Princeton’s lantern slide collection includes several sets from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Washington State Yakima Project.

“Established in 1902, the Bureau of Reclamation is best known for the dams, power  plants, and canals it constructed in the seventeen western states. These water projects led to homesteading and promoted the economic development of the West.

Reclamation has constructed more than 600 dams and reservoirs including Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and Grand Coulee on the Columbia River.” http://www.usbr.gov/main/about/

The Yakima Project was authorized on December 12, 1905 and construction lasted from 1909 to 1933. http://www.usbr.gov/projects/Project.jsp?proj_Name=Yakima%20Project

“As a result of a petition dated January 28, 1903, from citizens of Yakima County to the Secretary of the Interior presenting the very favorable opportunities for construction and development, investigations were initiated which led to the beginning of construction by the Reclamation Service.”

“Between 1905 and 1958, Reclamation built several diversion dams and canals. The project includes six reservoirs that catch and hold over a million acre feet of spring runoff in the Cascade Mountains. In a normal water year, these features provide a reliable water source for Yakima Valley farmers for the entire growing season.”

1904 – Prosser Diversion Dam – Yakima River near Prosser, Washington
1907 – Sunnyside Diversion Dam – Yakima River near Parker, Washington
1908 – Tieton Diversion Dam – Tieton River, 16 miles southwest of Naches, Washington
1910 – Bumping Dam – Bumping River, 29 miles northwest of Naches, Washington
1912 – Kachess Dam – Kachess River, 2 miles northwest of Easton, Washington
1914 – Clear Creek Dam – Tieton River, 48 miles west of Yakima, Washington
1917 – Keechelus Dam – Yakima River, 10 miles northwest of Easton, Washington
1925 – Tieton Dam – Tieton River, 40 miles northwest of Yakima, Washington
1933 – Cle Elum Dam Cle Elum River, 8 miles northwest of Cle Elum, Washington
1939 – Roza Diversion Dam – Yakima River, 10 miles north of Yakima, Washington

Over the years, Edward Wilson kept The Philadelphia Photographer surprisingly focused on the interests of photographers, with limited notice of current events. The end of the Civil War was an exception and in the fall of 1865, three documentary prints appeared in quick succession. “Now our dreadful civil war is ended,” Wilson wrote, “every one is anxious to possess some relic or remembrance of it. Photography has done much to cater to these desires in the way of views of ransacked, burned and deserted cities, fields of battle, and of the dead martyrs, and portraits of the various officers of rank and merit on both sides. Views may yet be taken, such as we have described, but such a one as we present in this issue can never more be taken.”

Between 1862 and 1863, New Hampshire photographer Henry P. Moore (1833-1911) was embedded with his state’s 3rd Regiment during their occupation of Hilton Head, South Carolina, where he made some of the earliest Civil War photographs of slave life in the Deep South. One photograph documented a group on Edisto Island, where the plantation owner abandoned fifty men and women, now left to manage the property themselves. “When [the negatives] were taken, they were slaves; now they are free men and women,” wrote Wilson. https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/12/27/henry-p-moore/

This was followed with “Burnt District of Richmond, Va.” [top] taken by Cornelius Levy (died 1865) and Leon Solis-Cohen (1840-1884), who ran a photography studio at Ninth and Filbert Streets. In the summer of 1865, the men traveled south to create the  series “Views In and Around Richmond.”

A set of these prints was shown to Wilson and without hesitation, he chose one for the October issue, writing, “No pen is required to tell of the ruin and desolation reigning there. The fiery destruction which visited it in April last, left little but ruins in the principal portions of the city to tell the tale of war and woe. Main Street, especially, where once stood handsome and flourishing business palaces, banks, and public buildings, suffered to the utmost extent, and for a series of blocks, but one noble building stands erect unscathed by the flames. This is the ‘First National Bank of Virginia’ formerly the Post-office, and latterly the Confederate Treasury building. It is a handsome structure of granite, and occupies a conspicuous position in our picture – its portals still draped in mourning for our late President.”

