The New Western History & Revisionist Photography
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2000 Parallel tracks| The new Western history & revisionist photography Jonathan Richard Eden The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Eden, Jonathan Richard, "Parallel tracks| The new Western history & revisionist photography" (2000). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 3175. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/3175 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY The University oFMONTANA Permission is granted by the author to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. ** Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature ** Yes, I grant permission No, I do not^ant permission Author's Signature Date 'iL/J S. f Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's explicit consent. PARALLEL TRACKS The New Western History &; Revisionist Photography by Jonathan Richard Eden B.S. The University of Cahfornia at Santa Cruz, 1990 presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The University of Montana 2000 Approved by: Chairperson Dean, Graduate School 5 - 5 " <3^000 Date UMI Number: EP36131 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT UMI EP36131 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest' ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Eden, Jonathan R., M.A., May 2000 History Parallel Tracks: The New Western History & Revisionist Photography (192 Pgs) Director: Dan Flore New Western photographers (as I dub them) and New Western historians have been re-envisioning the American West and its history in critical, often negative ways in seeming tandem. They have followed parallel tracks for similar reasons. Both took their cues from the general critique of American society that occurred during the 1960s. And they have been reacting to the same popular perceptions about the West - that it has been thought of as both a special place and a state of mind, representing promise, opportunity, and natiiral splendor matched by the heroics of nineteenth century Euro- American pioneers. The New Western History and the New Western Photography, using essentially identical perspectives from which to criticize the respective traditional views of the West in their fields, demonstrate that a more critical view of Western history was not an "internal" development in either field, but instead represented larger cultural currents in American society. Thus, the New Western History is neither so unique nor revolutionary as it appears. In my discussion of the New Western History I give special attention to the works of three important historians: Patricia Limerick, Donald Worster, and Richard White. I focus on eight photographers - Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Richard Misrach, Len Jenshel, Robert Adams, Mark Klett, David Levinthal, and Lewis Baltz - to represent revisionist photography. I place both revisionist history and photography into a wide context of how American views of the West have changed through time. I divide western history into three periods, periods that clarify the shift from a triim\phalist West to a critical West, and the corresponding tracks of the New Western Photography and the New Western History: the celebratory West, the West in question, and the critical West. The first period, the celebratory West, dates from the late nineteenth century on into the 1940s, though in a general cultural sense, it began in the mid-nineteenth century, and in derivative forms has lasted through the twentieth century. In the mid-twentieth century photographers and historians entered a second phase, the West in question, in which they began questioning the West of celebration. The third stage, the critical West, began in the 1970s for the New Western Photographers and in the 1980s for the New Western Historians. CONTENTS Introduction I Shadows of the Past: 16 Changing Views of the West and the Origins of the New Western History II The Transcendent West: 46 The Photography of Ansel Adams, Anne Brigman, and Edward Weston III Shifting Groimds: The New Western History 65 IV Dirge to Paradise: 119 The New Western Photography pL I V The American West Processed and Canned: 164 The New Western Photography pt. II Conclusion 181 Bibliography 188 Introduction In 1989 "New Western" historian Patricia Limerick, en route to a conference on Western landscape photography, supposed that the photographs being discussed would be of the land as sublime nature, untouched in any obvious way by people. She planned to deliver a speech informing the photographers that they were perpetuating a nostalgic, unrealistic image of the West by not acknowledging that people are and have been living in the West, and that both their relationships with the land and with each other often have been not romantic, but grim. To her chagrin. Limerick discovered that photographers had already been working with these ideas for some time, and that a reevaluation of the West was not confined to historians.! New Western photographers (as I dub them) and New Western historians have been re-envisioning the American West and its history in critical, often negative ways in seeming tandem. They have followed parallel tracks for similar reasons. Both took their cues from the general critique of American society that occurred during the 1960s. And they have been reacting to the same popular perceptions about the West - that it has been thought of as both a special place and a state of mind, representing promise, opportunity, and natural splendor matched by the heroics of nineteenth century Euro-American pioneers. The New Western History and the New Western Photography, using essentially identical perspectives from which to 1 Mark Klett, Patricia Nelson Limerick, & Thomas W. Southall. Revealing Territory - Photographs of the Southwest by Mark Klett. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), pg 10 P8 2 criticize the respective traditional views of the West in their fields, demonstrate that a more critical view of Western history was not an "internal" development in either field, but instead represented larger cultural currents in American society. Thus, the New Western History is neither so unique nor revolutionary as it appears. The origins of the New Western Photography go back to the Farm Security Administration photographers in the 1930s, who showed the West not as a place of escape or economic possibility as artists had often depicted it, but as a region ravaged by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Another forerunner of the New Western History was the photography books the environmental organization the Sierra Club began publishing in the 1950s. Although the pictures illustrating these books were stylistically the same as earlier and contemporary photographs of pristine landscapes, their purpose was new: to buttress arguments for saving exceptional but threatened western lands by informing Americans what they had to lose, and inspiring Americans to political action to preserve these places. Although photographers have been working in a roughly parallel vein to New West Historians, well before historians substantially revised their views of the Western past photographers were routinely making critical, pessimistic images of the West and its inhabitants. In the mid 1950s Robert Frank presented a gloomy view of the West; its inhabitants alienated and its classic themes of opportunity, independence, and space an illusion. Richard Avedon's portraits of Westerners in In the American West, 1979 - 1984, followed Frank's portraiture in spirit - his subjects seem estranged.2 This new imagery of the West and its landscape took off in the 1960s 2 Robert Frank. The Americans. (New York; Grove Press, 1959); Richard Avedon. In the American West, 1979 - 1984. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1985) and 1970s with the work of Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, and Richard Misrach. They rejected the romantic tradition of depicting nature as gorgeous and untouched by people. These photographers recognized the presence of people in the landscape, and depicted that presence as primarily malevolent. Their least grim images explored how the Western landscape appeared outside urban areas. Viewers of their photographs have been reminded that despite the comparatively small human populations in much of the West, there were, and are, few places one does not encounter signs of people, even if only bits of