent scholarship tends to summarize Documerica as having failed in fulfilling its original agenda, but part of this judgment is due to the chosen focus of criticism, as studies frequently concentrate on comparing Documerica and the FSA, its famous ancestor.38 Whereas FSA photography created a visual memory of 1930s rural America, Documerica, as a child of the 1970s, reflected the transformation of the nation into a consumer society. This presented photographers with new challenges in observing the changing settlement patterns in urban landscapes, as well as the influence of sprawling industrial sites. Documerica

36 Ibid. 37 Constance M. Tanczo, "Project Documerica: A Revival of Government Documentary Photography of the 1970s" (M.A. Thesis: Iowa State University, 1987): 44. For Stryker's role in leading the FSA photographers see F. Jack Hurley, Portrait of a Decade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972). 38 Abigail Porter, "Project Documerica, 1972-1977: Government Documentary Photography at the Environmental Protection Agency" (M.A. Thesis: George Washington University, 1992); Nancy Allen Peralta, "A comparison of two government sponsored Documentary photography projects: FSA 1935-1942 and Documerica 1970-1974" (M.A. Thesis: California State University, 1981); Barbara Lynn Shubinski, "From FSA to EPA: Project Documerica, the Dustbowl Legacy, and the Quest to Photograph 1970s America" (Ph.D. Thesis: University of Iowa, 2009); Frank E. Stanfield, "Project Documerica in the Southeast: The Use of Documentary Photography by the Environmental Protection Agency to publicize environmental problems in the 1970s" (M.A. Thesis: University of Georgia, 1980); Constance M. Tanszo, "Project Documerica: A revival of government documentary photography in the 1970s" (M.A. Thesis: Iowa State University, 1987).

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does pick up where the FSA left off as far as rural heritage is concerned— its research concerning the topography of a typical American Middletown being a case in point.39 The core task of the program though was dedicated to its new environmental agenda and resulted in a significantly different pictorial language—distinct from that of the FSA's black and white images. Danny Lyon, one of the well-known young photographers of the 1960s and 1970s, who was also engaged in Documerica, alludes to this necessary shift in pointing out the emergence of new photographic subjects such as pollution, smoke stacks, garbage, and old cars,40 relating to contemporary concerns. Furthermore, at that time, iconic images by FSA photographers were already viewed from a nostalgic perspective that idealized 1930s America and set aside its political and sociological context. Nonetheless, Documerica never became nearly as well-known as the Historical Section of the FSA. This was not only due to the ugly reality of environmental pollution that Documerica photographers had to face, but, more importantly, because of the limited use to which these visual records were put in policy and government communications contexts. On the one hand, the historic opportunity to become the heir of the famous FSA unit attracted many young photographers. However, their very first assignments showed how difficult it actually was to establish a new visual language that could articulate environmental concerns; neither were these talented photographers well paid for their endeavors. It is also true that Gifford Hampshire's understanding of his role as director of photography differed from Stryker's. His professional experience as former graphic editor at the National Geographic may have been the reason he refused to teach photographers, instead requesting extensive research and detailed proposals as a precondition to commissioning assignments. Only with those photographers who met his high standards did he take the time to converse in more depth. Apart from that, as his senior supervisors later admitted, in the first half year, Gifford Hampshire had to accomplish more work than could be han-

39 Barbara Shubisnki's thesis draws attention to assignments that reflect a consciousness within Documerica of the FSA heritage. 40 Danny Lyon, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," 15 July 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0067.

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dled.41 When photographers encountered the unpleasant reality of recording "dull visual material" in the documentation of new sewage plants constructions, Hampshire advised them to make the best of it, and declared these tasks a "challenge to [their] talent".42 This approach offered rather vague directions to the photographers.

4. I N S EARCH OF A N EW E NVIRONMENTAL P ICTORIAL L ANGUAGE With a selection of images resulting from 166 assignments, Documerica photographers employed various approaches, often tailored to environmental issues and ecological deficiencies in specific regions. Two larger pictorial strategies lay at the core of Documerica's visual agenda. Assignments either pointed to pollution's environmental impact, whether on the natural environment or on human health, or they stressed nature's beauty. Boyd Norton's 1972 assignment exemplifies the latter approach. The photographer proposed documenting various, scattered wilderness sites on public lands along the Rocky Mountains, which were of equal importance, in Norton's view, to the officially identified wilderness areas in the National Parks.43 Boyd's explanations reveal an understanding of nature that coincides with that developed by the preservation movement and Gifford Hampshire quickly agreed to the photographer's suggestion to document such areas in order to "prevent degradation of natural environments."44 The role that Documerica developed for photography in the context of prevention was more than picking up and running with the inheritance of the preservation movement.

41 Walter W. Barto, "Documerica Reorganization (III)," 22 September 1972: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1, File 2. 42 Hampshire, "Documerica, Guidelines for Photographers," January 1972: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0002. 43 Boyd Norton, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," March 21, 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0031. 44 Hampshire, "Letter to Boyd Norton," wd., NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0031.

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The Sierra Club photo book series of the 1960s also heralded the Sierra Club's visual battle of mediating environmental campaigns under the visionary leadership of David Brower, beginning with Ansel Adams's This is the American Earth (1959). Thereafter, the Sierra Club hired photographers such as Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Charles Pratt for its luxurious, color photo book series, which not only made these photographers famous, but also significantly bolstered the preservation movement's cause. Boyd Norton serves as a direct transmitter of this iconic visual heritage, not only because he was an active member of the Wilderness Society, and an experienced writer who advocated for nature's preservation. In 1972 he also published a book entitled Snake Wilderness with the Sierra Club that employed the pictorial language of what recently has been called the "ecological sublime."45 Finis Dunaway has developed this notion of the "ecological sublime" with reference to the pictorial language of Eliot Porter, who in 1962 published the fourth volume of the Sierra Club book series, In Wilderness is the Preservation of the World, the images accompanied by selections from the thoughts of Henry David Thoreau. Porter frequently focused on tender arrangements of flowers, stones, moss, and lichen, capitalizing on the relatively new development of color photography.

45 Finis Dunaway, Natural Visions. The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005): 194.

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Figure 29: Boyd Norton, Butterfly and flowers at the edge of the Acme coal company strip mine, 06/1973 © National Archives (412-DA-6706)

Like Porter, Boyd Norton had an excellent eye for closeups of plants, yet besides his images of natural beauty, he managed to mold his pictorial language into an unerring critique of humans' impact on nature. One of Norton's pictures focuses on a flower and a butterfly in the foreground, in a manner similar to Porter. In the background however lurks a coal mine, at the edge of which a flower and a butterfly have survived. Assignments like Boyd Norton's emphasized the beauty of nature and its value in terms of providing recreational spaces. As in the battle of Echo Park Canyon, where the photographically illustrated This is Dinosaur (1955) successfully supported attempts to prevent the construction of a dam, Documerica assignments documented unique scenery threatened with disappearance. Many Documerica images echo Eliot Porter's pictorial language in depicting delightfully colorful still lives and natural microcosms, or resemble Ansel Adams's splendid landscape panoramas. The Sierra Club, though, had a far greater publishing output than Documerica. And yet there remains another significant difference between the main body of Sierra Club photography and that of Documerica: whereas Porter showed the beauty of pristine spaces, Documerica photographers had to contend with the aftermath of consumer society's grip on natural resources. Forced to record the occurrence

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of dead fish, trash, filth, or chromatic effluents poisoning the rivers, they established an aesthetic of determent. Air Pollution and the Problem of Visualization In 1970, an amendment to the Clean Air Act constituted the first EPA law to restrain unfiltered emissions, and provided for the possibility of citizen lawsuits. Research on various industrial sites at which air pollution was severe became a major concern of Documerica. Accordingly, assignments benefited from a proactive understanding of the photographer's duties when exploring such sites, while other EPA officials continued to think about whether the government should take action. In this way, Documerica photographers pre-empted the actual implementation process and created their own photographic mandate, which went beyond taking measurements for the sole purpose of documentation. Gifford Hampshire regularly reminded photographers of the mandate to create images that showed the impact of pollution on humans.46 His determination to make this visual link is exemplified by LeRoy Woodson's assignment, conducted in the summer of 1972, on air pollution caused by the U.S. Steel Plant Company in Birmingham, Alabama.47 Woodson depicted deposits of smog in the community located closest to the plant, and some of his images resemble 1930s Dust Bowl photographs, with the distinction that this time the dust had not been produced by a "natural" disaster but by industry. Several of Woodson's images were chosen for the 1974 Documerica exhibition Our Only World, including a picture of the smoking chimneys of U.S. Steel Company plant. Images of factories were a common subject of FSA photography too; however, the style of photography differed radically. Views of 1930s factories by the FSA's most well-known photographer, Walker Evans, were taken in daylight and included the built environments in which the factories stood, reflecting the new urbanity of the growing cities. Documerica photographer LeRoy Woodson's views, on

46 Hampshire, "Letter to Harry Schaefer," 10 July 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E412-P, ass. 0051. 47 Hampshire, "Task order 0008 to LeRoy Woodson," 3 May 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0008.

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the other hand, isolate the smoke stacks from their surroundings and focus on the emissions, creating an almost absurdist aestheticization of pollution. Figure 30: LeRoy Woodson, Birmingham Steel Plant, 10/1972 © National Archives (412-DA-11388)

Woodson chose a dusk view that offered a reduced spectrum of colors and helped create a peculiarly dramatic atmosphere. Set against a reddish sunset, the picture presents the smokestacks in almost graphical abstraction. About a dozen chimney stacks pierce the sky like black bars emitting dark plumes that threaten to swallow the moonlight. In their physical compactness, these poisonous clouds have become a metaphor for an indistinct threat. Though the original caption to Woodson's image names the company, the picture was simply entitled "Birmingham, Alabama" when put on public display and the polluting company no longer referenced as the polluter.

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Figure 31: LeRoy Woodson, Robert B. Jones, retired worker, is totally dependent on his home Oxygen machine for survival, 06/1972 © National Archives (412-DA-11390)

Besides his apocalyptic images of air pollution, Woodson presented inhabitants of the neighborhood who suffered greatly from respiratory diseases. One of his most haunting images shows a pitiful man attached to an oxygen machine that enables him to breathe. Here again, the effect of FSA photography is recalled, as Documerica photographers document the human suffering inflicted by environmental damage. But whereas his FSA predecessors portrayed the suffering farmers and showed the rural poor in their living conditions, their cabins and belongings framing them like silent witnesses, Woodson's photographs lack any kind of emotive content. His photographs appear to be far less personally involving than for instance Evans's images of the Field family, in which the farmers' struggle against hunger and illness is literally inscribed in the sitters' faces. In Woodson's

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view, the suffering man and his wife are presented indoors, in a scene of modest wealth, surrounded by furniture, pictures and interior design. One can hardly see the man's face as it is partially covered by flexible tubes. To a certain degree, the oxygen machine appears to be an extension of all the objects gathered in the room. Far from posing a threat, it promises the alleviation of suffering. The implicit message inscribed in the photograph is that modern technology relieves and corrects illness caused by environmental pollution, a tempting, if false, proposition. Woodson's series is framed by two other images, presenting a normal lung next to one of a cancer victim, and seeks to remind the viewer of the impact of toxic emissions on human health. Woodson's photography depicted air pollution and its effects in telling images, yet when used for public display, it seems that they were not meant to influence and push for political decisions on further restrictions on polluters, but downplayed in order not to further aggravate feelings of anxiety. There is no evidence that either Documerica or the EPA used the images to intensify government implementation of environmental laws, file lawsuits against polluters or used any of the photographs in juristic discussions. The reasons for this lie in the political apparatus and its intentions, not in any lack of quality of the photographs. A Photographic Survey on Water Conditions In the early 1970s, the EPA aimed to improve the quality of streams and coastal waters and to regulate the discharge of hazardous substances. Besides the extension of Clean Air Act of 1970, EPA's main achievements were two amendments to the Clean Water Act in 1970 and 1972 respectively. Monitoring the enforcement of these laws became another key venture for Documerica photographers, and as in the selected examples on air pollution, the assignments preceded governmental action. Documerica's very first assignment commissioned concerned the Ohio River, but it was overshadowed by an emergency in Louisville, Kentucky, where a barge loaded with liquid chlorine crashed into a dam. The photographer, Bill Strode, was asked to report on this incident.48

48 Hermann Gordon, "Letter to Mr. Jon Webb," 18 January 1973: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0004.

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Figure 32: Bill Strode, A worried mother and her child leave Louisville by bus when the city was evacuated, 03/1972 © National Archives (412-DA1405)

Strode's photographs first followed photojournalistic traditions: he depicted the barge pinned on the dam and the evacuation of the residents of Lexington. In other images, Strode's photographic documentation of ecological refugees evokes once more the vital memory of New Deal images and their influence on the 1970s generation of photographers. His image of a mother and her child being evacuated from Lexington resembles Dorothea Lange's famous picture of the migrant mother. But the assignment also highlights the steps taken to develop a new, environmental photographic language. Photographers moved away from a newspaper style of depicting incidents, the purpose of which was to illustrate news and major incidents, to more general assignments, enabling them to conduct detailed and nuanced studies of particular regions. Thus they started to create larger riverscapes, and visually explored the streams' conditions, banks and crosscuts. This broader approach is exemplified by photographer Harry Schaefer's assignment

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concerning the Kanawha Valley and Ohio River, in which the photographer suggested that he would track the river from the confluences of its tributaries onward.49 Schaefer's photographs not only depicted the beautiful scenery along the river, but also systematically investigated the function of the river as a supply route for adjacent industrial sites and pointed out the negative impact of the plants. Spills, leaks, water dumping, and sewage full of effluents could now be geographically located and traced back to specific polluting industries. This approach was also picked up in further assignments submitted by Ted Rozumalski, Alexander Hope, Ivan Massar, and John Alexandrowicz. Beyond these explorations on the ground, aerial photographs enabled the photographers to monitor the earth from above, an opportunity not often afforded to FSA photographers. Alexander Hope's 1974 visual study of New Jersey's waterways illustrates aerial photography's obvious potential for surveillance, offering insights into how the waterfront had been shaped by industrial complexes. Arthur Kill River in the Metropolitan New York Area proved to be heavily contaminated by the agglomeration of petrochemical manufacturing companies such as E.I. DuPont and a huge Exxon Oil refinery. Aerial photography, again, pointed out examples of effluents and spills as colored drags and different colored waters. An iconographic photograph by Chester Higgins, presenting the Statue of Liberty surrounded by oil slick, was even displayed in the Our Only World exhibition. In this particular example, the American promise of freedom and prosperity, symbolized by the majestic sculpture, seemed to be restricted by the actual condition of the nation's environment and natural resources.

49 Harry Schaefer, "Project Idea #1, Kanawha River and Valley," 29 June 1972: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0051.

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Figure 33: Chester Higgins, Oil slick surrounds the Statue of Liberty New York, 05/1973 © National Archives (412-DA-11403)

5. D OCUMERICA ' S C OLLABORATION WITH THE EPA: O PPORTUNITIES AND L IMITATIONS In its first years, Documerica assignments closely conformed to the EPA's agenda and picked up topics pursued by the institution. Although Gifford Hampshire was in charge of the selection and commissioning of photographers, the director was himself rigorously supervised. The scope of particular assignments was developed in consultation with the regional EPA offices. In general, regional offices reacted in a very positive way to using photography in order to visually investigate controversial topics that were often at the center of the major political debates of the era. Collaboration on photographic assignments between Washington DC and its outposts even enhanced the communication between EPA offices. In many cases, documentation from the moment in which an assignment was commissioned offers the best insight into the working structure of the department and its employment of photography as an administrative research tool.

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In this respect, photographer Alexander Hope's assignment to document salt marshes is of special interest.50 The project centered on an ongoing environmental debate surrounding a municipal landfill in Middletown, Newport, Rhode Island, at a crucial moment in time. The dumpsite, located in a salt marsh, had been used for waste disposal since 1951, but in 1972, its operating company was accused by the city of illegally dumping trash into the wetlands. Hope was engaged at the climax of this battle in May 1973, just as the site's closure, initially scheduled for June 1973, had been postponed for six months. Figure 34: Alexander Hope, Middletown dump meets the Salt marsh, 05/1973 © National Archives (412-DA-5033)

50 Hampshire, "Task order 0068 to Alexander Hope," 12 February 1973, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0068.

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The assignment was commissioned as a way of gaining additional knowledge about the site shortly before the final decision on its closure was made. Hope was briefed by the regional EPA director, who relayed information from the representatives of local environmental groups who had previously been invited to suggest sites for consideration as the subjects of photographic assignments.51 Hope's photographs document the impact of the dump by literally drawing the viewer's attention to the ground. The photographer presented garbage spreading and floating throughout the marsh. Dump sites had already appeared in Walker Evans's exploration of the 1930s rural landscape, as the first detritus from the automobile society began to grace the scenery. Yet photographer Alexander Hope's image of the dump provides a more sophisticated statement. Whereas Walker Evans observed the junk from a distance, avoiding any further engagement with the object beyond that demanded by his artistic documentary style, Hope's image creates a symbol of modernity's alienation from its sustainable natural roots. In the image, two different, yet connected elements appear. One is the marsh with tender vegetation emerging from the water. The other is the trash in the foreground, floating in the water, among which the forms of some white plastic boxes are discernible, highlighted by the sunlight. But the trash is not the only component pointing to humanity's presence in the natural environment. A small white cabin, of the same tone as the trash, appears in the background, a further remnant of the human race. Hope's image therefore creates a metaphor for two opposing systems: that of a pristine ecosystem and man's conquest of the same, in the name of progress, that destroys it. Hope's salt marsh photographs were commissioned at a crucial moment in the decision process and it can be safely assumed that they were meant to influence the decision. However, there is no evidence to be found in the archive that the photographs were actually taken into consideration when the EPA made its final decision. Indeed, the EPA's implementation of environmental protection at this site progressed painfully slowly. From 1973 until its permanent closure in 1975, the site was still being used as a waste

51 Paul Keough, "Memorandum to Gifford Hampshire," 14 March 1973, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0068.

