William Henry Jackson and the Florida Landscape

Author(s): Michael L. Carlebach

Source: The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol. 23, Florida Theme Issue (1998), pp.
86-95
Published by: Florida International University Board of Trustees on behalf of The
Wolfsonian-FIU
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1504164
Accessed: 23-04-2015 22:05 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Florida International University Board of Trustees on behalf of The Wolfsonian-FIU is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

William
the

Jackson

Henry

Florida

and

Landscape
By Michael L. Carlebach

a photoMichaelL.Carlebach,
anddocumentary
journalist
teachesin
photographer,
the Schoolof Communication
at the University
of Miami,
CoralGables,Florida.
Heis
the authorof severalbooks,
the mostrecentbeing
American
Photojournalism
Comesof Age (Washington,
D.C.:Smithsonian
Institution
Press,1997).

byWilliamHenry
Photographs
Jackson.FromArchivesand
OttoG.
SpecialCollections,
RichterLibrary,
of
University
Miami,CoralGables,Florida,
exceptwherenoted.

illiam Henry Jackson (1843 -1942) came to Florida

for the first time in 1887, lured in part by the state's
comfortable climate. By then in middle age, the
country's most famous frontier photographer welcomed the chance to spend the winter months in
northern and central Florida. But Jackson was not on vacation. He came to
Florida to photograph; that he could do so under a warm winter sun made
the work much more pleasant, but it was still work. Nor was he in Florida
simply to make fine-art pictures of the legendary Floridawilderness. Jackson's
employers were railroadmen and hoteliers, and they needed pictures to help
sell the state as the country's premier tourist destination. He was the right
man for the job (fig. 1).
Jackson was born in April 1843 in Keesville, New York,a tiny hamlet a few
miles from Ausable Chasm, a tourist attraction bordering LakeChamplainin
the northeastern corner of the state. He had some early training as a painter
but drifted inexorably into photography, working first as an assistant in various
photographic studios, then, after a brief stint in the Army during the CivilWar,
as a retoucher for the Vermont Galleryof Art. He left for the West in 1866 after
a final, bitter argument with his fiancee.1
As Jackson was just beginning his great Western work from a small studio in
Omaha, Nebraska, the Reverend HenryJ. Morton, an Episcopal minister and a
professor of chemistry and physics at the Universityof Pennsylvania,published
a three-part series in The Philadelphia Photographer, a popular and influential monthly, extolling the opportunities awaiting serious photographers in
Florida. Despite the state's well-known pictorial qualities, few professionals
worked in Florida in that period immediately after the CivilWar,preferring,
at least in Jackson's case, the dramaticvistas of the mountain states. There
was, as a result, a dearth of salable photographs of Florida, a fact that seemed
to irritateMorton. "Florida,the land of flowers, ought also to be the land of
photographers," he wrote. "The scenery is novel, varied, and beautiful, affording fine subjects for the artist...." He noted that Northern tourists flocked
to campsites and hotels in Florida each winter but were usually disappointed
with the selection of images available as souvenirs. "Few scenes in these

1. Jackson left for the West at 10:30 PM. on Saturday,14 April 1866. "Iknow because I wrote it down.
I was methodical in my misery,"he wrote in Time Exposure. TheAutobiography of William Henry
Jackson (New York:G. P Putnam's Sons, 1940), 83.
DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

87

&.
s--

:"';

ii
:''

I
":*?I?':

Fig. 1. OldCityGate, St. Augustine,c. 1894.

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

":'

:;

..

'a~~~~~.

of Mount
Fig.2. Stereograph
of the HolyCross,Colorado,

far as we have been able to judge, are badly chosen and worse executed."2
Morton was correct: there was a huge and mostly untapped market for pho-

1873.Thisimage,which

tographs of Florida.

seemedto manyAmericans
to
suggesta divinehandinthe
settlementof theWest,was
oneof Jackson'smostfamous.
Privatecollection.

