Returning to the river: The Rephotographic Survey Project and the (im)possibility of capturing the same sites
2024; Wiley; Volume: 47; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/jacc.13578
ISSN1542-734X
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeological Research and Protection
ResumoIs it, as Heraclitus once pondered, possible to step in the same river twice? For the ancient Greek philosopher this was impossible for, as he proposed, "the water into which you first stepped has flowed on." In his well-known query Heraclitus questioned the ephemerality of existence and the changing perceptions of time and space; for even if one perceives that a river and its surroundings are the same, in reality it is profoundly different. Not only has the water at one's feet changed but the combination of light, atmosphere, and weather are never the same from one moment to the next. Furthermore, the individual has changed. In any situation, she is a different person physically and mentally than she was before, and she perceives her environment in a different manner, whether she acknowledges this or not. What could be said, however, of a photograph taken of the same object or an exact site after an interval of time – a week, a year, a decade, or a century later? Indeed, one of photography's greatest abilities is to encapsulate time, to seemingly make it stop. The existence of a second (or third, or fourth…) photograph(s) of a landscape does alter one's understanding of time and place. This is also true of a scene in which no change seems to have taken place, reflecting a world in which, as scholar Roderick Nash noted, "a millennium is almost meaningless geologically" (Nash, 1967, p. 379). The camera, therefore, could be a tool for those wanting to reenter the river, so to speak, to see if it had changed.1 In the late 1970s, an important, yet neglected, photography and art project was particularly interested in the notion of stepping into the flow of time. It was, in fact, a driving pursuit of the Rephotographic Survey Project (RSP) which existed from 1977 to 1980. The RSP did not invent the idea of repeat photography; repeatedly photographing a site is nearly as old as the medium. In innovations and ambition, however, it pioneered rephotography and would profoundly influence numerous other projects during its tenure and beyond. While there are many avenues of investigation that could be explored with this project, this essay specifically investigates a central aspect of the RSP: its engagement with the past.2 It will, moreover, explore the anachronistic nature of the project and the ways in which it engaged a historically saturated American West. Lastly, it highlights how their work – their photographic pendants of time and place – questioned the nature of the mythical West as well as the temporality of photographic images. The RSP consisted of photo-historian Ellen Manchester and photographers Mark Klett, JoAnn Verburg, Rick Dingus, and Gordon Bushaw. Together they retraced the footsteps of well-known nineteenth-century survey photographers like William Henry Jackson and Timothy O'Sullivan across the American West, relocating, reoccupying, and rephotographing many of their historic views (Figures 1 and 2). For the RSP Heraclitus's idea was not just a theoretical exercise but a motivating force and point of inquiry that propelled their work in the West (Dingus, 1982, p. xii). The RSP is one of the most influential projects to come out of the so-called "Photo-Boom" of the 1960s and 1970s, which is gaining greater attention. Like New Topographics, it is a significant product of a period that witnessed the expansion of university photography programs across the United States, as well as a deeper study of the medium and its history and a growing acceptance of photography in galleries and museums. The members of the RSP reflect the expansion of opportunities that were available to this generation of photographers. Like their peers, they also benefited from belonging to a small but committed community of photographers and photo-historians who were invested artistically, intellectually, and emotionally in their medium. The RSP began in Rochester, New York, in 1976 through discussions among Verburg, an MFA student at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and part-time curator at the George Eastman House; Klett, a trained geologist who was working on his graduate degree in photography at the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW); and Manchester, a VSW graduate in the history of photography. Keenly aware of the intersections of contemporary art and photography, their interest in rephotographing the West was primarily conceptual in nature, but it was also fueled by a growing interest in the history of photography and the medium's historic practices and key figures. The project was also powered by a desire to work in the American West where each of the three founding members of the RSP wanted to live and work. According