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disposal transfer station.52 Although the Documerica assignment indicates a certain level of governmental concern over this particular problem, as well as an awareness of this contested site, the resulting photographs were not picked up and integrated into the controversy. Closely related photographs were commissioned, but afterwards, the EPA did not take advantage of the end products that its own attached division had provided. Further Documerica assignments were characterized by an intense desire to investigate the most controversial topics of the time: in July 1973, Dennis Cowals was asked to examine the route of the proposed Alaska Pipeline.53 In 1971, the Sierra Club published a volume entitled Oil on Ice in its campaigning book series, in which it opposed the project, this time without the help of any images. As in the previous example, the government hesitated in its response and the idea of conducting a visual study came rather late. Oil had been found at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, and within a year, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company had drawn up plans to build a pipeline to Valdez harbor that would ensure year-round transportation. In the spring of 1970, after three Congressional hearings, environmental groups started to oppose the plan and prevent construction.54 The recently passed National Environmental Policy Act allowed them to file a lawsuit and the company was forced to justify its plans to the Department of the Interior (DOI). The DOI published a statement on the project's environmental impact in January 1971. By the end of March 1971, this statement had produced a bulky collection of testimony and evidence via Congressional debates. In the face of considerable opposition, but also against the background of the ongoing oil crisis and the nation's ongoing dependency on reliable oil supplies, Presi-

52 Environmental Protection Agency, Waste Site Cleanup & Reuse in New England; Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refugee, Middletown, Rhode Island, http://yosemite.epa.gov/r1/npl_pad.nsf/a36badb0f3493aff85256bc8005c97e1 /f8467e0ece07e17685256b4200606b8b!OpenDocument, accessed 08/27/2012. 53 Hampshire, "Task order 0094 to Dennis Cowals," 25 July 1973, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0094. 54 Paul Coates, The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy. Technology, Conservation and the Frontier (London / Toronto: Associated University Press, 1991).

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dent Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act on 16 November 1973. Figure 35: Dennis Cowals, Salmon spawn in the streams that drain salt marshes such as the one shown here. One of the mineral King Islands appears in the middle distance. The pipeline will run above the opposite shore from left to right (east to west) below Sugarloaf, the prominent Valdez landmark seen in the upper right. The blue haze is smoke from land clearing operations underway at the terminal site one mile of this picture. Mile 788, Alaska pipeline route, 08/1974 © National Archives (412-DA13244)

In July 1973, after more than two years of heavy controversy, Documerica had decided to conduct a photographic study of the area documenting the likely consequences of the decision for the Alaskan tundra and wildlife. With the aid of an airplane, photographer Dennis Cowals created numerous panoramic views of the fascinating tundra landscape. Almost all of these images present a picturesque and idyllic landscape, and it seems almost impossible to anticipate the impending change. Only a few photographs captured traces of previous human interventions, such as an aisle cut through the woods. In many cases, it is the captions that enable us to understand the otherwise inconsistent information provided by the photographs

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alone.55 Cowals's view presents a fascinating panorama of a tundra landscape of unimaginable diversity. A river in the foreground meanders through a meadow and finally flows into a larger stream that crosses the landscape. Blue mist ascends from the valley and leads the viewer's gaze over to impressive mountains, which frame the plains. What appears at first glance to be an unspoiled wilderness is then undermined by the captions announcing that the bluish mist results from the first tree clearances, and that the pipeline will be cutting through the landscape from "right to left." It is this additional information, together with various projected comparisons of "before and after," provided by the captions that explicitly preface the drama to come. Once again, this strategy emphasizes prevention in a manner akin to the Sierra Club, however unsuccessful it proved to be in the pipeline case. Yet the caption's choice of words and neutral statements suggest that Documerica editors already seemed to have accepted the inevitability of the construction of the pipeline. They followed the future course of the pipeline and preserved, at least in documents, what was about to vanish, but did not actually use the visual documentation to oppose the pipeline's construction. Here, Documerica, a federal agency, limited itself to monitoring environmental problems without becoming involved in decision making processes or actively adopting any kind of position. Just when the EPA might have remained true to its own agenda of restriction and prevention having commissioned photographic assignments geared precisely to this end, it withdrew from the enforcement process in order to focus on decisions that were considered more important.

55 For the relation of captions and images in social documentary photography see Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970); Wolfgang Kemp (ed.), Der Text des Bildes. Möglichkeit und Mittel eigenständiger Bilderzählung (München: edition text + kritik, 1989); W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Gisela Parak, The American social landscape. Dokumentarfotografie im Wandel des 20. Jahrhunderts (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009).

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Documerica's Environmental Vision This major inconsistency, combined with the stubborn adherence to never taking anything other than a neutral position of observation may well be considered par for the course for a government agency. The EPA's chronic inaction appears particularly strange, as the government of the day tried to embrace the pro-environmental claims of environmental organizations and of its citizens, and even implemented laws to that effect. With regard to Documerica, the government failed to consistently implement its own agenda, understood as much more than depicting administrational successes, as Gifford Hampshire's statement and the photographers' interests show. In some cases, the foot-dragging and the frustration with the government's incapacity to act provoked highly motivated photographers like Arthur Tress to leave, accusing Documerica of environmental betrayal.56 In the tumultuous chapters of environmental law enforcement during the early 1970s, Documerica's achievements and failures went hand in hand with the difficult process of incorporating environmental concerns into government policy, and of setting standards amidst competing political opinions. Documerica resembled a headhunter who collected prevalent environmental topics and integrated them into the government's official agenda; however, not one of the representatives seemed to know exactly what to do with these documents once they were collected. One particularly vaguely defined assignment was given to David Falconer and involved documenting the "lights out" movement in Oregon during the height of 1973 energy crisis.57 In the fall and winter of 1973, Oregon governor Tom McAll was the first to introduce a system regulating the circulation of imported fuel resources, limited as they were, by handing out numbered licenses for even and odd days respectively. Though this effort could neither increase the total amount of available gas, nor limit the demand for oil and power, it did reduce the level of chaos that residents experienced. McAll also banned illuminated commercial displays to save energy. The greater part of photog-

56 Arthur Tress, "Memo to Gifford Hampshire," w.d., NARA PD, RG 412, E-412P, ass. 0040. 57 Hampshire, "Task order 0114 to David Falconer," 24 September 1973, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0114.

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rapher David Falconer's images communicated the consequences of the gas shortage in Oregon by documenting the closure of gas stations, or the reduction of hours during which they were open, or the three color flag that indicated whether gas was available to everybody, or only to persons of a particular profession. From a contemporary perspective, the images seem to question consumer society's reliance on oil and energy but, at that time, the assignment illustrates the effects on everyday life, which include the public being forced to radically adjust their habits. Figure 36: David Falconer, Not all businessmen agreed with the Oregon governor's executive order curtailing neon and commercial lighting. This neon light company referred to the bible passage which reads "Let there be light," at Portland, 10/1973 © National Archives (412-DA-12958)

Falconer's collection of images does not indicate whether or not any kind of collective spirit, or indeed any level of environmental understanding, emerged as a result of the Oregon "lights out movement": his photographs

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simply go some way toward reflecting the many voices of public opinion relating to government restrictions. These ranged from general support—as represented by a sign saying: "Our lights are off to save energy. Won't you help too?" or "Fuel shortage will help to get the world back on its feet"—to aggressive demands such as "Turn off the damn lights!" and more ambivalent statements such as "Slow down today or walk tomorrow." Other sectors of the population and businesses clearly objected to gas restrictions and aired their opinion with the use of biblical references addressed to governor McAll, exclaiming "let there be light," or "Power shortage has us in the dark." Art historians have often referred to the 1930s as a landscape of signs and, indeed, many of the FSA photographers depicted the increasing numbers of billboards and commercial signs along the highways. Photographers also used these signs to create biting satirical comments on the political situation, as in a picture by Dorothea Lange, which contrasts two migrant workers on their arduous journey to California with a sign along the highway that mocks their situation with the following recommendation: "Relax and Take the Train." It is this awareness of contemporary displays and their announcements, first brought into play by New Deal photographers, which Documerica photographer Falconer sustained against the environmental background of the 1970s. Yet his perspective is far more that of a distanced observer who frequently documented signs but rarely turned them into a commentary in the way that Lange did. In fact, Falconer's assignment as a whole constitutes a record of the rather diffuse environmental awareness of the mid-1970s, which ranged from supporting the government's decision on gas shortages to vehement opposition, rather than a comment on environmental issues. Environmental politics per se were for the most part never discussed or commented upon. Nonetheless, they sum up the zeitgeist, as the public was mainly concerned about the impact of the gas shortage on their personal habits, while a collective sense of environmentalism was only just beginning to emerge. An excellent example of how contested and pedantic the government's vision of environmental protection was can be seen in the effect that the energy crisis had on Documerica: the demand for energy completely altered the program's agenda on assignments dealing with strip mining. Documerica initiated about half-a-dozen assignments on this topic, which was also a matter of pointed discussion in newspaper columns during the early

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1970s.58 Strip mining issues had been exposed by Documerica photographers prior to the energy crisis, but the latter's emergence made it clearer than ever that coal mining constituted one of the most critical environmental threats. As a matter of fact, this topic was prominently addressed in the first Documerica exhibition of 1972. In November 1973, the ongoing debate prompted photographer Douglas Wilson to send Hampshire a proposal.59 Hampshire expressed regret in his refusal to commission the photographer but, nonetheless, this refusal represents the complete rethinking of government priorities during the energy crisis: "Before the recent awareness of the energy crisis, we were well on the way to Federal legislation to control strip mining. Now, in the crunch, that legislation may be postponed. I'm going to postpone further Documerica assignments till I see how the 60

issue will drop."

Despite his awareness of strip mining's prominence among the environmental issues of the time, director Hampshire was obliged to follow the official governmental position on this topic: the photographs were kept in the drawer. Gifford Hampshire did not shy away from photographic projects on strip mining altogether, as assignments involving Arthur Greenberg and Boyd Norton, commissioned in May 1973, and Erik Colonius, commissioned in April 1974, show. Boyd Norton was assigned to study the effects of the strip mining of low-sulfur coal in the Powder River Basin of South Wyoming and North Montana in March 1973, another case of the observation of environmental responsibilities enabled through the close collaboration of the photographer and the EPA's regional offices. In addition to discussing the topic with Gifford Hampshire, Norton exchanged information with John R. Hallowell, the director of Public Affairs of Region VIII. In his letter, Hallowell billed the development of coal resources in the North

58 Donald Jackson, "Last Grab for Land. Conflict over public lands," in Life, 8 January 1971, vol. 70, no. 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0031. 59 Douglas Wilson, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," 20 November 1973, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0093. 60 Hampshire, "Letter to Doug Wilson," 28 November 1973, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0093.

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Central Plains as "one of the largest stories this regional office of public affairs is likely to encounter."61 Indeed, Hallowell predicted a darkening future for the plains, and his letter also proves that he was conscious of the department's responsibilities: "This office will doubtless be charged with telling the story of this development if it occurs." Boyd Norton's photographs picked up and ran with the hope of effecting prevention by photographically documenting future environmental crime scenes before the harm was done. Nevertheless, his photographs were never published. The whole assignment investigated both rural landscape of amazing beauty, but also featured farmlands that already had been sacrificed to strip mining, portraying its devastating effects on the scenery. In depicting the land that had been targeted for strip mining in its original pristine condition, Norton's photographs demonstrated what would be lost if the plans were not stopped. Although in general, Documerica visually monitored the implementation of environmental laws and conducted research studies, the understanding within the political administration was that the program was not to proactively investigate environmental issues in order to influence debates. In fact, in one highly delicate case, Documerica was successfully derailed by the military. As several task orders indicate, a couple of provocative topics were proposed, like the documentation of the "myth of recycling" at a Coca Cola plant,62 or the documentation of toxicological effects on primates, or of the Turkey Point atomic energy power plant,63 but despite being commissioned, these assignments were either never actually conducted or the images produced were not selected by Hampshire for inclusion in the digital database. Details of the whereabouts of these missing or excluded documents do not exist, with one exception, where the photographer demanded

61 John R. Hallowell, "Letter to Boyd Norton concerning Photos of North Central Plains and Coal Development," 5 October 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0096. 62 Hampshire, "Task order 0006 to Chuck Roger," May 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0006. 63 Hampshire, "Task order 0007 to Ray Fischer," May 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0007.

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that the correspondence canceling his task order be archived—and which now serves as the assignment's archival substitute.64 As pointed out in the photographer guidelines of January 1972, Gifford Hampshire considered a photographic study of existing atomic plants and their impact on the environment (such as raising water temperatures) one of Documerica's duties. These guidelines also represent his understanding of the function of Documerica and the EPA, because he considered it the role of the department to provide "comment" on the environmental consequences of all Atomic Energy Commission businesses.65 In February 1974, he commissioned photographer Steve Wilson to document the effects of the construction of a new base for the Trident Nuclear submarine fleet in Kitsap County, Maryland.66 It very quickly became clear that this assignment, which Wilson considered "one of the most valuable projects I've undertaken,"67 would cause considerable controversy and, by June, the photographer could confirm that the "Trident project of US Navy certainly [was] an incredible football in the political areas."68 From the beginning, the project proceeded rather slowly, as if invisible forces held back the all too eager photographer. Throughout 1974, Wilson suffered severe difficulties receiving authorization to enter the Navy area. By December 1974, his patience faded and he openly accused members of the regional EPA and the Navy of non-cooperation.69 Yet Wilson continued in his efforts. Officials might not have been fully aware that he was a member of the local anti-

64 Entheos/Northwest, "EPA Project Documerica Contract # 68-01-1634, Task Order #0139," March 1975:1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0139. 65 Hampshire, "Documerica, Guidelines for Photographers," January 1972: 3, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0002. 66 Hampshire, "Service order," December 16, 1975, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0092. This service order to pay Wilson the fee of $4,000, signed 16 December 1975 is to be found under Task order 0092. 67 Steve Wilson, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," 19 December 1973, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0139. 68 Wilson, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," 25 June 1974, NARA PD, RG 412, E412-P, ass. 0139. 69 Wilson, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," December 1974, NARA PD, RG 412, E412-P, ass. 0139.

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atomic movement and an active environmentalist. When he was finally allowed to visit the Navy camp, escorted by two officials on 9 December, he found what he later called "a true environmental disaster" and photographed it extensively.70 A letter of 15 December 1974 gave a detailed account of his findings at the so-called "North Dump," where "contaminated petroleum products, scrapings from the RDX dump, zinc, lead and unidentified chemical wastes have been dumped into an open trench, presently partially filled with rain water."71 Any photographs resulting from this visit are missing today from the digital database. Wilson's suspicion continued to grow and, in a letter to Hampshire, he cynically commented on the regional EPA officer's assurances that everything was fine at the site: "Of course the photos of the North Dump with Eldridge's quotes for a caption make a damning statement about the region 10-Navy relation and probably should be filed for historical use rather than present display, unless the flagrance continues."72 Wilson energetically continued to investigate the case, such that Kaye D. Kidwell, Chairman of the FRC Trident Task Force, reported to Seattle's EPA regional administrator Dr. Clifford Smith that he had been "queried […] at length about the Trident case study."73 The complaint of this phone call reflects the Navy's growing suspicion concerning Wilson's interests and also shows how an understanding of what constitutes a "photographic service" may vary from organization to organization and among various individual actors. Kidwell expressed his concerns that the photographer's "activities may reach beyond his contractual obligations and that his judgments and criticisms of the EIS which surfaced during our conversation may create a conflict of interest relating to his contractual job description."74 On the contrary, Wilson's understanding of his job was that he

70 Ibid. 71 Wilson, "Letter to LCDR David A. Rein," 15 December 1974, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0139. 72 Wilson, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," Dec. 1974, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412P, ass. 0139. 73 Kaye D. Kidwell, "Letter to Dr. Clifford Smith," w.d.: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0139. 74 Kidwell, "Letter to Dr. Clifford Smith," w.d.: 2, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0139.

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was to document Trident activities "since headquarters EPA is concerned about regional EPA Trident activities."75 But quarrels between the photographer and Navy officials were not the only ones that broke out around the site. In fact, the discussion that emerged around Trident had a broader impact. A letter from the Washington State Department of Ecology to the Navy reveals that the case was causing waves at a far higher governmental level, with severe disagreements between the State Department of Ecology and the Navy—the two agencies involved in vying for authority over the project.76 On 12 March 1975, tensions rose to the extent that Hampshire advised his photographer to withdraw from the assignment "for the convenience of the government."77 In the poisoned exchange between photographer, director, and the EPA, Hampshire initially tried to uphold his professional and environmental convictions and back Wilson, but finally fell prey to government pressure. Although Documerica was founded in order to "document" contemporary environmental issues and its photographers created compelling records concerning the most pressing environmental discussions and incidents of the 1970s, the project was shut down prematurely and the agency never overcame its teething problems. Photographers proactively expanded their mandate in agreement with the regional EPA officers, and the resulting images went far beyond those that federal government had foreseen coming out of the department. Documerica assignments investigated contaminated and threatened sites, and the photographers often started their inquiries prior to or at a point that coincided with EPA regulatory decisions. Nonetheless, the photographs were never truly integrated into the drafting of government legislation. If the initial intention behind Documerica had been to present environmental problems in a manner accessible to the public, the translation of the photographers' innovative research into government policy failed. Except for two exhibitions and a small number of contributions to

75 Wilson as quoted in Kidwell, "Letter to Dr. Clifford Smith," w.d.: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0139. 76 John A. Biggs, "Letter to E.R. Stacey," 8 November 1974: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0139. 77 Hampshire, "Letter to Steve Wilson," 12 March 1975, NARA PD, RG 412, E412-P, ass. 0139.

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contemporary magazines, the photographs were never widely published. The capacity of Documerica images to influence political decisions and enhance implementation was never fully realized. This failure of the program also represents the confusion that reigned over environmental enforcement under three presidents and three EPA directors during the period from 1971 to 1976.78 When Documerica photographers documented environmental violations committed by companies, the government's overall advice was not to use this information and not to constrain President Nixon's support of industry, as can be seen by Gifford Hampshire's deceleration of strip mining assignments. Caught between governmental trenches, Documerica can be considered a true reflection of the split environmental understanding of mid-seventies politics, in a time marked by extremely different points of view; from President Nixon's pro-industrial politics, to those of moderate Republicans such as Russell Train, Edmund Muskie or Tom McAll, who committed themselves to environmental protection. When the economy worsened, ushering in a prolonged spell of inflation and recession under Ford's term of presidency, health considerations became the EPA's primary focus.79 But a history of neglect surrounding the distribution of the materials that the EPA and Documerica had generated had already led to these bodies' failure to fulfill their self-given mandate. In conclusion, despite declaring its intentions in advance, the Documerica program collided with the interests behind actual government policy and was never integrated into the government's overall philosophy in the same way that New Deal photography became a component of the Roosevelt administration.

78 The three EPA directors from 1971 to 1976 were: William Ruckelshaus, Russell Train, Douglas M. Costle; the three presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter. 79 Robert McMahon, The Environmental Protection Agency: A Structuring Motivation in a Green Bureaucracy (Brighton Portland: Academic Press, 2006): 41.