Despite the importuning of Morton and others, only a few professional photographers took advantage of Florida's burgeoning tourist industry in the
two decades following the CivilWar.During these years Jackson made his living trekking through the West, compiling thousands of views of the Rocky
Mountains and the Yellowstone country as well as a stunning collection of
portraits of Native Americans. In the process he became known as America's
preeminent frontier photographer, and some of his images attained the status
of icons (fig. 2).
Jackson was adept at capturing what many of his contemporaries perceived
to be the very essence of Western settlement: the drama of building railways
across a wild and seemingly savage land and the subsequent spread of
Americans into that uncharted country. Although he assiduously cultivated an

image of himself as a simple, if also courageous and gifted frontier photographer, he was, in fact, far more complex. As historian Peter Bacon Hales noted,
Jackson "presided over the mapping, bounding, and settling of the American
West and the larger American landscape." For more than half a century he
meticulously

documented

the processes that fundamentally changed the

American landscape. And the work he did in Florida mirrored his Western
portfolio, offering compelling evidence of both an extraordinary technical
mastery of the medium and an uncanny ability to make pictures encapsulating
the dominant concerns of Gilded Age America (fig. 3).3
It was an age that endlessly extolled enterprise and industry,a time when the
entrepreneur was king. Commercial values crept into all aspects of American
as
society, affecting the arts and letters almost as much
politics and business
affairs. After the Civil War,for instance, Horatio Alger Jr. philosophized to

2. Rev.H. J. Morton, "EastFlorida and Photography,"The Philadelphia Photographer 4

(June 1867): 174.
3. Peter B. Hales, 'AVisual Proponent of Myths About the American Landscape,"Chronicle of Higher
Education (26 October 1988): B64. See also Peter B. Hales, William Henry Jackson and the
Transformation of the American Landscape (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).
88

DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig.3. GeorgeStreet,St.

.
c.
ugustine,

generations of American children - especially boys - about the moral path

to great wealth and happiness; in his 135 books for young readers, material
success was always the paramount goal and prosperity the reward for hard
work and clean living.
Jackson's work offered subtle corroboration and validation of that cultural
stance. In his images the land is indeed beautiful,but so, too, are the uses made
of it by men of vision and ambition. From 1871 to 1878 he worked for the
United States Geological Survey of the Territoriesunder Professor Ferdinand
Vandiveer Hayden, providing the government with visual evidence of the
shape and texture of the Western territories. The work done for the Hayden
Survey conveyed to the world the wonders of the West. Some of the material,
such as Jackson's views of the fabulous geysers and rock formations along the
Yellowstone Riverin Wyoming Territory,so impressed members of Congress
that they were moved to create the first national park. Preservation was never
more than a secondary goal, however. Indeed, the Hayden Survey's detailed
maps and geological studies were manna for a legion of businessmen, including the miners, railroadbuilders, ranchers, and farmers who were anxious to
use and profit from the land.4

4. RichardA. Bartlett, Great Surveys of the American West(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1962), xi-xii, 374-376.
DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

89

shoreline,
Fig.4. Coquina

;:

IndianRiver(withloneman
sittingamidthe rocks),...

c. 1880-1897.

...........~
..
.

*.............?
.....................~
......

..............
i.....
................................

During his years with the Hayden Survey,both Jackson and his pictures became
famous, and he began mass-producing photographic prints and selling them
at his new studio in Denver, Colorado. In the days before the halftone transformed the printing industry,allowing photographs to be mechanically reproduced by magazines and newspapers, photographers often sold pictures to a
public eager to own inexpensive views of celebrities, news events, and popular
attractions.Jackson tapped into this market. He sold his photographs in a variety of formats, from cheap cartes-de-viste and stereographs to handsome display prints made from mammoth glass-plate negatives. The pictures helped
publicize both the land itself and the work of railroadersand town-builders
who were busily transforming it.
When Jackson left the Hayden Survey in 1879, commissions from a grateful
railroadindustry more than made up for the loss of his government salaryand
allowed him to combine his love for travel and the outdoors with commercial
photography. "Iwanted to get a line on my chances of doing some extensive
work for the western railroads,"he wrote in his autobiography. "Itseemed to
me they were missing a great opportunity to publicize and popularize their
scenic routes."5 Success was immediate, and he began referring to himself as a
"commerciallandscape photographer."It is a useful and entirely apt description
and one that is helpful in interpreting the work he produced in Florida.
As railroadsacross the country contracted with Jackson to photograph their
routes, he was able to take his pick of assignments. He noted that when "cold
weather set in I found myself in Mexico or Californiaor Louisianaor Florida."
Hotels that catered to tourists arrivingon trains also began using Jackson's
services as their owners began "to understand the value of advertising their

