Bomen en bergen van Yosemite Valley weerspiegeld in het water van Mirror Lake 1887

Isaiah West Taber captured this photograph of Yosemite Valley’s Mirror Lake in 1887 using a wet collodion process. This involved coating a glass plate with light-sensitive chemicals, exposing it in the camera while still wet, and then developing it immediately. The materiality of this process influenced the final image, creating a soft focus and a delicate tonal range. The stillness of the water is key to its reflective properties, and Taber has really nailed it. You get a sense of the labor involved, from the preparation of the chemicals to the careful handling of the glass plate, even as the scene itself appears pristine and untouched. Photography like this played a role in the romanticization of the American West, turning sublime landscapes into commodities. Tourists traveled great distances, often by rail, to see these views for themselves. The resulting images became powerful tools for shaping perceptions of nature and wilderness, even as they obscured the labor and industrial processes that made their creation, and the related tourism, possible.