to Manchester, "[I] always wanted to go back just on a real naïve level to the site where Jackson stood or find one of these incredible O'Sullivan views; to see what it looked like." She continued, "To use [rephotography] as a tool. To ask questions about pictures. How we interpret information. To establish [a] methodology for comparative surveys and to ask questions about major photographic surveys in general" (Horan & Manchester, 1978, pp. 19-20). Manchester's comments suggest, in other words, that this was more than a scavenger hunt across the West; it was a serious endeavor that they believed could produce a wide variety of results. With the assistance of two survey grants from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts as well as financial and material support from the Polaroid Corporation, the RSP started following Jackson's work across Colorado in the summer of 1977. The following year the project expanded to investigate the photography of O'Sullivan and others like Andrew J. Russell. The original RSP members were also joined by two additional field photographers: Rick Dingus, an MFA student at the University of New Mexico, and Bushaw, a high school mathematics teacher and talented part-time photographer. The addition of Bushaw and Dingus enabled the project to broaden its focus to other western states including Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and New Mexico. The RSP remained in the field until 1980. The motivation to revisit past places in the American West was a byproduct of a renewed interest in the history of photography. Through the work of historians like Beaumont Newhall, Helmut Gernsheim, and Van Deren Coke, the medium's history was being gathered and processed at an unprecedented rate throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Additionally, for the first time photo-history courses were taught in an increasing number of colleges and graduate school programs including RIT, VSW, and other institutes of higher education across the United States like the influential program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (Davis, 1977, pp. 12-16; McDonald, 2014, pp. 176-189). These programs encouraged students – photographers and historians – to engage with the medium's past in new and dynamic ways and to place themselves in an expanding narrative of photography, past and present. The push to engage photography's history also spurred many young photographers to seek out and experiment with arcane and forgotten photographic processes. They enthusiastically explored "alternative processes," including cyanotypes, collotypes, gum bichromate prints, and many other formats, prompting what historian Lyle Rexer called "photography's antiquarian avant-garde" (Rexer, 2002, pp. 22-24). Photographer Bea Nettles, for example, assembled how-to manuals, or "cookbooks," that helped make these processes more widely available (Nettles, 1977). The drive to recreate historic practices was the impetus for the creation of the Chicago Albumen Works, a collaboration between historian Joel Snyder and photographer Doug Munson, which revived the albumen and tedious wet-plate collodion processes used by the "frontier" photographers in the American West (Munson, 1976). Through a greater interest in the histories of photography, students were introduced to the work of photographers like O'Sullivan, Jackson, Jack Hillers, William Bell, and others who came to the West after the American Civil War as part of the United States Geological Surveys conducted by Clarence King, George Wheeler, Ferdinand Hayden, and John Wesley Powell.3 They also came to know and appreciate the photographs of Russell who worked for Union Pacific as it attempted to complete the Transcontinental Railroad, as well as the San Francisco-based photographer Carleton Watkins, who created monumental images of Yosemite's wonders.4 Part of the allure of working in the Rocky Mountains and beyond was the still powerful draw of the heroic and mythical West. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the survey photographers were seen as "frontier heroes" who endured "spine-tingling adventures" out west (Goetzman).5 These photographers overcame a litany of obstacles and hazards in capturing the region's rugged landscapes. Indeed, few landscapes are as connected with heroic picture making as the American West. The photographers faced everything from rattlesnakes to inhospitable Natives, freezing temperatures to "burning sun [and] blistering wind" (Bell, 1872, p. 296). They were also challenged by their process of picture-making. To create glass negatives most nineteenth-century survey photographers employed the wet-plate collodion process, a tedious, multistep practice that involved working with explosive chemicals and the necessity of keeping one's darkroom nearby for the rapid development of plates which only remained photo-sensitive while still "wet" or tacky. When moving about, the frontier photographers used pack mules that were convenient