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6. P HOTOGRAPHY

AND

E NVIRONMENTAL E DUCATION

Whereas Documerica's publication strategy was characterized by its inconsistencies, the proposed display of environmental photographs in specific exhibitions as part of a larger environmental education program was professionally executed. In August 1972, Documerica's first exhibition was opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Arts in Washington DC.80 Conceptualizing and organizing the show, which was simply entitled Documerica 1, only three months after the program was launched must have put Documerica director Gifford Hampshire under enormous pressure, as the first dozen assignments were issued at the beginning of May, and returns were only just arriving.81 When the photographers returned from their field trips, Hampshire had to make a selection of images and captions needed to be edited in a hurry. When the show closed, political representatives were dissatisfied. Political representatives such as William Ruckelshaus and Walter Barto wished to commission enormous amounts of visual data, driven by a desire to mediate governmental efforts intended to solve the era's environmental problems. According to their understanding of photographic documentation, young freelance photographers were sent out to all parts of the United States to illustrate these efforts. Administrative staff vividly discussed ideas as to how to use photographs and make them accessible to the public: a database was established in order to target citizens and media professionals who could research the images and publish them free of charge. Media partnerships with organizations such as Time-Life books, National Geographic and Parade were sought,82 while representatives had to confess that the computer system still remained inaccessible to the public and interested journalists.83 Further visions for the use of Documerica images included the creation of a "Documerica Directory," that is, a catalogue of available images and brief descriptions. The directory was considered a basic "market-

80 Invitation card, NARA, PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1, File 5. 81 NARA, PD, RG 412, E-412-P, File 1. 82 Barto, "Documerica Marketing Plan," 21 November 1972: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1 File 2. 83 Ibid., 3.

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ing tool" that could generate "pictorial pamphlets" in the form of photoessays. These photo-essays would describe what the EPA was doing "to clean up" and therefore "could be viewed as a pictorial 'Toward a New Environmental Ethic,'" as Documerica staff called it, possibly with the thought of Aldo Leopold in mind.84 And, of course, pictures were intended to illustrate the EPA's own bulletin. An additional suggestion was to assemble a slide presentation series that could be used to illustrate 20-minute talks on the EPA and its program areas.85 One representative was enthusiastic about using Documerica images for posters, as well as providing a "tenor twelve-slide packet" that would be routinely included in a teachers' kit,86 an idea that reveals how much thought Documerica officials devoted to their audience. Documerica 1 The concept of Documerica 1 had responded directly to political representatives' desires to display their efforts. Once it was dismounted, representatives thought about further possible exhibitions, and promptly drew up plans for a large travel show (later to become the Our Only World exhibition of 1974).87 There was also a proposal to create a permanent show at the regional EPA headquarters and represent each particular problem area or to design exhibits related to specific scientific program lines, such as the National Eutrophication Survey or the Water Programs.88 In the wake of these promising ideas, Walter Barto, director of the Office of Public Affairs called Documerica's stock of photographs "a veritable gold mine!"89 Despite these high expectations, discontent broke out concerning the scope

84 Don Bliss, "Materials Promoting and Using Documerica" [Letter to Walter Barto], 13 November 1972: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1 File 2. 85 Ibid., 2. 86 Barto, "Potential OPA Uses of Documerica," 17 October 1972: 2, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1 File 2. 87 Barto, "Documerica Reorganization (I)," 5 September 1972: 2, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1, File 2. 88 Ibid., 3. 89 Ibid., 4.

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and orientation of the new travel show. Part of this criticism can be traced back to the general air of discontentedness that pervaded the whole organization of Documerica. Even while Documerica 1 was still on display, one representative asserted in a sharp tone that "it has become increasingly apparent that the entire Documerica project needs immediate reorganization and the infusion of new managerial talent if the project is to attain its goals."90 The letter nevertheless sketched out an optimistic future for Documerica: "If properly managed and organized, it can become the vehicle for dissemination of environmental photographic subject matter that its creators envisioned."91 The same letter also requested that "the exhibition of the existing Documerica 1 at the Corcoran Gallery and other future Documerica exhibits be turned over to an experienced exhibition manager who will serve in a contract capacity."92 In accordance with earlier proposals, the Smithsonian Institution Travel Exhibition (SITE) served as a cooperation partner, but before agreeing to adopt a show, SITE carefully evaluated the interest in and acceptance levels likely to be demonstrated for an environmental exhibition among its own partner institutions. As part of this evaluation process, Walter Barto, chief of the Office of Public Affairs, reported to his superior, that the SITE staff "was not […] overwhelmed" with Documerica 1. He summed up the general consensus commenting that "the presentation was an excellent exhibit of the Documerica project," but "its basic theme was too non-specific, its conceptual flow was far too random and, in their opinion, it did not speak directly enough to (1) specific environmental problems, (2) what is being done now and (3) what has to be done in the future."93 Furthermore, he himself agreed with these verdicts and stressed the necessity of developing a new concept. Roughly 150 photos were displayed in Documerica 1. The photo chosen for the exhibition's invitation card contradicted the official intention behind the project, which was stated as "an effort to document, through the

90 Fred Stannard, "Letter to Tom Hart," 21 August 1972: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1, File 2. 91 Ibid., 1. 92 Ibid., 2. 93 Barto, "Documerica Tours," [Letter to Herman Gordon], 5 December 1972, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2, File 1.

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sensitive lens of the camera, the nature and scope of the environmental problem in America and efforts being made to cope with environmental pollution."94 The view pictured a van in front of a barn, strongly recalling FSA photography of the 1930s. An image of pastoral America seemed somewhat out of place as an introduction to the work of a photographic unit dedicated to exploring industrial America in the 1970s—and its environmental problems. Most likely, the card was intended to attract visitors who were well aware of the project's famous predecessor. The show's selection of images was in part restricted by tight deadlines and the exhibition's predetermined focus on already implemented assignments. Accordingly, the selection blended together assignments according to the timeframe in which they were conducted and their thematic chapters.95 After an introductory space, the exhibition provided impressions of single assignments such as Documerica's very first assignment on the Louisville spill in Kentucky. Eight photographs showed the barge carrying liquid chlorine at McAlpine Dam, and the emergency evacuation of Louisville citizens. Photographs by Carl Mydan, who had already been sent to Puerto Rico on an FSA assignment in the late 1930s, showed current slum architectures. Danny Lyon, a photographer engaged in studying minorities and the urban poor, was represented with images from his El Paso assignment on urban renewal in a Chicano neighborhood. Interestingly, the images chosen for the show out of this assignment represented street life and vacant houses, without elaborating on what had led to the appearance of such conditions—for the whole area's population had been relocated elsewhere, due to toxic emissions from a nearby smelting plant. Images from further specific assignments were displayed in more depth, like Marc St. Gil's exploration of Texas and the Houston Bay area in particular, and LeRoy Woodson's study of air pollution around the U.S. Steel plant in Birmingham, Alabama entitled "Industrial Air Pollution and Its Victims." This section was later repeated in the

94 Back of invitation card, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 1, File 5. 95 My reconstruction of the order of images in Documerica 1 is based on the chapter information on the back of the invitation card and the entries in the digital database, which provide 154 photographs, all of which had been on display. The database does not provide any information regarding chapters or arrangement.

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Our Only World. Belinda Rain's assignment on Lake Tahoe presented the lake as a threatened paradise due to pollution resulting both from housing developments and industrialization. More general chapters of the show referred to specific examples of water pollution such as a photograph depicting a scene from the Schuykill River Oil Spill, or a collection of seventeen photographs of landscapes defaced by the remains of written-off cars. Figure 37: Gene Daniels, Litter on the banks of the Kings river, first day of fishing season, 05/1972 © National Archives (412-DA-10451)

Two other photographs depicted a blighted land. One showed a view of Kings River: rubbish in the foreground distracts the viewer's attention away from a scene at daybreak, the photograph again carrying disturbing information in the form of an image that at first sight, paradoxically, comes across as presenting a seemingly pretty scene. The second photograph showed sand dunes at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and pointed out a littered site with hundreds of rusting cans in the sand. The widespread littering of the landscape provided one of the show's major focal points: trash, abandoned cars, and the overarching topics of consumer societies' behavior were all addressed, as well as urban development and planning, traffic congestion and private transportation. Issues surrounding landfill sites and energy supplies also featured. Additionally, Documerica 1 presented nu-

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merous critical photographs concerning the topic of strip mining, captured by various photographers. This topic however was completely neglected by Our Only World. Within this loose bundle of topics, the core meaning of the show was addressed under the subtitle "Preserving Our Natural Environment."96 Several images pictured role model behavior in the form of groups of pupils gathering trash from the countryside. Cleaning up the landscape was introduced as a fun community activity and in order to raise awareness among citizens of the effects of littering. This attempt to evoke a positive outlook at the same time as inculcating citizens with alternative habits was further represented in images referencing new educational "characters" like Leo the Litter Lover, a painted lion on a circus wagon, who asked youngsters to feed him with paper. Further imagery presented impressions from institutions such as Hopkins Marine Institute at Stanford University, where children learned about different forms of marine life. A photograph shows a girl warily holding a starfish, and apparently completely lost in contemplation regarding its alien beauty. Another photograph depicts third-graders inspecting flowers, collecting berries, testing water, or drawing images with an environmental message. Images like these endorse environmental education as a new initiative in 1970s politics. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law in January 1970, promoted efforts to prevent and eliminate hazards to human health and welfare.97 The aim of the Act was to "enrich the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the Nation." As a consequence of which, the Environmental Education Act was passed in order to provide grants for environmental education. Since the EPA was not created until December, the implementation of the Environmental Education Act fell under the remit of the Department of Health, Education and

96 Other chapters were entitled by catchphrase and were obviously meant to awake the audience, such as "Using Our Precious Land" and "Dumping the Dumps." 97 Edward J. McCrea, "The Roots of Environmental Education: How the Past Supports the Future," 4, http://cms.eetap.org/repository/moderncms_documents/History.Final.20060315.1.1.pdf, accessed 5/16/2012.

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Welfare, officially entitled the "Office of Environmental Education in the U.S.".98 Prior to institutionalization, William Stapp and Caly Schoenfeld, both professors at the University of Madison, established The Journal of Environmental Education in 1969. Under the umbrella of environmental education, different approaches to teaching were brought together such as classic biology and geography, but also field trips, participatory community service projects, and outdoor schools enriched the syllabuses. These ventures would be organized by schools, but also by science centers and independent organizations. In a keynote, United States House of Representative member John Brademas addressed the overarching concept of environmental education and the need for new environmental attitudes. He criticized dominant attitudes that prioritized economic growth over environmental needs.99 Brademas quoted a Wall Street Journal editorial, in which, with reference to Nixon's Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality of 1970,100 the editors warned against the improper utilization of resources and argued for a new environmental agenda. Thus, environmental education was considered a key component in creating new attitudes and enhancing knowledge, as well as investing in the creation of personal bonds between people and nature through direct encounters with nature. The goals of environmental education were summed up in the first book on the subject in 1974, which sought to "produce a new cadre of citizens better able to deal with resolving the problems of the environment."101 Environmental Educa-

98

The program was shut down in 1981 under the Reagan Presidency, but re-

99

John Brademas, "Environmental Education: The Key to Change," in

opened in the 1990s under the direction of the EPA. American Institute of Biological Sciences, Environmental Education and the Adult Public. Report of a Workshop Conference (Washington DC: American Institute of Biological Sciences, 1970): 3. 100 Nixon, Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality, 10 February 1970, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2757#axzz1W WwZyWMu, accessed 8/30/2011. 101 James A. Swan, "Foreword," in Swan and Stapp (eds.), Environmental Education, 9.

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tion disseminated proposals for new teaching strategies: as one of the book's editors, James Swan wrote: "Our environmental problems stem from our inability to develop a system of social values, life styles, and institutions which enables us to live in harmony with the environment. The long-range goal of environmental education, therefore, should be to develop a citizenry which is knowledgeable about the biophysical environment and its associated problems, is aware of how to become effectively involved in working toward the development of a more livable future, and is motivated to do so."

102

In the years following the Education Act, numerous source books were published on the topic of environmental education.103 Furthermore, domestic debates echoed those at the United Nations, where Lynton K. Caldwell and Arthur F. Bently attempted to heighten the status of environmental awareness so as to become one of the key issues of the organization, calling

102 Swan, "Some Human Objectives for Environmental Education," in Swan and Stapp (eds.), Environmental Education, 25. 103 Scientists' Institute for Public Information (ed.), Environmental Education (New York: Scientists' Institute for Public Information, 1970); National Science Teachers Association (ed.), Programs in Environmental Education (Washington DC: The Association, 1970); James L. Aldrich, and Edward J. Kormondy

(eds.),

Environmental

Education:

Academia's

Response

(Washington DC: Commission on Undergraduate Education in the Biological Sciences, 1972); Larry L. Sale / Ernest W. Lee (eds.), Environmental Education in the Elementary School (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972); Cornelius J. Troost / Harry Altman (eds.), Environmental Education: A Sourcebook (New York: Wiley, 1972); Eugene Ezersky, Environmental Education/Facility Resources: A Report (New York: Educational Facilities Laboratories, 1972); Robert E. Roth (ed.), Environmental Education: Abstracts and Index from Research in Education, 1966 to 1972 (Ohio: Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, 1973); Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (ed.), Environmental Education at University Level: Trends and Data (Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1973); V. Eugene Vivian, Sourcebook for Environmental Education (Saint Louis: Mosby, 1973).

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for the establishment of an information program to draw attention to environmental issues.104 In the United States, Peter Sandman discussed whether the media could adopt and support the task of environmental education, observing that "in terms of mere exposure, the mass media are clearly our most efficient educators."105 He identified three pillars upon which the media's role in environmental education might rest: information, entertainment, and persuasion. Sandman finally concluded that unless the media took up such a role, it offered little in the way of espousing environmental skills.106 On the contrary, he also warned about its dissemination of misleading opinions via commercial ads as posing a serious threat to the nascent information society.107 Expectations, visions, and limitations of environmental education were much discussed among a small circle of experts in the early 1970s. The strong didactic appeal of Documerica 1 could therefore be considered as very much of its time, as could the endorsement of environmentalism by way of an exhibition. Not only would the show provoke direct discussion, but also the media would report on its objectives and intentions. Documerica 1 attempted to motivate citizens to realign their behavior in accordance with a new awareness of environmental issues, just as the images of role models captured by its photographers envisaged. This educational purpose was also briefly alluded to by Gifford Hampshire in his guidelines encouraging photographers to look out for persons that were actively involved in environmentalism and to depict "changing lifestyles."108

104 Lynton K. Caldwell and Arthur F. Bently, "Planning and Management of Human Settlements; Strategies for Coping with Environmental Problems," in United Nations Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs (eds.), Organization and Administration of Environmental Programs (New York: United Nations, 1974): 47. 105 Sandman, "Mass Environmental Education," 211. 106 Ibid., 211. 107 Ibid., 213. 108 Hampshire, "Documerica, Guidelines for Photographers," January 1972: 4, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0002.

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Our Only World The second show, entitled Our Only World, followed two years later. It opened on 24 May 1974 at the Smithsonian Institution's Visitor Center and was inaugurated by EPA Administrator Russell E. Train and Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley. Our Only World borrowed its guiding theme from a mixture between current intellectual, political, and popular discussions of the time and used one of the omnipresent Apollo 17 photographs of planet earth as its point of departure, and another photograph from the same series as the image with which the show concluded. It also directly picked up the frequently employed motif of Spaceship Earth.109 The show's concept was deeply influenced by these public debates, which also impacted on the exhibition's underlying ideology. Furthermore, the show's concept broadly borrowed thoughts from prevalent contemporary environmental advocates such as Carson, Commoner, and Dubos. 1970s America is often remembered for its multiple crises, including three extraterritorial colonial wars, two recessions, and the fissures in American society.110 The abandonment of the Bretton Woods monetary system and of the gold standard in 1971 and the sapping of the nation's economic strength during a prolonged recession have been identified as having the most serious impact on American self-esteem, as the nation's postwar wealth now seemed jeopardized.111 Besides the emergence of an anti-nuclear movement and nascent critical debates concerning urban sprawl, a number of eco-enlightening authors started to point out the global convergence of phenomena such as overpopulation, famine, and the limitations to further growth, as encapsulated in Paul Ehrlich's 1968 The Population Bomb, and Donella and Dennis Mead's 1972 Limits to Growth. The notion of a sudden shock caused by the economic crises however is over-

109 Richard Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968). 110 Niall Ferguson, "Crisis, What Crisis? The 1970s and the Shock of the Global," in Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, Erez Manely, and Daniel Sargent (eds.), The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2010): 5, 6, and 12. 111 Ibid., 16.

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simplified, as debates concerning the new geopolitical and economic impact of America as a new world superpower had been underway ever since the eve of WWII, not least among several critical commentators announcing their concern over the United States taking more than their fair share of the world's resources.112 One prominent voice in the discussion was Wendell Lewis Wilkie, Republican nominee to run for president in 1940 against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After his defeat, Wilkie became ambassador-at-large and his travel diary, One World, argued for a world free of imperialism and colonialism. Wilkie suggested expanding American exports as a tool to guarantee the nation's wealth and welcomed the trade opportunities that WWII had opened up for the US market,113 as he was well aware of the necessity of expansion to shoulder the national debt resulting from the war.114 Thus, despite his noble wish to envision One World, his considerations still took an imperialistic perspective of the world. Contrary to this one-sided hegemonic perspective, American postwar intellectuals became generally aware of the increasingly apparent separation of the world into so-called "developed" and "undeveloped" countries.115 Barbara Ward, a British economist, whose experience of living in West Africa and India had opened her eyes to the needs of poorer nations, and had led to her first book, The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (1961), gained international respect. In subsequent years, the writer was consulted by numerous politicians of the time, including Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, and she also be-

112 David J. Tietge, Flash Effect: Science and the Rhetorical Origins of Cold War America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002): 97. Tietge here quotes from an article published in the April 1953 issue of "Science and the Citizen." 113 Wendell L. Wilkie, One World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943): 204. 114 Ibid., 205. 115 For further early critique, see William Vogt, Road to Survival (New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1948); Henry Fairfield Osborn, The Limits of the Earth (Boston: Little and Brown, 1953); Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man's Future: an Inquiry Concerning the Condition of Man During the Years that Lie Ahead (New York: Viking Press, 1954); William L. Thomas, Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).

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came acquainted with Adlai Stevenson, who since 1961 had served as an ambassador to the Kennedy administration. In 1966, Ward published a book entitled Spaceship Earth, in which she referred to the final passage of a speech Adlai Stevenson had delivered before the United Nations' Economic and Social Council in Geneva in July 1965, in which Stevenson pointed out humanity's dependency on natural resources.116 Like a vulnerable spaceship, the earth was considered a tender microsphere to be protected from adverse influences. Ward's 1972 Only One World, co-authored with René Dubos, elucidated this humanitarian concern given the inequality of per capita income, health conditions and life expectancy in different parts of the world, and argued for aid to be sent to the poorer countries.117 When Dubos co-authored the influential preparatory study for the 1972 Stockholm United Nations conference, the medical scientist already had been awarded the Robert-Koch medal for his work on antibiotics, and written a number of books on the history of diseases and the impact of environmental pollution on human health. His 1970 book Reason Awake: Science for Man provided a harsh critique of the still widespread belief in technological and scientific progress and expressed skepticism regarding the atomic bomb. Dubos supported the idea that science could help reduce environmental pollution,118 but he expressed doubts as to whether technological progress should be considered the guiding light for the development of American society.119 Instead, he pleaded for disenchantment with technological progress and brought to attention that it was a general increase in levels of prosperity and consumer societies' appetite for ever more resource-intensive consumption that had caused so much environmental devastation. The scientist called for a new ethics of science and the regulation of scientific research as a "science of civilization to complement technological science."120 He did not go as far as to call for governmental con-

116 Barbara Ward, Spaceship Earth (New York: Columbia Press, 1966). 117 Barbara Ward and René Dubos, Only One Earth (New York: Norton & Company, 1972): xvii. 118 René Dubos, Reason Awake. Science for Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970): xi. 119 Ibid., 145. 120 Ibid., 161.