5. Jackson, Time Exposure, 252.

90

DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

scenic attractions...."6Being in the tropics during the winter months was far
more enjoyable and productive than remaining hunkered down in Denver,
and by his own accounts, Jackson relished the work (fig. 4). Nothing in his
writing suggests dissatisfaction with either his clients or the assignments they
threw his way. "Ishall enjoy working here in the East,"he told an interviewer
late in the century, "forit is a little known country to me, compared at least, to
the Rocky Mountain section." Using his many contacts in the railroadindustry,
Jackson planned "to roam at will over the North and South and East, arranging
for series of pictures of the localities most visited by tourists both of our own
and foreign countries."7
With other forms of transportation either scarce or hopelessly slow and uncomfortable, especially for one loaded down with hundreds of pounds of photographic paraphernalia,the railroadsprovided a neat and comfortable alternative, and usually did so for free. "Iwas moved from station to station and
from point to point...," he wrote in 1875. "Bymaking it a point to keep on the
right side of all the various employees, I was enabled to go back and forth, and
to be put off at any point I desired."8That is a bit of an understatement. Some
of the lines for which he provided pictures went to great lengths to accommodate the famous photographer. The Denver and Rio Grande offered the use of
the president's car, for instance, and others gave Jackson his own private car
complete with darkroom and a servant.
Such cordial relations with the men who ran America's railroadsmade it possible for Jackson to go just about anywhere in the country and do so on short
notice and in relative comfort. Provided with sturdy cases for cameras, lenses,
and other equipment, "the travellingphotographer may journey from one end
of the continent to the other,"Jackson wrote in 1888, "andbe able to defy
the.. .baggage smasher, the severest jolting and dust of the Concord coach,
the more trying rattle of the lumber wagon and... the idiosyncracies of the
festive pack mule...."9
Jackson's southern excursions in the 1880s and 1890s helped do for Florida
what his work for the railroadsand the government did for the West. A close
examination of photographs of Florida credited specifically to Jackson indicates that he had commissions from Henry Morrison Flagler's (1830-1913)
railroadand perhaps from several of Flagler's grand hotels. With such assignments Jackson was assured a tidy profit, and along the way he was able to
add significantlyto his collection of pictures that could be marketed to tourists,
either as full-size display prints or postcards. After 1898, when he sold his
archive of images to the Detroit Publishing Company,he increasingly turned
his attention to the production of inexpensive views, many of them printed
in color and sold to tourists eager to purchase some visual memento of their
trip to Florida.10
Jackson's decision to enter the postcard business should come as no surprise,
for he was alwaysinterested in making his pictures availableto a mass audience.
6. Ibid., 259.
7. Cited in "PicturesqueAmerica in Colors,"Wilson'sPhotographic Magazine 35 (April 1898): 179.
8. W H. Jackson, "FieldWork,"The Philadelphia Photographer 12 (March 1875): 92.
9. W H. Jackson, "LandscapePhotography with LargePlates,"in W Jerome Harrison and A. H.
Elliott, ed., The International Annual of Anthony's Photographic Bulletin (New York:E. and
H. T.Anthony and Co. Publishers, 1888), 316.
10. FritiofFryxell,"WilliamH. Jackson, Photographer, Artist, Explorer,"in FrankR. Fraprie,ed., The
American Annual of Photography 1939 (Boston: AmericanPhotographicPublishingCo., 1938), 218.
DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

91

Fig. 5. GreenStreet, St.

Augustine,c. 1880-1897.

Cr e-t7 ;S- e3 7 e Z,

St t ae
1~fi;
-. S

?.r ,

Ct

4-

Fig.6. Orangegrove, Seville,

c. 1880-1897.
1.__

...J4AO

4OJ,i ,I,

i.+.

Fig. 7. Pelican Islandon the IndianRiver,c. 1880-1897. The DetroitPublishingCompanycollection,

U.S. Libraryof Congress,Washington,D.C.

92

DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig.9. Twowomenin bonnets,

SilverSprings,c. 1902.The
DetroitPublishing
Company
collection,U.S.Library
of Congress,Washington,
D.C.

Fig.8. Threemenin a boat,

mangroves,
JupiterNarrows,
c. 1880-1897.

