Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
One associates Yosemite with popular images produced by artists like photographer Ansel Adams and landscape painter Albert Bierstadt. In 1861, the photographs of Carleton Watkins turned Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks and El Capitan into unforgettable sights, helping inspire the fi rst federal parks bill, the “Yosemite Grant.” Generations of artists, including Eadward Muybridge, William Henry Jackson, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, and George Fisk, produced images that shaped the world’s understanding of the American West’s geological wonders and resources. Th ese works convey majesty and pristine wilderness with an emphasis on the wonders and timelessness of nature. Such idealized pictures frame our expectations when visiting these iconic sites. Even in the 1870s, Mark Twain declared Bierstadt’s Yosemite paintings, “considerably more beautiful than the original!...more Kingdom-Come than California."
“…a refreshingly honest view of the ways in which visitors interact with nature.”
Shannon Thomas Perich
Curator, Photographic History Collection
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian
