Gezicht op de Three Brothers in Yosemite Valley, Californië before 1886

This is a photograph of the Three Brothers in Yosemite Valley, California, by George Fiske. Although undated, Fiske made photographs of Yosemite from the 1870s until his death in 1918. Fiske’s images played a crucial role in the cultural promotion of the American West. They were bought as souvenirs by tourists and widely reproduced, including as lantern slides, which became a popular form of mass entertainment and education. His decision to focus on landscape reflects the American idea of manifest destiny and the transcendentalist movement, which understood nature as an embodiment of the divine. Fiske made many of his photographs on commission from the Yosemite Valley Commissioners, a state-run body tasked with managing and promoting tourism to the area. To understand images like these, historians analyze how the idea of nature has changed over time. Art historians look at the distribution and consumption of images and investigate the relationship between art, commerce, and cultural values.