but not freed of hardship. In the Colorado Plateau, John Wesley Powell's team had a mule named Doc fall off a cliff. Surprisingly, the mule survived but the camera on its back was smashed into "10,000 pieces" (Powell, 2009, p. 392). "Photography in the field is a very difficult one," Bell insisted in 1872, acknowledging that the production of a "successful negative" was almost hopeless with all the "mule riding, packing and unpacking the working material from the mule on whose back the collodion, bath, &c., have been churned for hours" (Bell, 1872, p. 296). Despite the anxiety and obstacles, however, the photographers returned with an astonishing collection of images from the West, finding some of the "finest scenery" in the roughest places (Beaman, 1872, p. 464). In 1875, Jackson described his initial years in the field as "wandering up and down over many a weary thousand miles, scaling mountains, threading cañons, and exploring valleys in quest of the picturesque and marvelous" (Jackson 1875, p. 91). The investigation of the West was not limited to the nineteenth century. Manchester, Klett, Verburg, and their peers were also introduced to the work of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Elliott Porter, and a host of modernist photographers who were also engaged in the investigation of this important American space in the mid-twentieth century. Many of these photographers were also heavily influenced by the nineteenth-century survey photographers. As students of the medium and its history, Adams and peers like Todd Webb were interested in the people and processes of the past. Adams may have bristled at being called "the last of the O'Sullivans," but he made his own pilgrimage in 1941 to locate and rephotograph sites in Arizona and New Mexico where O'Sullivan worked decades earlier as part of the Wheeler Survey (Hammond, 2002, p. 61). For the generation of photographers coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s like Klett, Verburg, and Dingus, the West still had a tremendous allure. A century after it was first photographed, it was a mythical and romantic space. A host of younger photographers including Robert Adams, Kenneth Josephson, and others began journeying westward. The western road trip became an essential part of one's education. "Going out [West] for days and photographing out of your windshield or out of your tent," photographer John Pfahl remarked, "was an adventure or rite of passage for male photographers…We all did our road trip" (2007). Photo critic Andy Grundberg likened these road trips to the paths of the survey photographers through the American frontier (1990, p. 88). Once out west, they wanted to see the places where their photographic heroes worked. They claimed O'Sullivan as their own and Robert Adams went as far to claim him: "our Cezanne." "I felt like Carleton Watkins," Richard Misrach wrote, "like I was in a new wilderness that few had ever seen" (2021, p. 112). Through their work in the West, these young photographers not only located themselves in the traditions of this important American space, but they also participated in its ongoing representation. From the beginning, members of the RSP debated how closely they wanted to be tethered to history. They pondered what they needed to do to understand the survey photographs and how far they wanted to go to recreate the experiences and practices of nineteenth-century photographers.6 In their pursuit of authenticity, they knew that they would be making a pilgrimage, of sorts, to places photographed a century earlier, but they debated how deeply they would mimic the processes and practices of the past to create authentic rephotographs. This was particularly true of the American West which was steeped in nostalgia for a more "exciting" time and a more "rugged" place. Susan Sontag's assertion, "when we get nostalgic we take pictures," was certainly true of this period and place (1977, p. 65). It was, and still is, tempting to want to recreate the "Old West," a place perceived as possessing excitement and freedom. The drive for authenticity even tempted photographers to incorporate nineteenth-century modes of transportation into the modern world. During his exploration of the Overland Trail used by westward pioneers and those seeking to find gold in California, photographer Todd Webb decided to follow the trail as exactly as possible to understand the process of migration more fully. His trek started by boat and then by foot (Webb, 1963, pp. 144–162).7 Before they started in the field a decade later, the RSP faced a similar question and Manchester even considered using pack mules as part of their work. The RSP also contemplated using the wet-plate collodion process in their bid for a greater connection to the past photographers and their heroic ability to produce a picture. The wet-plate process did tempt the RSP and, near the end of the project, Klett and Bushaw went out with Munson to make a collodion negative. After years of working in