The Birth of a Century: Early Color Photographs of America

The final decades of the nineteenth century and the birth of the twentieth in America are illustrated as never before in this book of unique color images that actually predate the invention of color photography. The secret process which produced them combines the delicacy of watercolors with the look and feel of modern color photographs. The pictures are largely the work of the legendary William Henry Jackson, the pioneer photographer who explored the frontiers of the old American west with huge wet-plate cameras and a portable darktent strapped to the back of his trusty mule.
Jackson's name is synonymous with high adventure, and Jim Hughes' richly detailed introduction tells a gripping story. Jackson was born in 1843 in New York, and by the 1860s he was on his first trip west, working as a bullwhacker on a wagon train when the nation's unfinished rail lines would take him no further. Finally, on the edge of the western frontier, he began photographing the wild and often spectacularly beautiful landscape of a wilderness soon to be forced into submission by the advancing railroads.
Over the next three decades Jackson became the most celebrated of a small and hardy band of pioneer photographers, creating a striking photographic record of the rapidly changing face of America. When his photographs of Yellowstone were credited with helping to persuade Congress to make the region the first National Park, his place in history was secure. From the Rockies to California, from the Great Lakes to the deep South, from teeming New York City to forested New Hampshire these photographs capture both urban and rural landscapes to provide a unique picture of the social and physical evolution of the United States. The book is arranged as a visual tour of the country, and is written with fascinating insights into America's places and politics at the turn of the century.
In 1897 Jackson sold the bulk of his enormous archive of photographs to the Detroit Photographic Company, which he joined as a partner. The firm had recently licensed Photochrom, a secret Swiss process for turning black-and-white photographs into color. Completely distinct from today's four-color reproduction, Photochrom is a continuous-tone color rendition of a black-and-white photograph that uses multiple impressions from lithographic stones. The color produced was astonishingly naturalistic, and it was to this process that Jackson devoted his final years of active photography. Gone now was the mule, as he traveled North America in a specially equipped railroad car in search of images to tell the story of the closing of one epoch and the dawning of another.
William Henry Jackson died in 1942 after a lifetime that spanned almost the entire history of photography. In recent years, thousands of never distributed Photochrom prints were discovered in a Montana warehouse. This book offers an ample selection of the finest, all published for the first time.

One of America's most notable early photographers, Jackson (1843-1942) counts among his many credits dramatic photographs of Yellowstone that helped convince Congress to purchase it as the first U.S. national park. Unknown to historians was this cache of undistributed chromolithographs, the result of Jackson's collaboration with the Detroit Photographic Company. His black-and-white negatives, featuring urban, rural, and wilderness scenes taken throughout the United States and in parts of Canada, underwent a time-consuming process called Photochrom that resulted in richly colored images. All the images have an idealized "postcard" quality, and many were in fact commissioned by railroads and resorts. Compared with the stark black-and-white Western scenes for which Jackson is known, this genre is appealing but quite different indeed. Hughes outlines Jackson's lengthy career and the Photochrom technique in an introductory essay. Aimed at a popular audience, this heavily illustrated volume will also appeal to those interested in photographia.
Kathleen Eagen Johnson, Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.