Malakoff Diggins, North Bloomfield, Nevada County 1871

Editor: This gelatin-silver print, "Malakoff Diggins, North Bloomfield, Nevada County" by Carleton Watkins, dating to 1871, has this ghostly and unsettling feel. It depicts landscape, but the spraying water and the denuded hills seem to suggest something beyond a peaceful vista. What do you see in this piece? Curator: I see a potent intersection of progress and destruction, a visual testament to the socio-economic forces shaping the American West. Watkins’s photograph is not just a landscape; it's a document of environmental violence enacted under the guise of economic advancement during the Gold Rush. Look at those powerful jets of water. What does it say to you that the pursuit of wealth warranted the literal tearing apart of the Earth? Editor: It’s jarring to think about the environmental impact. I initially saw the photograph as a stark landscape, but now I understand the narrative embedded within. The technique feels almost romantic in a way but paired with this destructive action creates tension. Curator: Exactly! The almost romantic treatment, that soft, painterly light, the composition which mimics landscape paintings of the era… it all obscures the brutal reality. This disjunction mirrors the broader narrative of American expansion – a glossing over of exploitation and injustice with ideals of progress and manifest destiny. This piece provokes questions about whose perspectives were, and continue to be, centered. Whose history is valorized, and whose is erased in this image of progress? Editor: It’s powerful to consider how photographs can also obscure and misrepresent. It’s definitely given me a lot to think about concerning visual narratives of that era. Curator: Indeed. And perhaps inspires us to become more critical viewers today. The "truth" of the image lies not only in what's visible but also in what it conceals.