Landsacape, Exploration and the New Frontier

Landscape, Exploration and the New Frontier'

As the visual new frontier moved west in 1850, with the expeditions of Timothy O’Sullivan, and Carleton Watkins to expedition to Yellowstone a similar frontier is opening in Central-America for investment and nature lovers. The government of Guatemala looking for development in their native land contracted two photographers the Italian Agostino Someliani and the British Eadweard Muybridge; to produce travelers albums for promotion and development .
The photograph I selected is part of six albums produced by E. Muybridge in Guatemala during 1870 the intention of the photographer was to show the beauty of the place but at the same time to use these image, captured in the new frontier, to stimulate the imagination of investors. In this beautiful picture of the Lake Atitlan from the East he advertises land for coffee farms. This image is important because it has the entire element described by A. H Hoy page 115, to be both a landscape and exploration photograph: formidable foreground for the viewer to position himself, to give a sense of depth the photographer alternate planes of dark and light . In addition Eadweard Muybridge is including a human figure to have a sense of proportion as Timothy O'Sullivan did. All this was common knowledge based in the training as painters like Gustave Le Gray. Mr. Le Gray in his famous photograph The Great Wave is “full a romantic admiration for the power of rolling waves and clouds produced with two plates because the wet collodion was not very sensitive to blue and green”(116). On the other hand E. Muybridge in his portable studio in Guatemala, he did not have that capabilities to alter or enhance the print, but he is trying to convey the idea of the power of nature, when masterly covers the sky with branches. In the picture, also Eadweard Muybridge is posing himself as the romantic viewer astonished by the beauty of the landscape with two volcanoes in the back ground and the immensity of the of the lake are the alternate planes of dark and light. And at the same time his pictures are opening the new frontier for exploration.