Pi-wy-ack (Cataract of Diamonds), Vernal Falls, Yosemite Valley, California 1867

Eadweard Muybridge captured Vernal Falls in Yosemite Valley, California in this photograph. The title, "Pi-wy-ack (Cataract of Diamonds)," is drawn from the language of the indigenous people of the Yosemite Valley, and offers a perspective that settlers often disregarded. Muybridge's photographs romanticized the American West. His images served commercial interests and shaped perceptions of the landscape, encouraging tourism, while also contributing to the displacement of native populations. This photograph offers a vision of sublime nature, but what stories and histories are submerged? What is lost when a place is renamed and recast through a colonial lens? Consider the emotional dimensions of this image. The cascading water, the stillness of the trees. Think about the narratives we tell ourselves about nature, about progress, and whose voices are amplified or silenced. The photograph, in the end, presents us with a question of perspective: Whose vision are we seeing?