the West, Ansel Adams, likewise, pined for the past when the "old wet-plate process that made photographers work harder for results" (Stegner, 2010, p. 19). Yet, in photography practicality often outweighs purity especially when it comes to convenience and ease. When asked more than fifty years after he worked in the West what equipment he would use if he went back, Jackson was adamant that his new 35 mm camera would certainly be an upgrade to the wet-plate process he used in the 1870s. In 1942, Jackson, then ninety-nine years old and carrying his small camera around his neck, announced, "I can do it better and in color, with this, and no need for a string of mules" (Newhall & Edkins, 1979, p. 17). Early on, the members of the RSP acknowledged that "trailing [visual] artifacts" would not require them to be completely authentic when rephotographing sites (Klett, 1992, p. 164). Their friend and peer Robert Adams warned of an "obsessive nostalgia" and feared that too many young photographers were "doing the antique thing." The results of which, he insisted, "can be momentarily charming, but they are often finally sad, a footnote to history, arcane and a little saccharine" (Adams, 1996, pp. 81–82). Had the RSP mimicked the past so thoroughly and completely, Manchester believed, it would have become "too romantic and more about the 19th century than it was about the doing of the contemporary" (2006). They did not want to be accused of being "pickled in nostalgia" (Hughes, 1974, p. 56). To avoid this pitfall, the RSP sought to create a contemporary survey that focused on the images of the earlier photographers instead of trying to slavishly recreate them. For Klett, full immersion in the past was beyond the true nature of the project, and he advocated the use of modern techniques and practices over the arcane and antique. He argued, in fact, that their project had more to do with method and methodology than with recreation. Webb realized this decades earlier; after several long days on what seemed like endless stretches of road on foot, he abandoned his original modes of transportation in exchange for a Vespa motor scooter. Instead of mules, the RSP used cars including Manchester's Volkswagen Rabbit and Verburg's Chevy Vega. As often as possible, they also used paved roads and modern interstates. Rather than the difficult wet-plate process, they employed Polaroid's Type 55 Positive/Negative film, which the corporation gave them freely for use in their project. This new film, which simultaneously produced a positive and negative image, proved to be ideal for rephotography. The positive image, they discovered, was essential in aligning the nineteenth-century image on site, while the negative could be used to print their work back in the studio. Even if they did not employ pack mules or other vestiges from the past, the RSP believed that there were other aspects that aided their quest for authenticity. As a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) sponsored survey, the RSP saw their project as benefiting from the continued sponsorship of the federal government, which sent Jackson and his peers out west. For assistance, they turned to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and USGS employee Harold Malde, who had experience rephotographing Jackson. Malde became interested in rephotographing sites after hearing Ansel Adams discuss his experiences retracing O'Sullivan in 1941. He was particularly invaluable for the RSP in developing their own process in 1977. Leaning on their knowledge of photo-history, they immersed themselves in the study of the photographers and the surveys. They examined the original glass negatives and researched the surveys and the surviving journals and accounts of Jackson, O'Sullivan, Russell, and Hillers. Following the survey, photographers also required fieldwork, which they did, systematically, each summer to match the place and time captured in the photographs from the 1860s and 1870s. Ultimately, it was the connection between image and place that was essential to the RSP and its results. In the field, they learned how difficult it was to align a photograph with an existing place. They knew that these sites existed, but changes to the landscape and the names attached to them often frustrated their search. They believed that with time, effort, and research, they could find the places where Jackson, O'Sullivan, and the others worked. The infallibility of the place photographed was usually assumed. No matter how obscure or overgrown a site may have become, it was there to be found. "In photography," Roland Barthes claimed, "I can never deny that the thing has been there" (1981, pp. 76–79). Yet, they would never quite know what they would find when tracking down sites like White House Mountain until they arrived (Figure 3). Discovering the spot where the survey photographers worked more than a century earlier, however, was what Klett called the "magical moment" (2011, p. 195). When they found the mountain, they