Everything about William Henry Jackson totally explained
» See Honoré Jackson for the Canadian revolutionary.
William Henry Jackson (
April 41843 -
June 301942) was an American painter, photographer and explorer famous for his images of the
American West. He was a great-great nephew of
Samuel Wilson, the progenitor of America's national symbol
Uncle Sam.
Early life
Jackson was born in
Keeseville, New York, on April 4, 1843, as the first of seven children to George Hallock Jackson and Harriet Maria Allen. Harriet, a talented water-colorist, was a graduate of the Troy Female Academy, later the
Emma Willard School. Painting was his passion from a very young age. By age 19 he'd become a skillful, talented artist of American pre-Civil-War Visual Arts, of whom
Orson Squire Fowler wrote as being "excellent as a painter".
After his boyhood in
Troy, New York and
Rutland, Vermont, in 1862 Jackson, guided by patriotic feelings joined as a private in Company K of
12th Vermont Infantry and fought in the
American Civil War, including the
battle of Gettysburg. He then returned to Rutland, VT, where he eventually got into creative crisis as a painter in post-Civil-War American society. Having broken his engagement to Miss Carolina Eastman he left Vermont forever, for the American West.
In 1866 traveling by
Union Pacific Jackson reached its end, a point some hundred miles west of Omaha, where he joined as a bullwhacker a
wagon train heading west to
Great Salt Lake, on the
Oregon Trail. In 1867 he settled down in
Omaha, NE and got into the photography business with his brother Ed. Going off for three or four days as "
missionary to the Indians" around Omaha, Jackson made his famous photographs of the
American Indians:
Osages,
Otoes,
Pawnees,
Winnebagoes and
Omahas.
Career as photographer
In 1869 Jackson won a commission from the
Union Pacific Railroad to document the scenery along their route for promotional purposes. The following year, he got a last-minute invitation to join the 1871 U.S. government survey (predecessor of
USGS) of the
Yellowstone River and
Rocky Mountains led by
Ferdinand Hayden. Painter
Thomas Moran was also part of the expedition, and the two artists worked closely together to document the Yellowstone region. Hayden's surveys (accompanied usually by a small detachment of the
U.S. Cavalry) were annual multidisciplinary expeditions meant to chart the largely-unexplored west, observe
flora (plants),
fauna (animals), and geological conditions (
geology), and identify likely
navigational routes, so Jackson was in a position to capture the first photographs of legendary landmarks of the West.
Jackson worked in multiple camera and plate sizes, under conditions that were often incredibly difficult. His photography was based on the
collodion process invented in 1848 and published in 1851 by
Frederick Scott Archer. Jackson traveled with as many as three camera-types-- a stereographic camera (for
stereoscope cards), a "whole-plate" or 8x10" plate-size
camera, and one even larger, as large as 18x22". These cameras required fragile, heavy glass plates (
photographic plates), which had to be coated, exposed, and developed onsite, before the wet-collodion emulsion dried. Without light metering equipment or sure emulsion speeds, exposure times required inspired guesswork, between five seconds and twenty minutes depending on light conditions.
Preparing, exposing, developing, fixing, washing then drying a single image could take the better part of an hour. Washing the plates in 160 °F
hot spring water cut the drying time by more than half, while using water from snow melted and warmed in his hands slowed down the processing substantially. His photographic division of 5-7 men carried photographic equipment on the backs of mules and rifles on their shoulders -
Siouxess still made
scalping - Jackson's life experience (as military, as peaceful dealing with Indians) was welcomed. The weight of the glass plates and the portable
darkroom limited the number of possible exposures on any one trip, and these images were taken in primitive, roadless, and physically challenging conditions. Once when the mule lost its footing, Jackson lost a month's work, having to return to untracked Rocky Mountain landscapes to remake the pictures, one of which was his celebrated view of the
Mount of the Holy Cross.
Despite these difficulties Jackson came back with photographic evidence of western landmarks that had previously seemed fantastic rumor: the
Grand Tetons,
Old Faithful and the rest of
Yellowstone, Colorado's Rockies and the Mount of the Holy Cross, and the uncooperative
Ute Indians. Jackson's photographs of Yellowstone helped convince the
U.S. Congress to make it the first
National Park in March
1872.