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trol of science, but he argued for the development of a new social agenda and humanistic perspective within the science, which would reflect the social impact of technological developments. The understanding that science and technology should no longer be considered the saviors of mankind was also prominently expressed by Ward.121 In 1965, these ideas had not yet entered party politics, and Stevenson for example still identified the role of science as to bring "limitless blessings […] to mankind."122 Marine biologist Rachel Carson is credited as one of the seminal voices that helped initiate the modern environmental movement with her book Silent Spring.123 One year after Carson's Silent Spring, scientist Barry Commoner published Science & Survival. Like Ward and Dubos, he argued for an end to the "age of innocent faith in science and technology."124 Among a number of important topics, he brought to attention the environmental threat posed by radioactive fallout resulting from nuclear atmospheric testing, or land testing such as that which took place at the Nevada test site.125 He compellingly argued that these events and their effects created a negative mirror image of modern technical visions and pointed to the global environmental impact that accompanied such activities, such as air and water pollution. 126 His considerations also reflected a change in public opinion and political attitudes towards nuclear power that took place during the 1950s, in the run up to the 1963 signing of the test-ban treaty. Siding with Dubos' call for a new scientific ethic, Commoner suggested that "to

121 Ward, Spaceship Earth, 1. 122 Adlai E. Stevenson, "Science and Technology," in Science and Society, A Symposium (Rochester: Xerox Corporation, 1965): 14. 123 The influence of the book was widely discussed on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. See for example Lawrence Culver, Christof Mauch, and Katie Ritson (eds.), Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring': Encounters and Legacies, in Perspectives 2012, Issue 7, http://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/download/publications/perspectives/2012_perspectives/1207_silentspring_web_ color.pdf, accessed 10/15/2012. 124 Barry Commoner, Science & Survival (New York: The Viking Press, 1967): 3. 125 Ibid., 6. 126 Ibid., 9.

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survive on the earth" required "far-reaching social and political actions."127 He concluded that "science can reveal the depth of this crisis, but only social action can resolve it."128 A second book published in 1971, The Closing Circle-Nature, Man & Technology, went further still. It showed how the nuclear movement turned into the environmental movement with reference to the example of the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information, of which Commoner was a member, and which later changed its name to the St. Louis Committee for Environmental Information in 1963.129 These elaborate voices sparked lively debate of social and environmental features in the late 1960s that in turn ignited the internationalism of environmentalism, as represented by the 1972 Stockholm Conference and the global rise of environmental concerns. By 1972, speaking of the earth as a "spaceship" and using views of the planet as illustrations had become almost common sense. A new consciousness of environmental issues and the exploitation of natural resources had come into being.130 The Exhibition's Concept Our Only World presented 113 photographs. In Gifford Hampshire's first written conceptual draft of the show, next to a big print of the NASA image, views of people of all nations would be shown, expressing the shared heritage of the human race. A subsequent "Spaceship in trouble" section would address humanity in balance with nature, followed by examples of

127 Ibid., 131. 128 Ibid., 132. 129 Ibid., 200. 130 For the dichotomy of one-worldism vs. whole earth, see Cosgrove, "Contested Global Vision," 290. For the history of the globe as a symbol of imperialism, see Denis Cosgrove, Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), and for the backgrounds of further symbols of modernity represented like the 1964 New York World Fairs "unisphere" see Lawrence R. Samuel, The End of the Innocence: The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007).

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man in conflict with nature.131 In the exhibition's final format, the concept was modified, but the show's title and the guiding theme directly borrowed the motif of Spaceship Earth and Only One Earth. Furthermore, the show's concept was influenced by these framing ideas.132 In general, the exhibition was arranged around the EPA's focal points, each of which was addressed in separate sections. The exhibition though did not display any images depicting the contemporary calamities or incidents broadly discussed by the American public during the period of Documerica's existence. As such, no reference was made to the photographic assignments prompted by the debate over the Trans-Alaskan pipeline, or by industrial leaks or the clearances of estates that made way for strip mining during the energy crisis of 1973. Additionally, any transnational comparison of pictorial vocabulary under federal patronage is complicated by the general lack of adequate organizations, as Documerica constituted the only visual agency in countries such as the United States of American, Great Britain, Germany and Japan, thus constituting a unique alliance between photography and political programs. In a press release, the exhibition was likened to a photo-essay that was intended to bring the newly founded program and its environmental agenda to the attention of the general public.133 Another press release introduced Our Only World as a selection of images by the EPA's photographic agency, "a special program designed to portray, through photographs, the nature and scope of America's environmental crisis and the efforts being made to cope with it." The press release further elaborated upon the purpose of the agency, which was to investigate "some of the environmental problems that face each of us today: the need for clean air, clean water, solid waste management, insecticides and radiation control and noise abatement."134 Fol-

131 Gifford Hampshire, "Letter to Frank Lodge, concerning 'Sites Exhibition'," w.d., NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2, File 1. 132 A number of newspaper reviewed repeated the motto of Spaceship Earth, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2, File 2. 133 Press Release, 23 May 1974, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2, File 1. 134 SITES (Smithsonian Institution Travel Exhibition service), "Our Only World (press release)," w.d., NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2, File 2.

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lowing an introductory panel, there were twelve sections profiling various environmental issues.135 After an intense dispute over the show's concept, the selection of images and the final title,136 the show picked up on the same educational premises that had underpinned the Documerica 1 exhibition. Its first section, entitled "A planet in trouble" served as a prelude to the show. Despite the negative associations of its (somewhat contradictory) title, this section mainly contained positive, euphoric or even nostalgic portrayals of the earth as a recreational space, with all the beauty and undiluted happiness that images can express. Images of unspoiled rural landscapes, beautiful scenery, cattle driving and farming, leisure time on a boat trip, and an Indian sheepherder living in harmony with nature; all of these suggested a harmonious, balanced world. The second section, entitled "Moving into a new age," reflected the uneasy feeling concerning general and far-reaching change that loomed over the 1970s, prompted largely by the transfer from rural to urban forms of settlement, and a decline of agriculture as industrial processes started to dominate almost all forms of production. The exhibition did not represent, as it may have been expected to, modern life in the cities and the new industrial landscapes, but recalled the Dust Bowl photographs depicting rural depopulation: scenes punctuated by abandoned farmhouses and departing migrant workers. The section neither sought nor articulated any explanations for this cultural turn; its vague treatment of the underlying cultural turn was reflected in the section's contradictory title, which failed to explain what characterized this new age. In short, most of the chapter titles were not well chosen: the images on display contradicted the chapter titles, raising more questions than they might have answered. The later chapters were dedicated to concrete examples of pollution, starting with chapter three, entitled "An environmental crisis." One chapter

135 A list of exhibits found in the Smithsonian Institution Archives includes the section titles: (1) A planet in trouble, (2) Once upon a time, (3) Moving into a new age, (4) An environmental crisis, (5) Dirty air, (6) Poisoned waters, (7) A blighted land, (8) Pesticides, (9) Radiation, (10) Noise, (11) Protecting Our Environment, and (12) It's up to you. 136 Hampshire, "Documerica, Guidelines for Photographers," January 1972: 2, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-P, ass. 0002.

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presented two views of a coal mine with smoking chimneys—that were already employed for Documerica 1. An image depicting a massive coal cutter used in strip mining was followed by two further images presenting a view of Glen Canyon and the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, Columbia County, Oregon, apparently meant as a reference to cleaner substitutes for coal mining and as a suggestion of how to meet the nation's energy demands without exacerbating the crisis. One section also referred to architectural debates. An image of vacant houses used as a playground referred to the controversial architectural debate ignited by Jane Jacobs' famous The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, and topics addressed by John Brinkerhoff Jackson's Landscape magazine, which reflected upon the transformation of cities and landscapes since 1951. A photograph of a New York City subway car covered in graffiti picked up on the discussion of visual pollution, a topic brought up in the 1930s because of the increasing number of billboards and advertisements. The show's outlook coincided with the identification of urban sprawl as one of the main sources of environmental pollution, an insight that numerous contributors to Landscape also offered around this time. The show also presented an image of a crowded parking lot and contrasted it with a view of modern suburban row housing. Additional images featured newly created urban structures, pictured such that the city's expansion resembled an artificial reef. Though the interpretation of the images was largely a matter for the viewer in the exhibition, an image of a Texas expressway grid, presenting a landscape of driveways, might for example also be interpreted as a critique of suburbia's impact. Following these generalist sections, Our Only World turned to images on specific types of pollution and environmental degradation, which usually involved juxtaposing the beautiful and the ugly, pristine landscapes and examples of environmental collapse. "Dirty air" returned to a topic already covered in Documerica 1. Indeed, two images from the latter appeared in this section, one of discarded, burning car batteries and another of smokestacks framed as iconic polluters. It featured several photographs from an assignment undertaken in Birmingham, Alabama, which investigated air pollution caused by a U.S. Steel plant and its effects on local neighborhoods, where residents increasingly found themselves subject to respiratory illnesses. Once again, the captions withheld certain information from the viewer, as names of companies were not given. The section "Poisoned

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waters" contrasted idyllic scenes of lakes, rivers and wetlands with instances of pollution, and "A blighted land" assembled images of junk. Neither section made any suggestion as to how to avoid ruining the land. There was no notion of "cleaning up" that went beyond surface appearances: one photograph in this section proudly presented a landfill on which a golf course had been created. Perhaps it is above all this image that represents the height of naiveté in terms of environmental understanding: an illusion that only the Love Canal incident could shatter. Landfills, even those where toxic chemicals were disposed of, were still considered an effective means of waste disposal, as long as the effects on the landscape and its inhabitants, both of which were exposed to the unknown long-term effects of a raft of chemical elements, continued to be ignored. The section on "Pesticides" could easily have provided illustrations for Rachel Carson's writings, and her explanations of the ecological chain that connected insects, wildlife, fertilizers and pesticides. In order to improve agricultural production rates, these fertilizers and pesticides killed insects. Their sideeffects caused the eutrophication of water and poisoned fish. Other sections simply assembled images of different forms of pollution, as in the section on radiation, with very general images showing the sun, the creation of xrays, a radar scanner, and a nuclear power plant as forms of radiation. The section dedicated to noise simply outlined different sources of noise pollution such as the lawn-mower, cars, rock music, air planes, or road construction. The last two chapters were more informative. "Protecting the environment" presented further cases of pollution, but—more importantly— referred to measures taken to alleviate the effects: new sewage treatment plants, cleaner industries that met new environmental requirements, or recycling efforts. The show also contrasted perspectives on regulating traffic, and presented a new test facility that measured emissions. The section mediated governmental efforts to solve the crisis. Images of highway traffic jams at night, in which nothing moved except the bus on the express lane, implicitly advocated public transportation. Two Documericaphotographers, for instance, were sent to Europe to study the car-free innercity movement in Vienna and Munich. The show's last section may have been the most telling as regards the goal of creating an environmental vision. The show called upon each citizen to protect the environment and rescue the earth, claiming: "It's up to you." The intention was to inculcate every single visitor to the exhibition

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with a feeling of environmental responsibility. Environmental activists like the citizens of Birmingham who fought against air pollution featured as role models. One photograph portrayed the group but their accomplishments and engagement were not elaborated upon. By presenting a portrait of a group of persons, and mentioning in the captions who they were, the photograph implied support for their actions and encouraged viewers to follow the citizens' example. The same didactic suggestion underscores other Documerica photographs of role model behavior, such as when, for example, a group of people were depicted collecting trash or engaged in recycling efforts. This section of the show also displayed a picture of pupils in class, which focused on a recycling container in the foreground bearing the inscription: "Fight for Your World." Whereas EPA administrator Russell Train in his speech at the show's opening claimed that it was down to the individual to protect the environment,137 this last chapter reminded the viewer of his or her duty as a citizen to join collective recycling efforts in order to save the planet. The responsibility of industrial companies as major polluters and of government to prosecute environmental offences received no comment whatsoever.

137 Russell Train, "Opening remarks [manuscript]," 23 May 1974: 2, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2, File 2.

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Figure 38: Jim Olive, Children in Fort Smith are learning that protecting the environment will take more than awareness, 06/1972 © National Archives (412-DA-11452)

Thus, given their educational premises and illustrative qualities relating to the EPA's main concerns, the photographs displayed in Our Only World differed significantly from photographs deployed by the mass media. In all cases, they did not relate to well-known calamities or incidents, but attempted to picture environmental pollution in more general—and thus nonbinding—terms.

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Documerica 1 and Our Only World in Comparison The central ideas of the concept of Our Only World did not significantly differ from those of Documerica 1 as both exhibitions had a strong didactic undertone. Taking up representatives' understanding of photography, the images were employed for the purposes of environmental education. But whereas Documerica 1 was almost overlooked by the media, Our Only World received extensive reviews and reached a broad audience, the six sets of the show each being presented at 10 to 15 venues in different American cities. Nevertheless, there are also differences in the exhibitions' alignments. The didactic impetus of Our Only World was more subtle, and additional information on the EPA's key areas of environmental protection was incorporated. Furthermore, the information provided was edited more thoroughly. On the other hand, the coverage of strip mining in Documerica 1 was more thorough than that in Our Only World, from which the topic was almost completely excluded. Documerica 1 used more alarming images, which conveyed the reality of environmental disaster much more directly. Our Only World was much vaguer in addressing the alarming impact of environmental disaster. However, the concept of the show as a whole was much more innovative, as it was directly inspired by the most important writings of the time. The Spaceship Earth metaphor was used as a motto for the show in the press announcements and furthermore, the exhibition affirmed the humanitarian vision of Commoner and Dubos and their encouragement of citizen participation. Yet it did not pick up Commoner's and Dubos' call for a new "scientific ethic" or a "science of civilization" that would have restricted technological developments and the arms race for the sake of the environment. Quite on the contrary, it saw in science and technology a solution to the environmental crisis, and proudly presented nuclear power plants intended to combat pollution. As a matter of fact, most of the technological innovations presented in Our Only World concerned measures to remedy damage already caused; preventative measures were not part of the equation at all. As such, the show presented an ecological vision that came up short when compared with that set forth by the leading environmental writers mentioned above. The need for new cars was never doubted: solutions as regards pollution were sought in better means of exhaust control. The atomic menace did not prompt the curators to question

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the omnipotence, not to mention the omnipresence of technology. Instead, atomic power plants were considered an adequate solution to meet the nations' demand for energy. And as already stated, the responsibilities of industrial companies as polluters or of the government to implement environmental protection measures was missing altogether, and the shadow of the energy crisis and economic stagnation stretching right across the United States during the 1970s forced the Nixon government into a stalemate with respect to recently implemented environmental laws and the systematic monitoring of industry. Thus, Our Only World picked up the most important environmental ideas of the early 1970s, which became the point of departure for an appealing show that could please the concerned citizen with its popular illustrations of environmental concerns. The images mediated these concerns and contributed to educating the public, but the exhibition did not reveal any unknown facts, nor did the organizers question either the prerogative of industry or economic growth. Neither did the show proactively develop a new environmental perspective or debate green consumerism, solar energy, or alternative forms of living.138 It did however offer a display of government environmental thinking, something to which it alerted the public's attention for the first time.

138 For discussion of these countercultural initiatives see Steve Brand, The Whole Earth Catalogue, first issue launched in fall 1968.

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7. US AMERICAN F OREIGN P OLICY AND E NVIRONMENTAL D IPLOMACY

IN THE

1970 S

After being dismounted at the Smithsonian Institution's Visitor Center, six identical exhibition sets toured the United States until 1978, as part of an extended public education program intended to inform citizens of American environmentalism.139 The show not only enlightened school pupils and adults alike at partner institutions, but was also dispatched to represent the United States at the 1976 World Environment Exhibition in Tokyo. At this time, the concept of employing visual media in environmental campaigning at a governmental level was more or less unique and the persons involved tended to perceive the exhibition as a precursor of global environmental and cultural diplomacy, as well as a role model in environmental education. The institutionalization of environmentalism within the framework of US policy is consistently interpreted as a domestic US American matter, and part of the policy developed under the Nixon Presidency in response to the nascent environmental movement and rapidly growing public awareness that culminated with the introduction of the nation's first Earth Day in 1970. Since 1968, preparations had been made for the United Nations' Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Given that President Nixon signed the National Environment Policy Act in January 1970, and founded the Environmental Protection Agency in December of the same year, the institutionalization of environmentalism cannot be considered in isolation from the international context. Rather, it should properly be considered the product of domestic as well as international pressures. As argued, Our Only World was deeply influenced by the international political atmosphere of the time. Its concept emerged at a time in which ideas as to how to exhibit, propagate, and disseminate environmental information were circulating internationally. One-off exhibitions and international fairs coincided with one another. The idea of an international exhibition for example first materialized with the Osaka World Fair of 1970, followed by the U.S. Spokane Fair of 1974 and the Tokyo World Environment Exposition of 1976, the same year as the United Nations ConferenceExposition on Human Settlements "Habitat '76." The fairs' adaptation of

139 NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2 File 2

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environmental catchphrases significantly contributed to a growing public awareness of a growing body of environmental knowledge, but moreover, coincided with the institutionalization of environmentalism within international diplomacy, the pivotal United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, providing the first political framework within which to articulate transnational concerns. Beyond the global ascendancy of an environmental conscience, economic approaches at the level of nation-states determined governments' engagement in international diplomacy, and the juxtaposition of opposing interests became particularly tense within the battle between the United States and the United Nations over environmental issues. Japan also showed significant interest in becoming involved, embraced the environmental theme and spawned offensive and innovative marketing strategies, which were put on show at two environmental fairs in the 1970s. At the same time, the economic, diplomatic, scientific and popular implications of the process of the institutionalization of environmentalism became increasingly entangled. In 1965, Adlai Stevenson's notion of Spaceship Earth excited much interest within the United Nations' Social and Economic Council, not least in the way that the concept focused attention on the global environmental crisis. The metaphor introduced the topic of environmental degradation into an assembly were debates were more usually of a technocratic nature, concerning a single nation-state's per capita income, economic expectations, and industrial developments: a global vision of the whole earth was therefore bound to prompt a change of perspective. In July 1968, a member of the Swedish delegation to the annual meeting of the Economic and Social Council suggested an international assembly on the environment, which was later realized in the form of the Stockholm meeting in 1972. When the associated resolution was debated at the United Nations General Assembly, Swedish ambassador to the United Nations and godfather of the proposal, Carl Sverker Åström, stressed the need for immediate action.140 Contrary to this wish, the meeting was delayed until the year 1972 in order to give national governments the chance to introduce and implement environmental laws in advance; in other words, to present

140 Wade Rowland, The Plot to Save the World (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1973): 34.

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themselves with "relatively clean noses" and "find out what the environment is," as scholar Wade Rowland put it.141 The formulation of domestic environmental policy proceeded even more slowly. Following the United Nations' proposal, the United States, Great Britain and Japan established environmental agencies. The first meetings of the preparatory committee for the Stockholm conference were scheduled for 10 March 1970 and, from this moment onwards, United Nations' delegates carefully prepared the ground for a successful meeting. The reports of participating nation-states were considered an essential component for the transnational comparison of factors that contributed to the environmental crisis. To enable developing countries to commission their studies, funds were allocated by the preparatory committee.142 Significant investigations were not only conducted by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos in their preparatory study Only One Earth, commissioned by the United Nations, but also by the Economist's Blueprint for Survival. This careful, time-consuming preparation process, together with the implementation of directives supporting the conference's wide range of topics therefore reflects the complicated birth of international environmental diplomacy, a process in which conflicting viewpoints had to be reconciled, at least to some extent, with one another—particularly where the United States and the United Nations were concerned. Additionally, scholarly exchanges and related socio-economic debates flourished, including the MIT congress of 1970 entitled "Man's Impact on the Global Environment: Assessment and Recommendations for Actions," and a workshop at the University of Wisconsin's Institute of Ecology in 1972, entitled "Man in the Living Environment." Both conferences were attended by scholars from countries throughout the Western world. These congresses attempted to synthesize elements of environmentalism, international diplomacy, and science. Independent American research facilities not only stimulated discussion, but also cooperated with the United Nations to facilitate international exchange. Under the leadership of Richard N. Gardner, Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Universi-

141 Ibid., 34. 142 Maurice Strong, "Opening Remarks," in UN Conference on Human Environment Informal Meeting of the Preparatory Committee U.N. HQS NY 9–10 November 1970: 12. S-0885-05-0006, U Thant fonds, UNA NYC.