learned that although not much had changed, it was now known as Snowmass and that the large boulder that was present in Jackson's 1873 photograph was still present but located just outside of their rephotograph (Figure 4).8 Despite these differences, however, the scene was surprisingly similar. "Time has passed, but the vantage point remains," Klett explained, "it is a privileged view into another world and the landscape changes before the viewer" (2011, p. 195). As they relocated more sites and became increasingly proficient in their method and practice, members of the RSP were able to reexamine and reframe the conceptual underpinnings of what they had accomplished. After their first season of field work retracing Jackson across western Colorado, the original participants of the RSP astutely questioned their outcomes and what their project revealed about photography, art, and place. "Is a photo art? Is Jackson's stuff art? … Is our imitation [of] Jackson art?" Verburg contemplated (1977). While enjoying the "sense of journey" that came by following figures from the past, Klett embraced the anonymity of their process but still questioned the freedoms available to the rephotographer (1992, p. 164). The outcomes became so much more than the places they were visiting that Manchester, as the historian of the group, inquired: "does the 'West' have anything to do with [the] project?" ("Relevancy"). The West, in fact, did have a lot to do with the Project and its key findings. As they expanded their work to include sites all across the region, they gained insight into its changing nature. While some of the sites they rephotographed, like Yellowstone National Park, remained places of interest that continue to attract audiences, many of the places where they worked were forgotten and obscure in the subsequent century. Indeed, many sites that were important in the 1870s had sharply dwindled in importance for a variety of reasons. As they retraced the steps of the survey photographers, they came into direct contact with anachronistic places and sights, which revealed important ways in which the American West had changed over the course of the century. Stepping back into landscapes that few had photographed in the intervening century provided them with a perfect opportunity to see how places had and had not changed. The RSP's first season in the field culminated with a trip to Colorado's Mountain of the Holy Cross (Figures 5 and 6). Prior to Jackson's visit to the site in 1873, rumor and legend proclaimed that somewhere deep in the Rocky Mountains there existed a mountain with the Christian cross emblazoned on its face. Hungry for headlines and notoriety, Ferdinand Hayden, Jackson's employer, made the discovery of the peak a goal of the season's fieldwork. In August 1873, Jackson and other members of Hayden's team including the famed painter Thomas Moran, made the arduous trek up to the top of an adjacent peak known as Notch Mountain from which they would have an ideal viewshed of the famous peak. On August 24, he made his famous photograph, which was widely reproduced and proved that there was, indeed, a mountain deep in the West inscribed with a snowy white cross. In his journal the photographer wrote triumphantly, "The Mount of the Holy Cross has been thoroughly done at last. But at a cost of time and labor which was not at all anticipated. It may be after years, if at all, that another party will try to repeat the ascent" (Jackson, 1975, p. 60). News of the Mountain of the Holy Cross quickly spread, particularly among Americans eager for reassurance of a Manifest Destiny for their nation. It seemed to prove, in fact, that divine favor rested with the United States. What other nation on earth could boast such an overt Christian symbol created by Nature and not human hands? Jackson's photograph and the story behind its creation quickly became part of its legend and soon hundreds of pilgrims from around the world were following his path to see the snowy cross. In 1929, President Herbert Hoover declared it a national monument and four years later, the National Park Service built a small shelter on Notch Mountain and completed a path to the site the following year. The fame of the mountain and its cross, however, declined rapidly. Over the years fewer and fewer travelers made the difficult hike to the site. Reflecting its fall, in 1950, President Truman rescinded its monument status. Part of the reason for its decline was the fact that the famous cross was no longer as visible as it once was. Rockslides and erosion damaged the cross's right arm to the point where it no longer held snow and therefore, no longer formed a full cross. There were, however, more fundamental societal reasons for its fall. For an increasingly secular society, its symbolism and meaning no longer resonated with the same veracity as it had nearly a century earlier; a mountain with the sign of the cross was no longer a miracle but a mere geological anomaly. The RSP rephotographed