Jackson exhibited photographs and clay models of
Anasazi dwellings at
Mesa Verde in
Colorado in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia. He continued traveling on the Hayden Surveys until the last one in 1878. He later established a studio in
Denver, Colorado and produced a huge inventory of national and international views. Commissioned to photograph for western state exhibitions at the
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, he eventually produced a final portfolio of views of the just-shuttered "White City" for Director of Works and architect
Daniel Burnham.
Career as publisher
Thrust into financial exigencies by the Panic and Depression of 1893-95, Jackson accepted a commission by
Marshall Field to travel the world photographing and gathering specimens for a vast new museum in Chicago; his pictures and reports were published by
Harper's Weekly magazine. He returned to Denver and shifted into publishing; in 1897 he sold his entire stock of negatives and his own services to the
formerly called the Detroit Photographic Company (owned by William A. Livingstone), after the company had acquired the exclusive ownership and rights to the
photochrom process in America. Jackson joined the company in 1898 as president - just when the Spanish American War gained the nation's fervent interest - bringing with him an estimated 10,000 negatives which provided the core of the company's photographic archives, from which they produced pictures ranging from postcards to mammoth-plate panoramas.
In 1903, Jackson became the plant manager, thus leaving him with less time to travel and take photographs. In 1905 or 1906, the company changed its name from the Detroit Photographic Co. to the Detroit Publishing Co.
In the 1910s, the publishing firm expanded its inventory to include photographic copies of works of art, which were popular educational tools as well as inexpensive home decor.
During its height, the Detroit Publishing Company drew upon 40,000 negatives for its publishing effort, and had sales of seven million prints annually. Traveling salesmen, mail order catalogues, and a few retail stores aggressively sold the company's products. The company maintained outlets in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Zurich, and also sold their images at popular tourist spots and through the mail. At the height of its success, the company employed some forty artisans and a dozen or more traveling salesmen. In a typical year they'd publish an estimated seven million prints.
With the declining sale of photographs and postcards during World War I, and the introduction of new and cheaper printing methods used by competing firms, the Detroit Publishing Company went into receivership in 1924, and in 1932 the company's assets were liquidated.
In 1936
Edsel Ford backed by his father
Henry Ford bought Jackson's 40,000 negatives from Livingstone's estate for "The Edison Institute" known today as
Greenfield Village in
Dearborn, Michigan. Eventually, Jackson's negatives were divided between the Colorado Historical Society (views west of the Mississippi), and the
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all other views).
Later life
Jackson moved to
Washington, D.C. in 1924, and produced murals of the Old West for the new
U.S. Department of the Interior building. He also acted as a technical advisor for the filming of
Gone with the Wind.
In 1942, he was honored by the Explorer's Club for his 80,000 photographs of the American West. SS William H Jackson Steamship was in active service in 1945. Jackson died at the age of 99. Recognized as one of the last surviving Civil War veterans, he was buried at
Arlington National Cemetery.
Gallery
Image:Hayden en route.jpg|F.V. Hayden Expedition, Wyoming.
Image:Mexico City street market 1885.jpg|A street market in Mexico City, 1884-1885.
Image:Guangzhou Harbor.jpg|Canton harbor crowded with sampans.
Image:Solomon Islands warriors.jpg|Solomon Islands warriors, 1895.
Image:Madras the high courts 1895.png|Chennai, India, 1895.
Image:Madras view from the harbor 1895.png|Harbor in Chennai, India, 1895.
Image:Madras group of tamil natives at the pier.png|Group of Tamil natives at the pier, 1895.
Image:Denver five points DPL1.jpg|Denver, Colorado, 1885.
Image:Denver Colorado 1898 LOC 09570u.jpg|Denver, Colorado, 1898.
Image:Chinese American child in embroidered jacket.jpg|Chinese American child in embroidered jacket, 1900.
Image:Shirley plantation loc.jpg|Shirley Plantation, James River, Virginia, 1900-1906.
Image:CHS.J3075.jpg|The caretaker at Mission San Juan Capistrano chats with guests beneath the shade of one of the courtyard arcades, 1880-1900.
Further Information
Get more info on 'William Henry Jackson'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://william_henry_jackson.totallyexplained.com">William Henry Jackson Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