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ty, the Institute on Man and Science and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies convened a meeting entitled "International Organization and the Human Environment" in May 1971. Gardner had been a consultant to the United Nations, and the conference was considered a significant further step in the preparation process for Stockholm, since it brought together an international podium consisting of U.N. diplomats from various nationstates, representatives of other U.N. institutions such as UNESCO and the World Health Organization, American politicians such as Senator Edmund Muskie and scientific experts, such as Lynton K. Caldwell, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, one of the foremost scholars involved in the contemporary environmental debate. The outline for discussion encompassed wide-ranging topics such as marine life, atmospheric pollution, pollutants and nuisances of global significance, endangered species, agriculture, soils, forestry, water resources, energy production, mineral resources, population growth, housing, and the relation between physical and mental health on the one hand and urbanization on the other. However, the core question was whether the existing facilities within the United Nations were sufficient for confronting and dealing with the environmental crisis.143 Beyond American endeavors, Canada took the lead in enhancing the flow of knowledge between scientists and politicians, "The Conference on Human Survival" in May 1970 being a case in point. This was chaired by Professor Lester Pearson, Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, and funded by the United Nations.144 These external scientific gatherings on a transnational non-institutional level complemented regular meetings of the preparation committee, the pace of which remained slow. Nonetheless, persistence meant that the way to the Stockholm assembly remained open. In May 1969, United Nations Secretary-General U Thant submitted his report, entitled "Man and His Environment," the first official environmental warning by an influential

143 Richard Gardner, "International Organization and the Human Environment: A Discussion Outline," 5, in "Human Environment 20 May 1971," S-0883-030042, U Thant fonds, UNA NYC. 144 Press release "Conference on Human Survival," 25–28 May 1970, S-08590004-10, U Thant fonds, UNA NYC.

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politician.145 The report simultaneously strained relations between the United States and the United Nations by placing a major part of the blame for global environmental disruption on the former.146 The Secretary-General's statement was positively received in the New York Times of 25 June 1969 as a new point of departure in two respects: it linked "the dangerous deterioration of world resources to the simultaneous growth in population" and it emphasized the "global nature of the problem," and the involvement of rich and poor nations alike.147 Further comment in the New York Times stressed increasingly common calls for international networks,148 as well as for the establishment of an international environmental agency.149 In his introduction to the first preparatory meeting, Thant emphasized the urgency of the topic in calling the environmental crisis the most pressing problem in the history of the United Nations.150 He appealed for a new sense of world justice, such that richer nations should feel bound to sharing their quality of life and wealth with poorer countries: the former should assist with the development of the latter.151 Furthermore, Thant formulated guidelines for economic sustainability, for bringing irresponsible production methods to an end, and encouraging methods of green engineering.152 Mindful of the

145 U Thant, "Man and His Environment," Report of the Secretary-General, 26 May 1969, S-0891-0010-3, U Thant fonds, UNA NYC. 146 http://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/history/topics/epa/15c.html,

accessed

6/18/

2012. U Thant, "Man and His Environment," Report of the SecretaryGeneral, 26 May 1969, S-0891-0010-33 Records of Secretary-General U Thant - Press releases, UNA NYC. 147 "The Deteriorating Environment," in New York Times, 25 June 1969, S-0885-0007, U Thant Speeches, UNA NYC. 148 "Sweden proposes Pollution Pacts," in New York Times, 11 March 1970. S0885-05-0007, U Thant Speeches, UNA NYC. 149 David Bird, "World Panel Urged to Fight Environment Threat," in New York Times, 14 March 1970, S-0885-05-0007, U Thant Speeches, UNA NYC. 150 U Thant, "Statement by the Secretary General at the Preparation committee on the Human Environment," 10 March 1970, S-0885-05-0006, U Thant fonds, UNA NYC. 151 Ibid., 1. 152 Ibid., 2.

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two-year delay between the commencement preparatory meetings and the conference itself, Thant suggested an "action-oriented manner" of preparation to integrate "rapid changes" and developments in the interim.153 Press reviews and this visionary call for environmental diplomacy reflect the drive for international cooperation just at the moment of time in which American politicians felt they had conquered their own national environmental conscience. On 1 January 1970, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) into law. In his State of the Union address on 22 January, President Nixon announced programs to help "restore nature" and improve the quality of water and air as part of the implementation of NEPA.154 Nixon's Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality of 10 February 1970,155 announced the creation of an environmental agency to combat environmental devastation, yet the EPA, one of the first agencies of its kind, was not established until 2 December 1970, roughly ten months after his speech. Nixon's smart strategic maneuver to establish himself as a draft horse of the environmental movement has led to the view that the United States was not only witnessing the birth of environmental diplomacy under the Nixon presidency, but also pressing ahead with environmental concerns on an international level.156 It is due to this self-given image, that scholarly literature tends to give a somehow glorified account of Richard Nixon's and Russell Train's efforts and accomplishments, which marginalizes protagonists from countries other than the United States and particularly the role of the United Nations in shaping international environmental diplomacy. From this American point of view, the United States took the lead, for example, with its proposals of November 1969 for NATO's North Atlantic Council to create the Committee on

153 Ibid., 5. 154 Richard

Nixon,

State

of

the

Union

Address,

22

January

1970,

http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3889, accessed 6/27/2012. 155 Nixon, Richard, Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality. 156 J. Brooks Flippen, "Richard Nixon, Russell Train, and the Birth of Modern American Environmental Diplomacy," in Diplomatic History 32, no. 4 (September 2008): 638.

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the Challenges of Modern Society.157 But contrary to certain Americans' self-perception as the leaders of global environmentalism, historian Jacob Darwin Hamblin has drawn attention to European resistance to American proposals to use NATO as an instrument of international environmental action.158 Beyond this critique of Nixon's resistance to tailoring his environmental policy to the requirements of international diplomacy as determined by other, mainly European countries, criticism also emerged domestically, leading to complaints to Secretary-General U Thant in 1970. A letter by the Sierra Club of 20 July 20 1972, for example, requested an immediate halt to the use of weather modification as a war weapon in Southeast Asia, in reference to the US government's violation of the principles of the declaration of the United Nations on the Human Environment.159 In another letter to Thant, US Senator Alan Cranston encouraged the flow of environmental knowledge among nation-states in proposing the creation of international environmental volunteers corps sponsored by the United Nations for the purposes of dealing with pollution.160 Cranston's suggestions, as well as a letter by Professor Richard Gardner to U Thant, exemplify the awareness among Americans of the importance of international frameworks in restricting environmental degradation. In his letter, Gardner explicitly positioned himself as being opposed to Nixon's ambitions for NATO and in favor of the United Nations program.161 After the Stockholm conference, the United States pursued its economic interests and environmental exceptionalism.162 Its failure to implement

157 Jacob Darwin Hamblin, "Environmentalism for the Atlantic Alliance: NATO's Experiment with the 'Challenges of Modern Society'," in Environmental History 15 (January 2010): 55. 158 Ibid., 61 and 71. 159 Raymond J. Sherwin, [Letter to President Nixon], 20 July 1972, S-0971-000501, Kurt Waldheim fonds, UNA NYC. 160 Alan Cranston, "The Environmental Corps," [Letter to U Thant], 11 March 1970: 5, S-0885-05-0006, U Thant Speeches, UNA NYC. 161 Richard Gardner, "New Tasks for the United Nations – the Environment, Population, Space and Seabeds," 4 March 1970: 3, S-0885-05-0007, U Thant Speeches, UNA NYC. 162 Flippen, "Richard Nixon," 618.

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domestic environmental law was no less staggering. During a time of recession, the administration tended to support the perspective of business in all jobs-versus-the-environment questions.163 It has been argued that the Nixon administration's halfhearted attempt at environmental enforcement was reflected by an environmental policy that needed to be integrated across federal agencies to be effective but was in fact met instead with a "continual lack of support" across all federal agencies.164 Indeed, many American politicians were not willing to question the ideology of abundance.165 The battle for hegemony over environmental policy between the United States and the United Nations was but one aspect of growing tensions between the two institutions. Simultaneously, a major turn in the history of the United Nations took place.166 By the 1970s, the United Nations had matured as an institution and become increasingly autonomous from its founding member states. Additionally, UN Secretary-Generals criticized the Nixon administration for its handling of the war in Vietnam. In contrast, Nixon's antiUN feelings are an open secret.167 In November 1970, he and his minister of foreign affairs, Henry Kissinger, tried to position their own choice of candidate as director of the UN Development Program in order to guarantee pro-American decisions.168 When Kurt Waldheim was elected the new Secretary-General in 1972, this already strained relationship between the US President and the United Nations deteriorated further. Waldheim pub-

163 Joel A. Mintz, Enforcement at the EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995): 26. 164 Rosemary O'Leary, Environmental Change: Federal Courts and the EPA (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993): 8. 165 Donald Worster, "Environmentalism Goes Global," in Diplomatic History 32, no. 4 (September 2008): 641. 166 Proposed as the Leagues of Nations by Franklin Roosevelt to keep the world from Nazi terror, the United States founded the organization and had always had a significant role in all decisions.  (GZDUG&.HHIHU7KH1L[RQ$GPLQLVWUDWLRQDQGWKH8QLWHG1DWLRQV‫ޖ‬,W VD  'DPQHG 'HEDWLQJ 6RFLHW\‫  ޖ‬KWWSZZZGLSORPDWLHJRXYIUIU,0*SGI ONU_edward_keefer.pdf, accessed 6/21/2012. 168 Ibid., 8.

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licly disapproved the US bombing of Vietnam,169 and Nixon accused Waldheim of "double standards" and of simply repeating North Vietnamese propaganda.170 Additionally, Waldheim expressed his conviction that the United Nations had become independent of the expectations of its founding nation. In response to the United Nations' negative comments on American foreign policy, Waldheim stressed the United Nations' positive accomplishments in all of his speeches between January and June 1972, to restore American confidence in the United Nations. In these announcements, he used the handling of environmental issues and the Stockholm conference as exemplary example for the positive work the UN was doing.171 He branded the Stockholm conference the appropriate instrument of a new era of international collaboration,172 and the creation of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) the appropriate response to international calls for a global environmental agency.173 1970s Environmental Fairs While the US economy suffered a downturn, the Japanese economy flourished towards the end of the 1960s. During the next two decades, Japan established itself as an actor in the global economy, with a distinct interest to enter the American market.174 In a time of recession, this growing com-

169 Milton Viorst, "Kurt Waldheim: Embattled Peacemaker," in Saturday Review, 23 September 1972, 41, S-0985-0001-04, Kurt Waldheim fonds, UNA NYC. 170 Keefer, The Nixon Administration, 15. 171 Kurt Waldheim, "The Future of Communications in the Cause of Peace," [Transcript of speech at Columbia University], 28 March 1972, 1, S-09850001-04, Kurt Waldheim fonds, UNA NYC. 172 Kurt Waldheim, "Towards a New Alliance," 7 July 1972: 3, S-0985-0001-06, Kurt Waldheim fonds, UNA NYC. 173 Reports and Action Recommendations Culminating Two-Year Effort Made Public at UN Headquarters, March 15, 1972, S-0913-16-0001, Waldheim fonds, UNA NYC. 174 Nakanishi Hiroshi, "Japanese Relations with the United States," in Ezra F. Vogel, Yuan Ming, and Tanaka Akihiko (eds.), The Golden Age of the U.S.

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petition with Japan as well as the still unresolved question over the return of the Okinawa and Japan's ambitions to become military independent from the US shattered U.S.-Japanese relations.175 Despite all of which, Japan continued its conquest of western markets. In this regard, the two international exhibitions hosted by Japan in 1970 and 1976 should not only be considered crucial for the way in which they introduced environmental topics, but also as smart ways of penetrating the international economy and signs of an astute recognition of future market opportunities. Both the Osaka Exposition of 1970 and the Tokyo Environmental World Exhibition of 1976 sought to promote the harmonization of industrialization, progress, modern lifestyle, and sustainability, but also create a platform for international trade founded upon new sustainable technologies. The Osaka World Fair was held from 15 March to 13 September 1970. The exposition's concept attempted to modify the ideology of a universal exposition as a showcase for products and national developments in order to present cultural achievements in transnational comparison.176 Therefore, it picked up the prevalent topics of sustainability and transnational justice with its theme "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In the words of exposition president Kenzo Tange, the fair attempted to inspire cultural exchange between the nations.177 A large art exhibition presented artifacts that conveyed the value of cultural relations between Europe and Asia as lying in the potential for rapprochement between the East and the West that had existed since the dawn of civilization. Five sub-themes were dedicated to

China-Japan Triangle 1972–1989 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002): 164. 175 Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997): 218; Curtis, "U.S. Relations with Japan," 142; Roger Bucklet, US-Japan Alliance Diplomacy 1945-1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press 1992): 115. 176 http://www.expo2000.de/expo2000/geschichte/detail.php?wa_id=18&lang=2& s_typ=22, accessed 5/21/2012. 177 Kenzo Tange, "The Basic Concept of Expo '70," in Editorial Committee of the Second Architectural Convention of Japan (ed.), Structure, Space, Mankind: Expo '70. A photographic interpreter (Osaka, 1970): 2.

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the general shifts that took place as modern societies emerged.178 But even more importantly, the fair intended to bring together political, economic, and scientific perspectives in order to create a collaborative platform for discussing the role of technology and modern developments in improving the quality of life for all of humankind. Alongside the exposition, a scientific congress on the topic of "Environmental Disruption" was held in March, organized by the International Social Science Council.179 Like the exposition, this congress looked at the possibility of reconciling technology, science, and the desire to create a better, future-oriented way of living. Though many of the nation-state pavilions, the United Nations pavilion, and the pavilions of domestic companies made references to related environmental themes and promised a better use of nature, none of the exhibits presented any clearly formulated methods for fighting the destruction and devastation of the environment.180 Nor did these presentations go into much depth on such themes but tended instead simply to repeat familiar slogans. Washington State, for example, hosted a pavilion to encourage trade with Asia as well as to stimulate tourism.181 The environmental exposition of Osaka did not truly accomplish its original intentions. It did, however, inspire further international exhibitions that soon copied the idea of employing green slogans, such as the Spokane exposition of 1974 and the Tokyo World Environment Exposition of 1976. Moreover, the fairs resonated with Japanese foreign policy, as the nation not only made swift progress in global markets, but also looked like taking a leading role in international environmental diplomacy. In 1973, Japan offered to host the next

178 Expo Museum of Fine Arts (I) The Dawn Of Creation, (II) The Contact Between East and West, (III) Sacred Arts, (IV) The March of Freedom, (V) Contemporary Trends, Japan Association for the 1970 World exposition, 1970. 179 Shigeto Tsuru (ed.), Environmental disruption-a challenge to social scientists (Tokyo: International Social Science Council, 1970). 180 Motoi Nakamura and Tsutomu Kameda (eds.), Expo '70 Osaka (Tokyo: Shinjudo Co. Publishers, 1970). 181 W.a., Report to the 1969 Legislature from the Washington State World Fair Commission, Nov 20, 1968: 3.

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United Nations conference on the Human Environment,182 an offer with obvious self-interest attached, as doing so would also draw global attention to Japanese technological (and economic) progress. And yet, economic tensions aside, the United States of America actually served as a role model for Japanese environmentalists. In 1973, a Japanese delegation visited the United Nations and a letter to the Secretary-General expressed a wish for international cooperation and the transfer of technological knowledge, making specific reference to learning from America as to how to deal with the implementation of environmental laws.183 The visit was followed by the suggestion for a World Environment Exhibition held in Tokyo, then realized in 1976. The theme, "Toward a Pollution-Free Society," served as the slogan of the exhibition, which was held at the same time as the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat '76, in Vancouver. The board of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry chaired and partly funded the exposition, pursuing a policy of merging technological, scientific and scholarly discussions similar to that pursued at the 1970 Osaka fair. Once again, alongside the Tokyo World Environmental Exposition, an International Environmental Symposium was held, organized and funded by the Japanese Economic Journal.184 The core intentions behind the Tokyo exhibition, including that of creating a national consensus on environmental topics with a view to establishing a welfare state, were outlined in a panel discussion among members of the organization committee.185 One member of the committee contemplated an environment-based fair that combined "information-exchange or social enlightening nature" with the commercial promotion of industrial machinery.186 Certainly, the exhibition tried to offer a new understanding of industry and

182 Takeo Miki, "Letter to Kurt Waldheim," 15 February 1973, S-0971-0004-14, Kurt Waldheim fonds, UNA NYC. 183 Kenkichi Toshima, "Letter to Kurt Waldheim," 19 June 1973, S-0971-000502, Kurt Waldheim fonds, UNA NY. 184 Testu Kishimoto, in w.a., The 1976 World Environmental Exposition– Translated Manuscript From The Productivity Newspaper, 26 May 1976: 1, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2 File 6. 185 Ibid., 1. 186 Shinya Izumi, in "The 1976 World Environmental Exposition," 3.