Jackson's famous image in August 1977. When they arrived, they learned that the trek to Notch Mountain was still difficult; the hike, they were warned, was "worth half of your life" (Brown, 1968, p. 38). Their journey was made even more arduous by the heavy photographic equipment they needed to haul to the 13,237-foot (4035 meter) summit. Even though they matched their attempt to the same month and time as Jackson's 1873 visit, the sight looked remarkably different. The rephotograph that they made reveals a peak that is largely devoid of snow and a full cross. The members of the team quipped that they photographed the "Mountain of the Holy Apostrophe" (Verburg, 1995, p. 5). When the RSP made their visit, they came to the place not because of its religious significance, but because of the iconic status of an old photograph. It was an anachronistic exercise, a unique pilgrimage not to a site of religious worship, but to a sight of importance to their field, the field of photography. Another important site for the RSP revealed the depths of the anachronistic nature of the project and the ways in which western sites could fall into oblivion for nearly everyone except those interested in photography and its history. From 1978 to 1979, each member of the project worked in Echo Canyon, a 25-mile long rocky define made of red sandstone and conglomerate rock located in northeastern Utah. Echo Canyon was part of the California, Oregon, and Mormon trails to the West and later it became a stretch of the Pony Express Route and the Transcontinental Railroad. More than a gateway to the West, its stone monuments – from Castle Rock to Pulpit Rock (also known as the Sphinx of the Valley) – were known to audiences around the world. Through the Illustrated London News and other sources, readers came to know its "scenes and objects of natural curiosity" (Williams, 1879, p. 116). Furthermore, it attracted the attention and praise of writers from Horace Greeley to Mark Twain. In 1860 the famed English traveler and writer, Sir Richard Burton, emphatically exclaimed, "Echo Kanyon [sic] has but one fault: Its sublimity will make all similar features look tame" (Burton, 1861, p. 144). Drawn to its fame and visual potential, Echo attracted several prominent photographers including O'Sullivan, Russell, Jackson, C.R. Savage, Watkins, and a host of others who were eager to cash in on its geological landmarks through the production of photographs and more lucrative stereographs. However, for a site that once left "a most enduring impression!" on the minds of earlier visitors, Echo was largely forgotten by the twentieth century (Merrill, 1999, p. 50). Echo's accessibility made it famous, but as the West was opened and mapped, other sites like Yosemite, Yellowstone, and a host of others eclipsed its fame. Today, the erasure of Echo's earlier importance is nearly complete as millions of travelers drive through the canyon along Interstate 80, barely recognizing that they are passing through one of the most famous landscapes of the previous century. For those interested in the history of photography, the canyon was richly alive in the discourse of photography and a fixture in the early documentation of the American West. It was, as Bushaw observed, "majestic as ever" even as "the rest of the world whizzes by, taking little notice" (2007). In the variety and volume of the images produced in the nineteenth century, it provided an ideal location for the RSP. Within a relatively short stretch, they located and rephotographed several views including Russell's Hanging Rock, which Rick Dingus rephotographed in 1978 (Figures 7 and 8). With the balancing forms of Pulpit Rock on the left and Hanging Rock to the right, Russell created a view that was both grand and terrible; it was sublime. Indeed, it seems as if the small figure is about to be crushed by the massive rocky hull looming overhead. What Dingus documented, however, revealed a place that was strikingly different. It was no longer a scene of sublimity but a broken landscape and an illusion. Not only was Pulpit Rock gone, blasted away decades earlier to make way for a larger road and additional rail lines, but Hanging Rock was revealed to be a modest overhang and not the oppressive form it was in Russell's photograph. Moreover, the landscape beyond had changed too with the rerouting of the Weber River and the inclusions of other infrastructure such as more paved roads, telephone wires, and streetlamps. In the final year of field work, Klett and Bushaw traveled to Virginia City, Nevada, which once, nearly one hundred years earlier, boasted some of the most lucrative mines on earth. From the famed Comstock Lode came gold and silver valued at more than four hundred million dollars, which attracted prospectors from around the globe. As its wealth grew, so did the town and by the time O'Sullivan came to Virginia City in 1867, it boasted several hotels, twenty-two restaurants, three theaters, and one hundred saloons. Eventually, the