NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Some of the oldest daguerreotypes and photographs of U.S. landscapes are about to go on display in New Orleans, as part of the first exhibit and study of such landscapes made east of the Mississippi River.
Photographs of vast, unspoiled Western vistas are well known, many of them from federal land surveys after the Civil War. Photography had had a while to develop by then – “people could take cameras with them into the West,” said Russell Lord, curator of photography at the New Orleans Museum of Art .
But, he said, “In many ways, when photography comes to the East, people have reshaped the land, and people photograph that process.” And, by the end of the century, photographers were taking note of industry’s devastation and pushing for preservation of what wilderness remained.
“East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography,” which debuted with four months at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, will run Oct. 6-Jan. 7 at the New Orleans Museum of Art – its only other stop. About 62,000 people saw it in Washington.
“Some of the oldest known photographs in this country are in this exhibit, and many are being shown for the first time ever – and probably the only time in our lives, because the material is fragile and light-sensitive,” said Lord, who worked on the exhibit with creator Diane Waggonner, curator of 19th century photography at the National Gallery.