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promote green businesses, displaying the "newest pollution-abatement equipment and technological information," in order to make the "attitude of the industrial sector toward the environmental issues […] public."187 The Tokyo World Environmental Exposition of 1976 also hosted the EPA's Our Only World exhibition. It is interesting that this photographic exhibition was integrated into the exposition's scientific section rather than displayed in the US national section, or even the United Nations' booth. In a letter, the US Executive Secretary of the US-Japan Environmental Agreement assured Documerica director Gifford Hampshire that the Our Only World exhibition was "well received,"188 and a telegram informed him that the Japanese Crown Princess was "especially interested" in seeing the Documerica photo show.189 At this moment of time, the Documerica show was not anymore the only visual attempt at an international statement of commitment to environmental protection. A concept paper for the United Nations' booth at the World Environment Exposition mentioned a movie screening and photo exhibition that were concurrently presented in Vancouver.190 It refers to an international photo-competition entitled "A Better Way To Live," organized by the French photo association FIAP (Fédération International de l'Art Photographique).191 When preparatory work for the booth commenced, further visuals were requested from the UN Public Information Bureau, including a collection of environmental posters, with the headline "The Daily World,"192 and UNEP was reminded to mail the winning photo-

187 W.a., Description of the Exhibition, in "The 1976 World Environmental Exposition," 11. 188 Kirk Maconaughey, "Letter to Gifford Hampshire," 6 July 2, 1976, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2 File 6. 189 Maconaughey, "Telegram to Gifford Hampshire," w.d, NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2 File 6. 190 W.a., "UN Booth Display Concept," 7, in Items in Secretary Generals Statement (Kurt Waldheim), http://archives-trim.un.org/webdrawer/rec/4230 76/view/Items-in-Secretary-Generals%20Statements, accessed 5/20/2012. 191 NARA PD, RG 412, E-412-M, Box 2 File 7. 192 "UN Booth Display Concept," 8.

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graphs of the Habitat Photo Exhibition.193 Additionally, visual mediation was meant to accompany the Stockholm conference, including in the form of a film on the environment to accompany the meeting, an international film competition and a photo exhibit, as well as an illustrated press kit.194 Like the distribution of movies about the European Union under the Marshall plan, by 1967, the United Nations was discussing the benefit of visuals and the establishment of its own film and photo division.195 However, there are no documents to be found at the United Nations' Archive concerning the realization of these plans for visual communications. When displayed at the Tokyo exhibition, Our Only World served as a transnational environmental vision of American origin, but its vision could hardly cover the tumultuous economic conflicts of different nation states. In the context of the Tokyo exhibition, Our Only World came across as the product of a self-confident advocate on environmental matters. But merely repeating popular headlines did not deliver a forward looking, progressive role model. Its outlook was also limited solely to images of America and a national American perception of the world. The exhibition was pathbreaking in seeking to increase environmental awareness in an appealing form that was easy accessible, educational, and entertaining. The show, however, failed to develop a pro-active, innovative agenda of American environmentalism, and it did not even come close to creating a global vision. Instead, Our Only World as a truly American vision reflects the gap between a sense of entitlement and the reality of American foreign and domestic policies, which were formulated with a view to claiming an ideological leadership position that in fact did not exist.

193 Ibid., 10. 194 Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, New York, 13-24 September 1971: 62, S-0885-05-0006, AG005, U Thant fonds, UNA NYC. 195 Report Information Activities of the United Nations, 17 January 1967: 13 and 16, S-0855-0008-03 AG-00, U Thant fonds, UNA NYC.

Conclusions

Since the 1860s, images that I have been identified as photographs of environmental phenomena have accompanied scientific quests for knowledge in connection with geology, climatology, soil science and soil conservation. As outlined in the preceding chapters, this imagery has not only evolved with the emergence of a visual episteme, but also guided manifold modes of scientific insight. Whereas scientists often consider illustrations the cherry on the cake––insofar as they condense and sum up a scientific article's thesis in a telling figure––in art history, the term tends to carry a pejorative meaning. Thus, in art history, "illustration" tends to imply the repetition of something already known, a non-creative decoration that marks the opposite of a genuinely artistic composition. This study has highlighted different ways of employing photographs as scientific "illustrations" with a view to providing a more differentiated account of "illustrative" description as the interdependence of photography and science. The three chapters of the book offer insights into image-led debates conducted between 1860 and the 1970s in scientific publications that appeared under the auspices of such sections of the US American administration, which were engaged in topographically surveying the land, in its conservation and, later on, in the prevention of environmental pollution. The chapters illuminate the functions of photography in such techno-scientific contexts and verify the image's growing role in the development of an environmental conscience. Photographs of environmental phenomena supplemented the gathering of data, helped to synthesize and mediate findings, and, furthermore, provided context and support as concerns the empirical evaluation of the land.

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As technical images that were conditioned by and grew out of scientific discussions, photographs of environmental phenomena can and should be distinguished from the categories of landscape or nature photography, or, indeed, of photographic Eco-Images.1 These photographs were envisioned as technological and scientific explorations of space––rather than images that posed aesthetic questions. They were embedded in specific topographic, geologic or climatic considerations and served as carriers of information. As can be demonstrated in connection with the example of Documerica, over the course of time, the quality of photographs used in public relations grew steadily––in contrast to those used as scientific evidence. Photographs of environmental phenomena were on the one hand a means of internal communication in the sciences but, on the other, a means of guaranteeing high public visibility. The growing curiosity surrounding environmental visual cultures has of late been expressed using turns of phrase such as "eco-images," "ecophotographs," "eco-art," or "environmental photography." The term environmental photography in this effect may best be understood as an overarching, though largely nonbinding and therefore open concept. One may consider the term as indicating certain thematic content or subject matter, to be subsumed under an art historical "genre," which—as the rather broad art historical use of the term suggests—needs to be subdivided into further, more accurate subunits. The tradition of landscape photography, on the contrary, is utterly distinct from photographs that came into being during the course of the preservation movement at the turn of the twentieth century, or from imagery originating in techno-scientific contexts like the images of land management in the 1920s, or indeed from images connected to the environmental movement of the 1960s, which have an altogether different purpose. The term photographs of environmental phenomena distinguishes between imagery that emerged in the context of techno-scientific discourse and that which had distinctly artistic origins.2 As a counterpart to photographs of environmental phenomena, "Ecoimages" have been identified as "images informed by a decisive environmental agenda" and are to be understood in terms of their "purposeful, non-

1

Gisela Parak, "Introduction," in Ibid. (ed.), Eco-Images. Historical Views and Political Strategies (Munich, Rachel Carson Center perspective series, 2013): 5.

2

See introduction of this book, 10.

CONCLUSIONS | 219

verbal communicative function."3 Examples of such "Eco-images" dating back to the 1960s or 70s are for example to be found in the the Sierra Club exhibition book series. This definition moreover implies an attitude that goes beyond images per se, an attitude comparable to political activism, to an advocacy for the environmental cause in images, images capable of conveying associated messages and intentions. The term introduced the criterion of "moral integrity" and therefore is seperate from the term "ecological citizenship." Finis Dunaway has reminded us of the importance of this "ecological citizenship" in his account of the photographic approaches during the 1970s, relating to the strain of environmentalism found in movements such as the New Topographics. However, although these manifold visual interventions became entangled with the environmental conscience of the 1970s, it would be wrong to perceive them as being marked by a definite environmental intention: "[…] the work of [Robert] Adams and other photographers of the [New Topographics] exhibit must be understood as part of a larger field of environmental, intellectual, and political discourse that sought to create new forms of ecological citizenship."4 1970s visual culture was shaped by the environmental movement, in addition to architectural debates and considerations highlighted in the debate on "limits to growth." But the photographic orientation of New Topographics cannot be equated with environmentalism. Photographers of the 1970s were linked to these intellectual discourses, but they did not necessarily represent, or actively further this thinking. Considered as a neutral medium capable of accurately conveying information, extensive use was made of photography in the visualization of environmental phenomena in the case studies from US-American history that I have presented. Photographic images of environmental phenomena were used with a view to influencing political decision-making processes and ideologically instrumentalized in debates concerning soil and landscape conservation, as well as those concerning emerging approaches to environmental protection. Technical pictures were employed as "illustrations" in

3

Gisela Parak, "Introduction," in Ibid. (ed.), Eco-Images, 5.

4

Finis Dunaway, "Beyond Wilderness. Robert Adams, New Topographics, and the aesthetics of ecological citizenship," in Greg Foster-Rice and John Rohrbach (eds.), Reframing the New Topographics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010): 14.

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numerous different ways. As pictorial evidence, they supplemented, conveyed, and assisted with processes of deduction involved in developing scientific theses and legitimized political visions and rhetoric in public relations. As technical aids, photographs served to reproduce observations and mediatize political programs. While in the nineteenth century, the use of the image in communication was largely limited to the context of expert discourse (and specifically as part of a process of arriving at an understanding among scientists), the pictoralization and popularization of science opened debates up for the public long before the digital revolution. By the end of the nineteenth century, the application of photographic images of environmental phenomena had caused a significant shift, dislodging drawing from being the preferred medium of communication among the scientific elite. In the twentieth century, the photographic image became a ubiquitous means of communication––and of persuasion. It took a lead role in the promotion of certain interests through publicity and the rhetorical legitimation thereof. This book presented the history of how photographic images of the environment became so effective in this way, and thus slowly brought about a major change in the visual culture of science. The American government not only recognized photographic images of environmental phenomena as a medium capable of representing and aiding the analysis of economic and agropolitical circumstances, but also recognized their potential as a political instrument in the central areas of science and economy—and above all in agro-industry and the emerging debate concerning environmental protection. At the same time, photographs were of assistance in scientific investigation and could be used as supporting evidence in showing that the promise of administrative authorities to provide a solution to social problems could be fulfilled. They could also be used in education and to raise awareness, as part of a wide-ranging exchange between science and the public. Uwe Pörksen's study Weltmarkt der Bilder: Eine Philosophie der Visiotype suggested a trend in which visual material originating in the context of scientific discourse was increasingly used for the purposes of public relations, with the effect of establishing so-called "visiotypes," that is, stereotypes in the form of "global visual idols"5—empty, visual expressions

5

Uwe Pörksen, Weltmarkt der Bilder: Eine Philosophie der Visiotype (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1997).

CONCLUSIONS | 221

that do not carry any specific information or even attempt to do so. With reference to the 1990s, during which the visual turn took place, Beyer and Lohoff have alluded to these "spectacularly staged global visiotypes" as unspecific and ambivalent visual symbols that are divorced from any kind of scientific content or observation.6 In contrast to which, the aforementioned visual cultures within science and ecology during a period beginning in the 1860s and extending to the 1970s cannot be characterized in terms of such visiotypes. American photographic images of environmental phenomena were used in various ways—and often ways that made use of their rhetorical ambivalence—within the broad framework of the government's program. But they were most often used as part of specific scholarly inquiries into the application of technology to bring about development, and into various areas of agro-industrial production, as well as ecology. Indeed, it was as a result of these science-related programs that photographic images of environmental phenomena were recognized as being eminently suited for use in publicity, in what constituted a second level of the images' dissemination. It was not the intention for each photograph to serve as a visual cliché in the context of the global visual culture of the mass media but, on the contrary, as a contribution to the pursuit of scientific and economic progress. Nonetheless, the aforementioned applications of photographic images of environmental phenomena bring the contradictions inherent in various uses of "epistemic evidence" sharply into focus. In the previous three case studies, the technological belief in pictorial evidence was strong enough to support the perception of photography as a carrier of a transnational vision. Thus, photography was considered capable of providing guidance in establishing an approach to environment that would conserve resources and of acting as an agent in international environmental diplomacy aimed at changing the world for the better. In respect of which, the critical contextualization of the exhibition project Our Only World in the third chapter constitutes a continuation of the analysis of ideologically motivated exhibitions, in which curators discovered the medium of photography in the twentieth century as a valuable tool for the com-

6

Beyer and Lohoff, "Bildhandeln: Eine Einführung," 11.

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munication of political statements and positions.7 It was in this manner that an honest belief in a "good thing" driven by a collective penetrated the exhibition concept of Our Only World and led to the sustained, if somewhat naive, confidence of those involved in their ability to effect an ecological turn before the public's very eyes. Given the immense pressure that the considerable expectations of Documerica exercised upon the project, it is hardly surprising that the forwardlooking EPA department never fulfilled its goals. And yet: Documerica did provide a service, as significant then as it is unrecognized now, in terms of preparing the way for green media strategies, exhibition projects and world fairs through its systematic creation and pursuit of a global and unique alliance between photography and politics—at least for a period of six years. Today, exhibition projects use various exhibits drawn from a wide range of areas of interest and disciplines to illustrate aspects of the constantly shifting dichotomy of man and nature, and, with the support of pictorial "evidence," craft a narrative of the continuous hybridization of the world.8 The preceding study illuminated these historical projects in the light of the background against which they came into being and the methods used to realize them, at the same time as diagnosing the reasons for their ultimate failure to fulfill expectations.

7

Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to the Family of Man, 1928–55 (Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2008).

8

Among numerous photography and art exhibitions of the past six years, exhibition concepts in the areas of cultural history and the history of technology also feature, such as the cooperation between the Rachel Carson Center, the Deutsches Museum in Munich and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin for the exhibition planned for 2015 on the anthropocene. For the findings of a preliminary workshop on the exhibition, see Helmuth Trischler (ed.), Anthropocene: Exploring the Future of the Age of Humans, a special issue of Perspectives

(3/2013), http://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/download

/research_and_projects/exhibitions/120523_anthropocene_desc.pdf,

accessed

08/09/2013. For other concepts, Sabine Himmelsbach and B. Dziembowski (eds.), Landschaft 2.0 (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2009), and Johannes Ebert and Andrea Zell (eds.), Klima Kunst Kultur (Göttingen: Steidl, 2014).

CONCLUSIONS | 223

As has been shown, the alliance between politics and photography in the United States developed in the wake of the interplay between science and illustration took place over many years. In the long term, photography superseded the medium of drawing as a means of communicating science. Nineteenth-century naturalists may have dreamt of new pictorial—that is, photographic—evidence, and invested their hopes in the ability of the photographic image to prove scientific theses. But in fact, photography only succeeded in providing a service to science, in terms of legitimating and verifying the conclusions of those who utilized it, for a period equivalent to the blink of an eye, and was soon supplanted by the introduction of new electrical optics that created computer-generated images. As opposed to the scientific evidence that had been hoped for, the ambivalence of the pictorial statement made using photography opened the door for pictorial strategies of persuasion. In the face of the obvious political exploitation of the medium by a succession of protagonists, the belief in photographic evidence seemed both naive and unworldly. And in spite of a raft of visual theories promising to take apart the photographic construction of reality before one's very eyes, the persuasive power of photographic images of environmental phenomena still divides and even polarizes the public today, just as the photographs of Yellowstone National Park did Members of Congress in the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, the campaigns of environmental organizations and companies still draw on the power of photographic images to convince and on their emotional impact, independent of the political or economic standpoints and interests that may once have informed the creation of such images. In the wake of the pictorialization of the sciences and the supporting role of the image in science communications, one outcome of the preceding study is to prove that photographic images of environmental phenomena, as technical images, played a decisive role within the mechanisms of the state and the US government, as well as within the authorities responsible for soil science, agriculture, and environmental protection. Photographic images of the environment supported the gathering of expertise and knowledge in many different ways and played a key role in the process of communicating and legitimating knowledge, as well as the empirical evaluation and charting of land and natural resources. Besides their incorporation into the public relations of politicians and government bodies, the photographic projects discussed struck out in new directions of their own accord, which

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led to success in terms of autonomous research. This research presented new aspects of soil and landscape conservation, as well as emergent environmental protection—and reinforced them too. The ideological outlook of the commissioning politician was such that he recognized in photography a historic, democratic dimension and made use of it in state programs. However, it was precisely this that prepared the way for the autonomous characteristics of technical images and led to their positioning and established role within extensive photographic programs, ranging from those initiated in the SES/SCS and RA/FSA to the EPA. As the commentaries of Rexford Tugwell and Roy Stryker show, their contemporaries recognized the potential of photographic archives as cultural storehouses for the preservation of records of contemporary developments that could inform the judgments of future generations. This was a function that the democratic state increasingly perceived as a duty that had to be fulfilled for the benefit of current and future citizens. Besides the persuasive instrumentalization of single photographs, photographic images of environmental phenomena were considered a means of collecting empirical data that would guide the state in making decisions based on scientific evidence. Thus the commissioning of photographic images of environmental phenomena became an active moment in the formation of political decision-making processes—a far-reaching consideration that remains valid even if the images' influence could never have had any practical consequences, as indeed was the case with regard to Documerica. In accordance with the historic intention behind state photographic programs, the photograph was relied upon to provide, in the name of transparency and legitimacy, evidence of the actions of the state and associated decision-making processes. As concerns the understanding of photography that developed continuously under the Historical Section and, thereafter, in the context of Documerica, the latter's ultimate failure in the 1970s remained irrelevant, even if, looking back, it is regrettable that the program never realized its full potential. The preceding study has revealed synergies and concrete relations between the respective photographic departments and the government authorities concerned with discourses of soil science, agriculture and environment during three distinct periods, thus making apparent the presence of continuous lines of development over many years. A primary assessment of arrangements made for associated photographic programs has been provided

CONCLUSIONS | 225

for two of those three periods—that is, both the period during which New Deal soil science emerged and the one during which the EPA's intentions concerning environmental protection formed. Future re-search will have to deal with the inaccessibility of the archive materials, since the correspondence between the EPA and the relevant photographers is not to be found at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland but in the EPA's seven regional archives, where there are no externally accessible finding aids available. Beyond the cognitive application of photography as a vehicle of knowledge production, photographic images of environmental phenomenon, whether used as public relations material or in state propaganda, provided a strong impulse for political discussion. This in turn prompted the proactive gathering of environment-related knowledge, the results of which can be seen in examples provided by picture agents and photography exhibitions. And it was these efforts that provided the educational and political impetus for state programs. All such programs served most of all the field of environmental education, which was founded in close association with visual communications under the aegis of a society in which images played an ever-greater role. As can be seen in the historical case studies, the capacity for visual communication in this society stemmed from and was founded upon the basis of the state photographic programs that accompanied and supported a politics of modern environmental protection.