mines dried up and the town endured a long decay. A century later, the fame of Virginia City, like that of Echo Canyon, was greatly diminished. By the time of Klett and Bushaw's arrival, it had become a tourist town living off its former luster. Touting its rough and turbulent history, visitors were invited to tour underground mines, visit museums and saloons, purchase curios, or have a sepia-colored photograph made in an old-time photo studio (Reinhardt, 1967, pp. 160-161). In other words, Virginia City had become the typical tourist destination drawing on the nostalgia of the Western frontier. During their work in the western Nevada town, Klett and Bushaw retraced O'Sullivan's movements and rephotographed his work. When they rephotographed O'Sullivan's distant view of Virginia City, it appeared as if not much was altered. However, as the RSP worked across the West they continually witnessed a landscape that experienced profound changes with the incursion of modern infrastructure and urbanization. Many of their rephotographs revealed the ways in which reservoirs and roads had drastically altered the physical landscape. Telephone and electric wires seemed to cut through every setting. Still other features like subdivisions revealed additional ways the land was transformed. In an age of growing awareness of environmental issues, it was difficult for the members of the RSP to not be pessimistic about the future of the West. Near Virginia City, Klett and Bushaw learned that this was not always the case. When they rephotographed O'Sullivan's shot of the Gould and Curry Mine and quartz mill, they found that certain, often adverse, effects of human presence could be undone. While the mountains and hills of O'Sullivan's picture aligned, there was no trace of the once prosperous industrial site (Figures 9 and 10). This became an important comparison for the RSP, which revealed that the changes they had seen and documented could be reversed. For Klett, this was a "vote of confidence—a sort of reassuring statement" that nature could rebound and return (Klett, 1980). It was a visible gesture of hope that foliage would return such as a large tree had grown on roughly the same spot of the mill's massive smokestack. While the general impact of rephotography tends to accentuate the ill effects of time, this photograph, and others made by the RSP, suggests a different and more positive outcome. According to photo-historian Thomas Southall, "the RSP's refusal to draw predictable negative conclusions about the evidence of people in their photographs makes the project all the more useful to critics and contemporary commentators reevaluating our relationship with the land" (Southall, 1996, p. 196). Before they finished their work in the Virginia City area, Klett and Bushaw wandered into town and had their portrait made at Silver Sadie's Old Time Saloon (Figure 11). Typical of "old time" photo studios found in tourist sites across the West, visitors were encouraged to wear stereotypical costumes and pose as gunslingers, dancing girls, and other frontier types. In their portrait, Bushaw and Klett stand behind their photographic equipment holding examples of their work. To complete his mock ensemble, Klett held a toy gun with a casual air that resembles the famous image of Billy the Kid from nearly a century earlier. Despite their misfit costume hats, they wear the work attire of a modern photography survey: T-shirts, shorts, and tube socks. Despite their serious facial expressions, the two photographers understood the humor and irony of having their photograph made in the tourist trap and they reveled in the anachronism and the conspicuous play on the past. For Klett, Bushaw, and the rest of the RSP, however, photography provided a far more substantial opportunity to understand the "Old West." They were not just playing a role or a type from the past. Rather, for nearly three years the RSP retraced actual frontier photographers across the American West. They set aside elements that would have made their project seem more arcane, to focus on the photographs that O'Sullivan, Jackson, and others made more than a century earlier. Through this connection they came to a greater understanding of their practices as well as the changing nature of the American West. Their work allowed them to go beyond the myth and romanticized version of the West to see and better understand the complexities of the region and the changes which had taken place. Through their efforts in reentering places from the past, they experienced the ways in which these particular places had changed, changes which were and were not registered in their photographs. Ultimately, through the process of rephotography, which they helped pioneer, the members of the RSP came to a more subtle and nuanced meaning of Heraclitus's paradoxical conundrum, understanding that representation and perception are fluid, ever changing, and yet intricately connected.
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