Then in November, Wilson published this group portrait entitled “Major-Generals Anderson and Burnside” taken by John Coates Browne (1838-1918), a wealthy amateur and founding member of the Philadelphia Photographic Society. The image would have been published earlier, Wilson told his subscribers but only one of Browne’s negatives was successful and so, it took longer to print the full edition of approximately 1,000 prints.

While Anderson and Burnside are identified, there is no identification of the other two men. If you recognize them, please let us know.

There have been several requests recently for images from the family photo album prepared by Helen Henderson Chain and her husband James A. Chain. Both were artists and avid hikers, as is apparent from these photographs. Their 1888 trip took them to Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and several other European countries. Note in particular, Mr. Chain’s feet in a too-small bed.

The album holds more than 275 photographs–some decoratively cropped, some hand colored–assembled by Mrs. Chain with various captions. One source indicates that both Mr. and Mrs. Chain died in a typhooon off the coast of China while on another trip in 1892.

Recently, Helen Chain was the focus of an exhibition at the Denver Public Library entitled “Helen Henderson Chain: Art and Adventure in Early Colorado.” http://www.denverpost.com/2014/06/20/noel-helen-henderson-chain-a-pioneer-in-denvers-art-history/

This particular photograph is both hand colored for the inside pages and cropped for the title page of the photo album below.

James A. Chain, The Chain Gang Abroad: Around Europe with a Camera [photography album], 1888. Some photography by Helen Henderson Chain ( 1848-1892). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2008-0001E
There is no caption or names associated with this photograph but we assume it presents the extended Chain family in Colorado.

For nearly 40 years, Edward Livingston Wilson (1838-1903), published the most influential photography journals in the United States, beginning in January 1864 with The Philadelphia Photographer, later renamed Wilson’s Photographic Magazine. Unlike other journals of the day, filled with reproductive wood engravings, Wilson understood that actual photographs needed to be seen for his audience to appreciate this new art form and so, ‘it was determined that a photographic study should accompany each number.’

From 1864 to 1901 (when photographs were replaced by halftones), Wilson published 540 prints by 280 photographers from 142 cities in 16 countries. Within the United States alone, negatives were sent by photographers in 33 different states, remarkable given there were only 36 states in 1864 and 44 by 1890.

Thanks to the 1957 donation by David H. McAlpin, Princeton University Class of 1920, and several recent purchases, the Princeton University Library now owns a nearly complete run of The Philadelphia Photographer, with all the original photographs still in place. These are not illustrations but a separate work of art included with each issue.

In researching the history of the magazine, an index has been completed of the original photographs, the first organized by the name of the photographer: philadelphia photographer by name

A second list is organized chronologically, which is helpful in studying the development of photographic printing in the second half of the 19th century: philadelphia photographer by date

Thanks to Wilson’s never-ending appeal for submissions, the work of many notable photographers appeared in The Philadelphia Photographer, among them William Bell, Abraham Bogardus, Adolph Braun, Jeremiah Gurney, Frederick Gutekunst, William H. Jackson, Eadweard Muybridge, William Notman, H.P. Robinson, and Napoleon Sarony. Negatives were sent from as far as New Zealand, Venezuela, and South Africa.

Unlike traditional histories covering the second half of the 19th century, the pages of The Philadelphia Photographer document the multitude of photographic processes with concrete examples and detailed explanations, including Albertypes, Aristotypes, Autogravures, Bromide prints, Carbon prints, Edwards process prints, Gelatine prints (an early version of photogravure), Halftones, Heliographs, Ives photoengraving, Orthochromatic process prints, Lithium paper prints, Meissenbach prints (zinc-etching), Mosstype prints, Photogravures, Platinogravures, Three-color photoengraving; Velox prints; and Woodburytypes, among many others.

The complete run has been digitized and will be available in the future.