Abbreviations

ass.: Assignment DOI: Department of Interior E: Entry EPA: Environmental Protection Agency FDR: Franklin Delano Roosevelt FDR LIB HP: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library Hyde Park, New York FSA: Farm Security Administration GPO: United States Government Printing Office LOC MRR: Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room LOC P&P: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Section NARA PD: National Archives, College Park, Maryland Photo Division NARA TR: National Archives, College Park, Maryland, Textual Records RA: Resettlement Administration RG: Record Group RSP: Roy Stryker Papers RTP: Rexford Tugwell Papers SCS: Soil Conservation Service SES: Soil Erosion Service UNA NYC: United Nations Archive New York City USDA: United States Department of Agriculture

Archival Research and Literature

Archives Anthropological Archive, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC Cullman Library Rare Books, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC Franklin Delano Roosevelt Archives, Hyde Park, NY Asa Gray Papers, Harvard University Herbaria, Botany Library Archives, Photographs and Illustrations, Cambridge MA Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room, Washington DC Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs, Washington DC National Archives, College Park, Maryland Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington DC United Nations Archive, New York City Magazines Fortune, issues 1960 to 1975 Landscape—Human Geography of the Southwest, issues No.1 1960 to 1970 Life, issues 1960 to 1975 National Geographic, issues 1960 to 1975 Soil Conservation, issues 1935 to 1940 Environment, issues 1968 to 1972

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LITERATURE | 231

Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and Politics. The rise and decline of the Farm Security Administration (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1968) Thomas Barnes, "Framing Postwar Litter: The Photojournalism of Fenno Jacobs and Keep America Beautiful's Public Service Announcements," in Photography & Culture Volume 6—Issue 2 July 2013: 175–192 Roland Barthes, Die Helle Kammer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2012) Richard A. Bartlett, Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1985) Rebecca Bedell, The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825–1875 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970) Hugh H. Bennett, The Soils and Agriculture of the Southern States (New York: Macmillan Co., 1921) Hugh H. Bennett and W. R. Chapline, Soil Erosion a National Menace (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1928) Hugh H. Bennett and W.C. Lowdermilk, Soils and Men, 1938 Agricultural Yearbook: General Aspects of the Soil-Erosion Problem (Washington DC: GPO, 1938) Hugh H. Bennett, Soil Conservation (New York, London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1939) Hugh H. Bennett, Soils and Security (Washington DC: GPO, 1941) Hugh H. Bennett and William Clayton Pryor, This Land We Defend (New York, Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1942) Andreas Beyer and Markus Lohoff (eds.), Bild und Erkenntnis. Formen und Funktionen des Bildes in Wissenschaft und Technik (München and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005) Alan C. Braddock (eds.), A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009) H.W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865–1900 (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2010), Kindle edition Horst Bredekamp, Gabriele Werner, and Angela Fischel (eds.), Bildwelten des Wissens: Instrumente des Sehens (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004) Horst Bredekamp, Darwins Korallen: Die frühen Evolutionsdiagramme und die Tradition der Naturgeschichte (Wagenbach: Berlin, 2005)

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Horst Bredekamp, Birgit Schneider, and Vera Dünkel (eds.), Das Technische Bild: Kompendium zu einer Stilgeschichte wissenschaftlicher Bilder (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008) Horst Bredekamp, Galilei der Künstler: Der Mond. Die Sonne. Die Hand (Oldenburg: Akademieverlag, 2009) Patricia Broder, The American West: the modern vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984) Franziska Brons, "Das Versprechen der Retina: Zur Mikrofotografie Robert Kochs," in Bildwelten des Wissens: Kunsthistorisches Jahrbuch für Bildkritik 2, no. 2. (2004) Matthew Brower, Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American Photography (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man's Future: An Inquiry Concerning the Condition of Man During The Years That Lie Ahead (New York: Viking Press, 1954) Tom Brown, Oil on Ice (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1971) William Cullen Bryant (ed.), Picturesque America, or, The Land We Live In: A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, Forests, Water-falls, Shores, Canons, Valleys, Cities, and Other Picturesque Features of our Country (New York: D. Appleton, 1872) Michael A. Bryson, Vision of the Land: Science, Literature, and the American Environment from the Era of Exploration to the Age of Ecology (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002) Roger Bucklet, US-Japan Alliance Diplomacy 1945-1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992) Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995) William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998) Hubert Burda and Christa Maar (eds.), Iconic Turn: Die neue Macht der Bilder (Köln: DuMont, 2004) Werner Busch (ed.), Landschaftsmalerei (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 1997) Van M. Cagle, Reconstructing Pop / Subculture. Art, Rock, and Andy Warhol (London: Sage Publications, 1995) Thomas Carskadon and George Soule, USA in New Dimensions. The Measure and Promise of America's Resources (New York: Macmillan, 1957)

LITERATURE | 233

James G. Cassidy, Ferdinand V. Hayden: Entrepreneur of Science (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000) Paul Coates, The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy. Technology, Conservation and the Frontier (London / Toronto: Associated University Press, 1991) Barry Commoner, Science & Survival (New York: The Viking Press, 1967) Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle. Nature, Man & Technology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971) Denis Cosgrove, "Contested Global Visions: One-World, Whole-Earth, and the Apollo Space Photographs," in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 84(2), 1994: 270-294 Denis Cosgrove, Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) Denis Cosgrove, Geography & Vision. Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008) Robert J. Cox (ed.), Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Pubn Inc, 2006) Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1990) Lawrence Culver, Christof Mauch, and Katie Ritson (eds.), Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: Encounters and Legacies (Munich: Perspectives, 7/2012) Thomas Cyrus, Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985) Thomas Cyrus, Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky Mountains (Washington: GPO, 1891) Laurie Dahlberg, Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of Avoiding Errors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) Pete Daniel, Merry Foresta, Maren Stange, and Sally Stein (eds.), Official Images: New Deal Photography (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987) William Culp Darrah, Powell of the Colorado (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951) William C. Darrah, Stereo Views: A History of Stereographs in America and Their Collection (Gettysburg, PA: Times and News Publ., 1964)

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John Davis, The Landscape of Belief: Encoutering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) Doris Ostrander Dawdy, George Montague Wheeler. The Man and the Myth (Athens: Swallow Press / Ohio University Press, 1993) Kevin Michael DeLuca and Anne Teresa Demo, "Imaging Nature: Watkins, Yosemite, and the Birth of Environmentalism," in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 17, No. 3, September 2000 Kevin Michael DeLuca, Image Politics. The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (New York: Routledge, 2009) Thomas R. Detwyler, Man's Impact on Environment (New York: McGrawHill Book Company, 1971) Thomas R. Detwyler and Melvin G. Marcus et al., Urbanization and Environment. The Physical Geography of the City (Belmont CA: Duxbury Press, 1972) Henry W. Dill, Worldwide Use of Air-Photos in Agriculture (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1967) Robert Disch (ed.), The Ecological Conscience (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970) Julie Doyle, "Seeing the Climate? The Problematic Status of Visual Evidence in Climate Change Campaigning," in Sidney Dobrin and Sean Morey (eds), Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, and Nature (New York: Albany State University of New York Press, 2009): 279-298 Julie Doyle, Mediating Climate Change (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2011) Robert L. Dorman, A Word for Nature: Four Pioneering Environmental Advocates, 1845–1913 (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 1998) René Dubos, Man adapting (New Haven: Praeger, 1968) René Dubos, Man, medicine, and the environment (New York: Praeger, 1968) René Dubos, Reason Awake. Science for Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) Finis Dunaway, Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)

LITERATURE | 235

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Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, Erez Manely, and Daniel Sargent (eds.), The Shock of the Global. The 1970s in Perspective (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2010) Susan L. Flader, "A Biographical Study of Aldo Leopold: Thinking like a Mountain," in Forest History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Apr., 1973) Paula R. Fleming, Native American Photography at the Smithsonian: The Shindler Catalogue (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2003) J. Brooks Flippen, Conservative Conservationist. Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006) J. Brooks Flippen, "Richard Nixon, Russell Train, and the Birth of Modern American Environmental Diplomacy," in Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 4 (September 2008) Merry A. Foresta, Maren Stange, Sally Stein, and Pete Daniel (eds.), Official Images: New Deal Photography (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1987) Greg Foster-Rice and John Rohrbach, Reframing the New Topographics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010) Mike Foster, Strange Genius: The Life of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1994) Richard Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968) Henry Thomas Frey, Agricultural Application of Remote Sensing (Washington, D.C.: Economic Research Service, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1967) Christopher Gair, The American Counterculture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007) Peter Geimer (ed.), Ordnungen der Sichtbarkeit: Fotografie in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technologie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2002) Elizabeth R. Gillette, Action for Wilderness (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1972) Herbert W. Gleason, Through the Year with Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917) William Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009) Vicki Goldberg (ed.), Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988)

LITERATURE | 237

Frank Goodyear, Constructing a National Landscape: Photography and Tourism in Nineteenth-century America (PhD thesis: University of Texas at Austin, 1998) John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) Great Plains Committee, The Future of the Great Plains (Washington DC: GPO, 1936) Marcus Graeser, "Visuelle Strategien und Bildabstinenz: Varianten im Verhältnis von Soziologie und Sozialreform in den USA und in Deutschland 1890-1920," in Christiane Reinecke and Thomas Mergel (eds.), Das Soziale ordnen. Sozialwissenschaften und gesellschaftliche Ungleichheit im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2012) Gilbert M. Grosvenor (ed.), Alaska. High Roads to Adventure (Washington DC: National Geographic Society, 1976) Deborah Lynn Guber, The grassroots of a green revolution; polling America on the environment (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003) Erwin Anton Gutkind, Our World From The Air; An International Survey of Man And His Environment (Garden City, NY / Doubleday: British Institute of Sociology, 1952) Jacob Darwin Hamblin, "Environmentalism for the Atlantic Alliance: NATO's Experiment with the Challenges of Modern Society," in Environmental History 15 (January 2010) Anders Hansen, Environment, Media and Communication (London: Routledge, 2010) Walter Harding (ed.), Thoreau as Seen by his Contemporaries (New York: Dover Publications, 1989) Cecil Augustus Hart, Air Photography Applied to Surveying (London, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1943) John H. Hartig, Burning Rivers. Revival of Four Urban-Industrial Rivers that Caught Fire (Burlington, Ontario: Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management Society, 2010) Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia. Green Fields and Urban Growth (New York: Pantheon Book, 2003) Ferdinand V. Hayden, Geology and Natural History of the Upper Missouri. Being the Substance of a Report made to Lieut. G.K. Warren (Philadelphia: C. Sherman & Son, 1862)

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Ferdinand V. Hayden and Fielding Bradford Meek, Paleontology of the Upper Missouri, a Report upon Collections made Principally by the Expeditions under command of Lieut. G.K. Warren, U.S. Top Engineers in 1855 and 1856 (Washington City: Smithsonian Institution, 1864) Ferdinand V. Hayden, Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery (New York: Julius Bien, 1870) Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Yellowstone National Park, and the Mountain Regions of Portions of Idaho, Nevada, Colorado and Utah (Boston: L. Prang and Company, 1876) Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Grotto Geyser of the Yellowstone National Park: with a descriptive note and map, and an illustration by the Albert-type process (Washington: GPO, 1876) Ferdinand V. Hayden, Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado and Portions of Adjacent Territory (New York: J. Bien, 1877) Ferdinand V. Hayden, The Great West: Its Attractions and Resources (Bloomington, Ill.: Charles R. Brodix, 1880) Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency. The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1959) Stephanie Hawkins, American Iconographic. National Geographic, Global Culture, and the Visual Imagination (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010) Bettina Heintz and Jörg Huber, Mit dem Auge denken: Strategien der Sichtbarmachung in wissenschaftlichen und virtuellen Welten (Vienna and New York: Springer, 2001) Douglas Helms, Anne B. W. Effland, and Patricia J. Durana (eds.), Profiles in the History of the U.S. Soil Survey (Iowa: Iowa State Press / Blackwell Publishing Company, 2002) Henry L. Henderson and David B. Woolner (eds.), FDR and the Environment (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Philip Herrera, Energy: A Crisis in Power (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1972) Martina Heßler, Konstruierte Sichtbarkeiten: Wissenschafts- und Technikbilder seit der Frühen Neuzeit (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2006) Sabine Himmelsbach and B. Dziembowski (eds.), Landschaft 2.0 (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2009)

LITERATURE | 239

John Holdren and Philip Herrera, Energy (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1971) Robert K. Holz (ed.), Surveillant Science: Remote Sensing of the Environment (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1985) James Mason Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras: The Yosemite Valley (Oakland: Pacific Press Publishing House, 1886) Jack F. Hurley, Portrait of a Decade. Roy Stryker and the Development of Documentary Photography in the Thirties (Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1972) Anne Farrar Hyde, An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820–1920 (New York: New York University Press, 1990) William Irwin, The New Niagara. Tourism, Technology, and the Landscape of Niagara Falls 1776–1917 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996) William Henry Jackson, Descriptive Catalogue of the Photographs of the United States Geographical Survey of the Territories for the Years 1869 to 1875 (Washington: GPO, 1875) Axel Jansen, Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century (Frankfurt: Campus, 2011) Japan Association for the 1970 World Exposition (ed.), Japan World Exposition (Osaka, 1966) William Jenkins, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (Rochester, NY: International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, 1975) Christos M. Joachimides, Bernd Klüser, and Katharina Hegewisch (eds.), Die Kunst der Ausstellung: Eine Dokumentation dreißig exemplarischer Kunstausstellungen dieses Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1991) Greta Jones, Science, Politics and the Cold War (London / New York: Routlegde, 1988) John Jones, Wonders of the Stereoscope (New York: Random House, 1976) Toby Jurovics et al. (eds.), Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy O'Sullivan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) Alison Kadlec, Dewey's Critical Pragmatism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)

240 | PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENA

Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (Berkely: University of California, 1960) Marsa Karl et al. (eds.), A Yellowstone Album: A Photographic Celebration of the First National Park (Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1997) Bern Keating, Alaska (Washington DC: National Geographic Society, 1969) Robin Earle Kelsey, Photography in the Field: Timothy O'Sullivan and the Wheeler Survey, 1871–1874 (PhD thesis: Harvard, 2000) Robin Earle Kelsey, Archive Style: Photographs & Illustrations for U.S. Surveys, 1850–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) Wolfgang Kemp (ed.), Der Text des Bildes. Möglichkeit und Mittel eigenständiger Bilderzählung (edition text + kritik: München, 1989) Robert Keziere, Greenpeace (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972) Clarence King, "Mt. Shasta," Atlantic Monthly 170 (December 1871) Clarence King, Catastrophism and the Evolution of Environment, An Address (Sheffield: Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, 1877) Clarence King, Systematic Geology: Report of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (Washington, DC: GPO, 1878) Andrew G. Kirk, "Technology. The Whole Earth Catalog and Counter Culture Environmental Politics," in Environmental History, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Jul. 2001): 374-394 Andrew G. Kirk, Counterculture Green. The Whole Earth Catalogue and American Environmentalism (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2007) Benjamin Kline, First Along the River. A Brief History of the U.S. Environmental Movement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007) Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976) Frieda Knobloch, The Culture of Wilderness: Agriculture as Colonization in the American West (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) U.C. Knoepflmacher and G.B. Tennyson (eds.), Nature and the Victorian Imagination (Berkley: University of California Press, 1977) Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser et al. (eds.), Neue Welt. Die Erfindung der amerikanischen Malerei (München: Hirmer, 2007)

LITERATURE | 241

Ulli Kulke, Alexander von Humboldts Reise nach Südamerika (München: Frederking & Thaler, 2010) Hilton Kramer, "Art. Focus on Photo Shows," in New York Times, 28. May 1976 James Krasner, The Entangled Eye: Visual Perception and the Representation of Nature in Post-Darwinian Narrative (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) Rosalind Krauss, "Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View," Art Journal 42, no. 4 (December 1982): 313–22 Kunstmuseum Bonn (ed.), Mitch Epstein, State of the Union (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010) Landesgalerie Linz, New Topographics. Texte und Rezeption (Salzburg: Fotohof edition, 2010) George P. Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971) Marc K. Landy, Marc J. Roberts, and Stephen R. Thomas (eds.), The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) Dorothea Lange / Paul Schuster Taylor, An American Exodus; a Record of Human Erosion (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939) Barbara Larson and Fae Brauer (eds.), The Art of Evolution: Darwin, Darwinism, and Visual Culture (London: University Press of New England, 2009) Libby Lebster, Media & Environment (Cambridge: Poity Press, 2010) Joanna Lehn (ed.), Ecotopia (Göttingen: Steidl Publishing, 2006) Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches here and there (London: Oxford University Press, 1949) Aldo Leopold, For the Health of the Land. Previously Unpublished Essays and other Writings (Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1999) Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science. The MilitaryIndustrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock, The Influence of Photography on American Landscape Painting, 1839–1880 (PhD thesis: New York University, 1967) Armin Kohl Lobeck, Military Maps and Air Photographs: Their Use and Interpretation (London: McGraw-Hill, 1944)

242 | PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENA

Brad D. Lookingbill, Dust Bowl, USA. Depression American and the Ecological Imagination, 1929-1941 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001) Renate Löschner, Lateinamerikanische Landschaftsdarstellungen der Maler aus dem Umkreis von Alexander von Humboldt (Inaugural Dissertation Berlin: Technische Universität, 1976) Glen A. Love and Rhoda M. Love, Ecological Crisis. Readings for Survival (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970) David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh, Prophet of Conservation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), Kindle edition Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz. A Life in Science (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988) Pamela E. Mack, Viewing the earth. The social construction of the landsat satellite system (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1990) Neil Maher, Nature's new deal: the Civilian Conservation Corps and the roots of the American environmental movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) Chris J. Magoc, Yellowstone: The Creation and Selling of an American Landscape, 1870–1903 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999) John Marini and Ken Masugi, The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Science. Transforming the American Regime (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) William Marder, Anthony: The Man, the Company, the Camera; An American Photographic Pioneer (Plantation, Fla.: Pine Ridge Pub. Co., 1983) George P. Marsh, Man and Nature or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (New York: Scribner, 1867) Manuel Luis Martinez, Countering the Counterculture. Rereading Postwar American Dissent from Jack Kerouac to Tomás Rivera (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) Wesley Marx, Oilspill (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1971) Donna Matrazzo, Wild Things. Adventures of a grassroots environmentalist (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2008) Laurette E. McCarthy, Walter Pach (1883–1958): The Armory Show and the Untold Story of Modern Art in America (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011) John W. McCoubrey, American Art 1700–1960, Sources & Documents in the History of Art Series (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965)

LITERATURE | 243

Robert McMahon, The Environmental Protection Agency. A Structuring Motivation in a Green Bureaucracy (Brighton Portland: Academic Press, 2006) Dennis Meadows, "The Limits to Growth and the Future of Humanity," lecture, 4 December 2012, Amerika Haus, Munich Martin Melosi, Effluent America. Cities, industry, energy, and the environment (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001) Carolyn Merchant, American Environmental History: An Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) Char Miller, "The Greening of Gifford Pinchot," in Environmental History 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1992) Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2001) Perry Miller, Nature's Nation (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967) Victor C. Miller, Photo geology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961) Barbara B. Millhouse, American Wilderness: The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting (New York: Black Dome Press, 2007) Joel A. Mintz, Enforcement at the EPA. High Stakes and Hard Choices (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995) W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture theory: essays on verbal and visual representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) Gregg Mitman, Reel Nature. America's Romance with Wildlife on Film (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999) Kevin D. Moore (ed.), Starburst: color photography in America 1970-1980 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010) Mark Monmonier, "Aerial Photography at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration: Acreage Controls, Conservation Benefits, and Overhead Surveillance in the 1930s," in Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing Vol. 68, No. 12, December 2002 Katherine and Peter Montague, Mercury (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1971) Gilla Mora and Beverly W. Brannan (eds.), FSA. The American Vision (New York: Abrams, 2006) James Gregory Moore, King of the 40th Parallel: Discovery in the American West (California: Stanford General Books, 2006)