Picture postcards had first appeared in the United States during the 1893
World'sColumbian Exposition in Chicago. When Congress formally approved
the new format five years later, the country was flooded with views almost
overnight. Where others saw only a fatal decline in the intricate beauty of the
handmade print,Jackson saw opportunity. The reproduction of his pictures
in halftone, whether as postcards or periodical illustrations, made it possible
to reach and affect more people, and that was always his primaryobjective.
'As the process of halftone engraving improved," he wrote, "not only did magazine pictures cut into the old 'views' market, but cheap (and increasingly
excellent) reproductions, in color as well as in black-and-white,further lowered the demand for photo prints. The latter had to be made one at a time,
while photo-engravings could be turned out by the thousands.""
ForJackson, the association with Detroit Publishing led to a resurgence in
his photographic output. Though undoubtedly interested in the manufacturing and marketing ends of the business, his first love was photography. "Now
that I was assured that the pictures I took would be profitably reproduced,"
he wrote, "Iwent back to my outdoor career with a zest as great as I have ever
known before."'2
The Detroit Publishing Company collection, now housed in the Libraryof
Congress, contains more than twenty-five thousand glass-plate negatives and
transparencies, nine hundred forty-one of which were made in Florida.In addition, the collection contains more than nine hundred mammoth glass-plate
negatives and prints made in Mexico and the United States during the last two
decades of the nineteenth century with Jackson's eighteen-by-twenty-two-inch

11. Jackson, Time Exposure, 320.

12. Ibid., 324.
DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

93

Fig. 10. Docked excursion boat,

Silver Springs,c. 1902. The
DetroitPublishingCompany
collection, U.S. Libraryof
Congress,Washington,D.C.

camera.13A small handmade book containing originalprints of FloridabyJackson

and a few others is now housed in the Archives and Special Collections of
the Otto G. Richter Library,University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. On the
surface, the photographs merely tell us what certain places in Florida looked
like at the turn of the century. But there is considerably more to the story.
The choice of subject matter is significant. Hotels and other tourist facilities
are lovingly presented; so, too, are well-known attractions such as the narrow
streets and ancient buildings of historic St. Augustine (fig. 5). Fecundity and
easy living are subtexts throughout, from Jackson's images of lush orange
groves near Seville (fig. 6) to those of mud flats in the Indian Riverteeming
with pelicans (fig. 7). The photographs Jackson produced in Floridawere
meant to promote tourism and development, and the message is decidedly
beneficent and alluring.Absent from Jackson's Florida portfolio are any
images that question or cast doubt on the rush to exploit either coastal hammock or riverside. We see instead a pretty state, one that offers visitors and
residents alike effortless living amid natural beauty. Transportation,whether
by rail or boat or horse and carriage, is readily available, and accommodations
for visitors are plentiful and luxurious.

Fig. 11. Excursionboat,

Silver Springs,c. 1902. The
DetroitPublishingCompany
collection, U.S. Libraryof
Congress,Washington,D.C.

Jackson's photographs of rivers in Florida seem at first to offer a slightly less

salubrious view, occasionally conveying a sense of mystery and awe. But that
view is usually tempered by the presence of human figures. Jackson photographed a twisted and forbidding tangle of mangroves along Jupiter Inlet,
for instance, but included in the scene three men relaxing in a rowboat (fig. 8).
At Silver Springs on the Oklawaha River,Jackson made a number of pictures,
and all of them included whimsical touches of humanity. In one, two women

13. Access to the Detroit Publishing Company collection is now available on the Internet at the
American Memory collection. See www.loc.gov.
94

DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

.,.

,A

Fig.12. DeepCreek,
c. 1880-1897.Thisappears
to be a croppedversionof
negativenumber3586inthe
DetroitPublishing
Company
catalogue.

in fancy bonnets pose in their canoe (fig. 9); in others, a jaunty excursion
boat loads up with passengers and drifts in the current (figs. 10 and 11). On
the narrow reaches of Deep Creek, he photographed a small steamer plowing
through the mist toward a lone silhouetted figure in a skiff (fig. 12). Here was
raw nature, slightly menacing perhaps, but made much less so by the presence
of plucky human beings, as wilderness gave way, slowly, to the hand of man.
ForJackson and many other Gilded Age Americans, this process of settlement
and the development of naturalresources was inevitable and ultimatelybeneficial, and his pictures reflected this philosophy. He was, after all, a commercial
landscape photographer. o
DAPA23

This content downloaded from 200.24.17.12 on Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:05:35 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

95