William Henry Jackson

1843-1942

American (United States)

William Henry Jackson was one of many notable early photographers whose images helped define and popularize the American West. After  serving in the Civil War, he opened a photography studio in Nebraska  before finding work as the photographer on a land survey. Over the course  of his career, Jackson helped to chart areas around the Yellowstone River  and the Rocky Mountains—becoming one of the first settlers to capture  now iconic natural landmarks.  
When Jackson joined the survey in 1870, the discipline of photography  was scarcely thirty years old. Advances in photographic technology made  work in the field possible, but making photographs still demanded  tremendous skill and significant resources. The technically challenging  wet-plate collodion process required traveling with glass negatives and a  portable darkroom. Assistants and a team of five-to-seven mules carried  the equipment, and missteps could mean disaster, as they traversed areas  that did not yet have roads. 
Jackson’s contributions to photography have been recognized for their  historical and art historical significance and his life celebrated as one of  adventure and exploration. However, Jackson also operated in a system of  exploitive colonization and industrialization, which complicates the  legacy of his work today. With an awareness of ongoing injustice to  Indigenous peoples and contemporary environmental challenges in this  country, we revisit Jackson’s legacy—not to discredit his contributions but  to provide opportunities to learn from this complex history.