244 | PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENA

John G Morris, '"The Family of Man' as American Foreign Policy," in History of Photography, 29.2005 John Muir, Our National Parks (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1902) John Muir, The Yosemite (New York: The Century Co, 1912) Pricilla Coit Murphy, What a book can do. The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005) Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to the Family of Man, 1928-55 (Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2008) Weston J. Naef, Era of Exploration. The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West, 1860-1885 (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975) Hans-Dieter Nägelke (eds.), Konstruktionen und Katastrophen: Staatliche Architekturfotografie aus den Beständen des Architekturmuseums der Technischen Universität Berlin 1860–1918 (Berlin: Jaron Verlag, 2009) Motoi Nakamura and Tsutomu Kameda (eds.), Expo '70 Osaka (Tokyo: Shinjudo Co. Publishers, 1970) Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967) National Geographic (ed.), Powers of Nature (Washington DC: National Geographic Society, 1978) National Research Council, Photogrammetry and Aerial Surveys (Washington: Highway Research Board, 1966) National Science Teachers Association (ed.), Programs in environmental education (Washington DC: The Association, 1970) Mark Neuzil and William Kovarik, Mass Media & Environmental Conflict. America's Green Crusades (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996) Mark Neuzil, The Environment and the Press from adventure writing to advocacy (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008) Douglas R. Nickel (ed.), Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception (San Francisco: Museum of Modern Art, 1999) Boyd Norton, Snake Wilderness (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1972) Ethan Arlo Norton, Soil Conservation Survey Handbook (Washington D.C.: USDA, 1939) Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture. American Landscape and Painting 1825–1975 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)

LITERATURE | 245

David E. Nye, American technological sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994) Rosemary O'Leary, Environmental Change. Federal Courts and the EPA (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (ed.), Environmental education at university level; trends and data (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1973) Fairfield Osborn, The Limits of the Earth (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953) Peter E. Palmquist (ed.), Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West (Albuquerque: Amon Carter Museum / University of New Mexico Press Albuquerque, 1983) Gisela Parak, The American social landscape. Dokumentarfotografie im Wandel des 20. Jahrhunderts (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009) Gisela Parak (ed.), Eco-Images. Historical Views and Political Strategies (Munich: RCC Perspectives, 2013, no. 1) Nancy Allen Peralta, "A comparison of two government sponsored Documentary photography projects: FSA 1935-1942 and Documerica 19701974" ( M.A. Thesis: California State University, 1981) Sandra Phillips et al. (eds.), Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the present (San Francisco: San Francisco Art Museum of Modern Art, 1996) Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Gifford Pinchot, A Primer of Forestry, Bulletin 24, Division of Forestry, US Department of Agriculture (Washington: GPO, 1900) Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1910) Ulrich Pohlmann (ed.), Industriezeit: Fotografien 1845–2010 (Tübingen: Wasmuth Verlag, 2011) Françoise Poos (ed.), The Bitter Years. Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2012) Uwe Pörksen, Weltmarkt der Bilder: Eine Philosophie der Visiotype (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1997)

246 | PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENA

Abigail Porter, "Project Documerica, 1972-1977: Government Documentary Photography at the Environmental Protection Agency" (M.A. Thesis: George Washington University, 1992) Eliot Porter, "Photographing Birds," U.S. Camera Magazine no. 3 (March / April 1939): 18-21 J.W. Powell, Report of the Explorations in 1873 of the Colorado of the West and its Tributaries (Washington DC: GPO, 1874) John Wesley Powell, Report of the Special Committee of the U.S. Senate on the Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid Lands (Washington DC: GPO, 1890) J.W. Powell, Canyons of the Colorado (Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent, 1895) John Quarles, Cleaning up America. An Insider's View of the Environmental Protection Agency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976) James Rathlesberger, Nixon and the Environment. The Politics of Devastation (New York: Taurus Communications-The Village Voice, 1972) Readings from Scientific American, Science, Conflict and Society (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1969) Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) Report to the 1969 Legislature from the Washington State World Fair Commission, Nov 20, 1968 Boyce Richardson, James Bay (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1972) Thomas Richter, Alexander von Humboldt: 'Ansichten der Natur' Naturforschung zwischen Poetik und Wissenschaft (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2009) Robert W. Righter, The Battle over Hetch Hetchy. America's most controversial dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) Jacob A. Riis: How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the Tenements of New York (New York: Scribner, 1901) Norman Rosenthal (ed.), Amerikanische Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert (München: Prestel, 1993) Benjamin Ross and Steven Amter, The Polluters. The Making of our chemically altered environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

LITERATURE | 247

Robert E. Roth (ed.), Environmental education: abstracts and index from Research in education, 1966 to 1972 (Ohio: Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, 1973) Hal K. Rothman, The Greening of a nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (Belmont CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 1998) Arthur Rothstein, Photojournalism. Pictures for Magazines and Newspapers (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1970) Wade Rowland, The Plot to Save the World (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1973) Martin Rudwick, "The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science 1760–1840," History of Science xiv (1976) Martin Rudwick, The New Science of Geology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) Martin Rudwick, Lyell and Darwin, Geologists. Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Reform (Burlington, VT: Asgate Publishing, 2005) Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publ., 2010) Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current. Nineteenth-century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (New York: Viking, 2006) Kirkpatrick Sale, The Green Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993) Larry L. Sale and Ernest W. Lee (eds.), Environmental Education in the Elementary School (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972) Lawrence R. Samuel, The End of the Innocence - The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007) Martha A. Sandweiss (ed.), Photography in Nineteenth-century America (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum and New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991) Martha A. Sandweiss, Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) Michael Schaller, Altered States. The United States and Japan Since the Occupation (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Scientists' Institute for Public Information (ed.), Environmental Education (New York: Scientists' Institute for Public Information, 1970) James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State–How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)

248 | PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENA

Paul Sears, Deserts On the March (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935) Paul Sears, This is our World (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937) Marguerite S. Shaffer (ed.), See America First: Tourism and National Identity; 1880–1940 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001) James Shanahan and Katherine McComas, Nature Stories. Directions of the environment and their effects (Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1999) Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinley, The Subversive Science. Essays toward an ecology of man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969) Barbara Lynn Shubinski, "From FSA to EPA: Project Documerica, the Dustbowl Legacy, and the Quest to Photograph 1970s America" (Ph.D. Thesis: University of Iowa, 2009) Bruce J. Shulman, The Seventies. The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Da Capo Press, 2001) Harold Theodore Uhr Smith, Aerial Photographs and Their Applications (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1943) Jonathan Smith, Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture (Cambridge: University Press, 2006) Michael L. Smith, Pacific Visions: California, Scientists and the Environment, 1850–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) Russell Smith, Men and Resources. A Study of North America and its Place in World Geography (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1937) Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) John F. Stacks, Stripping (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1972) Frank E. Stanfield, "Project Documerica in the Southeast: The Use of Documentary Photography by the Environmental Protection Agency to publicize environmental problems in the 1970s" (M.A. Thesis: University of Georgia, 1980) Edward Steichen, The Bitter Years 1935-1941; Rural America as seen by the Photographers of the Farm Security Administration (Garden City New York: Doubleday, 1962) Sally Stein and Terence R. Pitts (eds.), Harry Callahan. Photographs in Color. The Years 1946-1978 (Tucson: Center for Creative Photography, 1980)

LITERATURE | 249

Carol Steinhart and John Steinhart, Blowout. A Case Study of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill (North Scituate: Duxbury Press, 1972) Erich Stenger, "Alexander von Humboldt und die beginnende Photographie," in Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Photographie, Phtotphysik und Photochemie, 31.1932/1933: 54-67 Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954) Wallace Stegner, This is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers (New York: Knopf, 1955) Adlai E. Stevenson, Xerox Corporation et al. (eds.), Science and Society, A Symposium (New York: W.A. Benjamin, 1965) William Stott, Documentary Expression in 1930s America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, l973) Cyrus L. Sulzberger, The World and Richard Nixon (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987) Frank E. Stanfield, "Project Documerica in the Southeast: The Use of Documentary Photography by the Environmental Protection Agency to publicize environmental problems in the 1970s" (M.A. Thesis: University of Georgia, 1980) Karl Sturmanis, The Greenpeace book (Vancouver, B.C.: Orca Sound Publications, 1978) Ann Sutton, Yellowstone: A Century of the Wilderness Idea (New York: Macmillan, 1972) John Szarkowski (ed.), The Photographer and the American Landscape (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1963) John Szarkowski, The Photographer's Eye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966) John Szarkowski, William Eggleston's Guide (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1976) James A. Swan and William B. Stapp (eds.), Environmental Education. Strategies Toward a More Livable Future (New York: Sage Publications, 1974) Constance M. Tanczo, "Project Documerica: A Revival of Government Documentary Photography of the 1970s" (M.A. Thesis: Iowa State University, 1987) John Upton Terrell, The Man Who Discovered America: A Biography of John Wesley Powell (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969)

250 | PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENA

The Ecologist, Blueprint for Survival (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970) William L. Thomas (ed.), Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago / London: The University of Chicago Press, 1956) David J. Tietge, Flash Effect–Science and the Rhetorical Origins of Cold War America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002) Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society. Tomorrow's Social History: Classes, Conflicts and Culture in the Programmed Society (New York: Random House, 1971) Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989) Cornelius J. Troost and Harry Altman (eds.), Environmental education: a sourcebook (New York: Wiley, 1972) Rexford Tugwell, Thomas Munro and Roy E. Stryker, American Economic Life and the Means of Its Improvement (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925) Frederick Jackson Turner, History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993) Russell E. Train, Politics, Pollution, and Pandas. An Environmental Memoir (Washington: Island Press, 2003) Helmuth Trischler (ed.), Anthropocene: Exploring the Future of the Age of Humans (Munich: Perspectives, 3/2013) http://www.carsoncenter.unimuenchen.de/download/research_and_projects/exhibitions/120523_ant hropocene_desc.pdf William H. Truettner (ed.), The West as America, Reinterpreting Images Of The Frontier, 1820–1920 (Washington DC: National Museum of American Art, 1991) Shigeto Tsuru (ed.), Proceedings of International Symposium Environmental Disruption (Tokyo: Asahi Evening News, 1970) Shigeto Tsuru (ed.), Environmental disruption-a challenge to social scientists (Tokyo: International Social Science Council, 1970) United Nations. Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs (eds.), Organization and Administration of Environmental Programs (New York: United Nations, 1974) U. S. Bureau of Soils, Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Soils (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1927)

LITERATURE | 251

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men. Yearbook of Agriculture (Washington D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1938) U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, Airphoto use in Resource Management. A Survey of non-Federal Purchasers of Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service Air photos (Washington D.C: Agriculture Information Bulletin No 336, June 1969) U.S. Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs (eds.), Organization and administration of Environmental Programs (New York: United Nations, 1974) U.S. Soil Conservation Service, Aerial-photo interpretation in classifying and mapping soils (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1966) Norman J. Vig and Michael G. Faure, Green Giants? Environmental Politics of the United States and the European Union (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2004) V. Eugene Vivian, Sourcebook for environmental education (Saint Louis: Mosby, 1973) Ezra F. Vogel, Yuan Ming and Tanaka Akihiko (eds.), The Golden Age of the U.S. China-Japan Triangle 1972-1989 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002) William Vogt, Road to Survival (New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1948) Jan von Bevern, Blicke von Nirgendwo (München: Fink Verlag, 2012) Wiebke von Hinden, Ernst Fuhrmann: Fotoregisseur. Die Pflanzenfotografien des Auriga-Archivs. Zivilisationskritische Tendenzen in der Fotografie der Neuen Sachlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003) Bodo von Dewitz and Reinhard Matz (eds.), Silber und Salz: Zur Frühzeit der Photographie im deutschen Sprachraum 1839–1860 (Köln and Heidelberg: Edition Braus, 1989) Alexander von Humboldt, Kosmos: A General Survey of Physical Phenomena of the Universe (London: Hippolyte Bailltere, 1848) David Rains Wallace, Yellowstone (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2001) Laura Dassow Walls, Seeing New Worlds: Henry Thoreau and NineteenthCentury Natural Science (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) Frank Walker, Geography From The Air (London: Methuen / New York: Dutton, 1953)

252 | PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PHENOMENA

Barbara Ward, Spaceship Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966) Barbara Ward and René Dubos, Only One Earth (New York: Norton & Company, 1972) Thomas R. Wellock, Preserving the Nation. The Conservation and Environmental Movement 1870-2000 (Wheeling ILL: Harlan Davidson, 2007) Ortrud Westheider and Karsten Müller (eds.), Neue Welt: Die Erfindung der amerikanischen Malerei (München: Hirmer Verlag, 2007) George M. Wheeler, Photographs Showing Landscapes, Geological and Other Features, of Portions of the Western Territory of the United States, obtained in connection with Geographical and Geological Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian. Seasons of 1871, 1872 and 1873 (Washington DC: GPO, 1874) George M. Wheeler, Report on the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian (Washington: GPO, 1889) George M. Wheeler, Irrigation in the United States (Washington DC: GPO, 1892) Leslie Paul White, Aerial Photography and Remote Sensing for Soil Survey (Oxford: Oxford University Press / Clarendon, 1977) James Dwight Whitney, The Yosemite Book: A Description of the Sierra Nevada, and of the Big Trees of California (New York: Julius Bien, 1868) J. D. Whitney, "Geological Survey of California," in Geology, Vol. 1, 1865: 421-422 Henry T. Williams (ed.), The Pacific Tourist: Williams' Illustrated Transcontinental Guide of Travel, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (New York, H. T. Williams, 1876) Wendell L. Wilkie, One World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943) Kristina Wilson, The Modern Eye: Stieglitz, MoMA, and the Art of the Exhibition, 1925–1934 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) Robert Wilson, The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West (New York: Scribner, 2006) Paul Wing, Stereoscopes. The First One Hundred Years (New Hampshire: Transition Publishing, 1996) Nancy Wood, Clearcut (San Francisco: Sierra Club Battlebook, 1971)

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Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) Donald Worster, "Environmentalism Goes Global," in Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 4 (September 2008) J. William T. Young, The Fair and the Falls (Cheney: Eastern Washington University, 1996) Online Franklin Delano, Inaugural Address, http://www.inaugural.senate.gov /swearing-in/address/address-by-franklin-d-roosevelt-1933 Edmund Burke, Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15043/15043-h/15043-h.htm Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Stereoscope and the Stereograph," in The Atlantic Monthly, June 1859, Vol. 3, http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/ cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=atla;cc=atla;view=toc;subview=short;idno=atla00 03-3 Environmental Protection Agency, Waste Site Cleanup & Reuse in New England; Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refugee, Middletown, Rhode Island, http://yosemite.epa.gov/r1/npl_pad.nsf/a36badb0f3493aff85256 bc8005c97e1/f8467e0ece07e17685256b4200606b8b!OpenDocument Expo 200, Die Geschichte der Weltausstellungen, http://www.expo2000. de/expo2000/geschichte/detail.php?wa_id=18&lang=2&s_typ=22 Edward C. Keefer, The Nixon Administration and the United Nations: "It's a Damned Debating Society," http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/ pdf/ONU_edward_keefer.pdf François E. Matthes, "Geological History of the Yosemite Valley," Introduction, Geological Survey Professional Paper 160, http://www.nps.gov /history/history/online_books/geology/publications/pp/160/intro.htm Edward J. McCrea, The Roots of Environmental Education: How the Past Supports the Future, http://cms.eetap.org/repository/moderncms_ documents/History.Final.20060315.1.1.pdf Richard Nixon, State of the Union Address, January 22, 1970, http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3889 NASA, "The Blue Marble from Apollo 17," January 31, 2001, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1133

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Richard Nixon, Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality, February 10, 1970, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php? pid=2757#axzz1WWwZyWMu Mary C. Rabbitt, "The United States Geological Survey: 1879–1989", U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1050 (Washington DC: GPO, 1989), http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1050/surveys.htm Mary C. Rabbitt, "The United States Geological Survey: 1879–1989," http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1050/first.htm H. Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1844) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33447/33447h/33447h.html#toc2 Valdez History, "Trans-Alaska Pipeline," http://www.valdezalaska.org/ discover-valdez-history/valdez-history-trans-alaska-pipeline James Voorhies, "Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and His Circle," http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgl/hd_stgl.htm

Acknowledgement

This publication would not have been possible without the financial help and support of many institutions: The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Volkswagen Foundation, Hannover and the German Historical Institute in Washington DC. At SAAM Office of Fellowships, Amelia Görlitz did everything possible to smooth out disturbances and allow researchers to focus on their work. I thank my fellow scholars Prue Ahrens, Lacey Baradel, Meredith Brown, Maggie Cao, Breanne Robertson Chen, Camara Holloway, Bridget Gilman, Elizabeth Lee, Sara Beth Levavy, Sara Picard Mandel, Márton Orosz, Austin Porter and Susanne Scharf for lively discussions and making my stay at DC pleasant, in particular Liz McGoey and Kate Lemay for their steady cooperation and smart ideas. The staff of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room, and numerous librarians contributed to my research, in particular Carol Johnson, Curator of Photography at the Library of Congress, Gina Rappaport, Photo Archivist at the Smithsonian Institution National Anthropological Archives, Leslie K. Overstreet, Curator of Natural-History Rare Books at the Cullman Library Rare Books, Mary Markey at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and Lisa DeCesare at the Harvard Botany Libraries. My two mentors at the SAAM, Frank Goodyear and Toby Jurovics, kindly shared their knowledge on American landscape photography. Elizabeth Childs and John Klein served as friendly hosts at Washington University St. Louis, and I owe gratitude to my friends Kristina Kleuthen, Adrian Ossi, Lisa Cakmak and Melanie Michailidis. My special thank goes to Angela Miller at WashU and to Cindy Ott at St. Louis University, who provided the intellectual background in St. Louis, as well as to Mike

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Lützler for his engagement for the international fellowship program. In addition, Susan Spitz, Franziska Bomski, and Monika Pietrzak-Franger created a great community in the mid-West. My special gratitude also goes to Marcus Graeser for his evocative comments and feedback, to Jennifer Colten for her support, and last but no least to Nils Büttner at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart for his advice on multifarious levels. Numerous friends helped the writing process with recommendations and an open ear: Mario Daniels, Franziska Torma, Ariane Leendertz, Nina Möllers, Tanja Baar, and Miriam Krohne. Ben Tendler thoroughly copy-edited the script and translated introduction and conclusion. Moreover, I would like to thank my parents Fritz and Edeltraud for their encouragement over the years. This book is dedicated to Jörn Petersen.