Beschreibung:

Title: Album of Albertypes from photographs by William Henry Jackson taken on the 1871 Hayden Geological Survey, during which the Yellowstone region was explored and photographed Author: Jackson, William Henry Place: New York Publisher: E. Bierstadt's Albertypes Date: [1874, but not bound until 1888] Description: 63 Albertypes from photographs. The size of the images varies a bit, the largest being approximately 19x23.5 cm (7½x9¼”); on sheets 27x34.3 cm (10¾x13½”), period full brown roan leather, covers ruled in gilt with decorative devices at corners, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, raised bands. An extremely rare and highly important album of Albertypes from photographs by William Henry Jackson, containing the first photographic views of the Yellowstone, which were instrumental in its establishment as the first U.S. national park. The proof images, produced in 1874, were made from Jackson’s glass plate negatives using the Albertype process, a then-new German technique to reproduce photographs. Only a few of the proof albums survived, only one copy known contains a greater number of Albertypes than the present. The scarcity of these albums was caused by a fire in the studio of the photographer and engraver Edward Bierstadt in early 1875 that destroyed most of the Albertypes he had printed, as well as virtually all of the original glass negatives. William Henry Jackson was in the early stages of his very long career as a photographer when he joined Ferdinand V. Hayden of the U.S. Geological Survey on an expedition to investigate the marvels of what is now the Yellowstone National Park. Jackson took hundreds of photographs of the towering mountains, the breathtaking canyons, the bubbling hot springs, and the steamy geysers, as well as the surrounding country, towns and forts on the way to the Yellowstone, creating glass plate negatives using the painstaking wet-collodion process, his studio borne by a mule. His photographs verified the amazing natural wonders to a fascinated nation, and led to the creation in early 1872 of the first national park out of “a tract of land fifty by sixty-five miles” at the Yellowstone. Hayden, leader of the expedition to the Yellowstone, was a promoter as well as a scientist, and saw Jackson’s photographs as a prime means to publicize the new park as well as help procure funding for future government surveys. The technique to be used in their reproduction, the Albertype process developed in Germany, was a refinement of the collotype, a screenless photomechanical reproduction technique that allows high-quality prints from continuous-tone photographic negatives. Edward Bierstadt brother of the noted artist Albert Bierstadt had purchased rights to the Albertype, and was contracted by Hayden to produce albums of “about one-hundred illustrations, printed by the Albertype process from photographic negatives taken by Mr. Jackson.” He began by creating the proof albums, but got no further before the disastrous fire occurred. There are five other known sets of the Albertypes to have survived – one previously offered by PBA consisting of 76 images; a set at the Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts, containing 56 prints; a set at the Denver Public Library with about 30 images; and two lesser sets. Affixed to a blank leaf at the rear is a partially printed document, completed in pencil, presenting this "set of Albertypes of the Yellowstone Region" to Mr. Martin Bash of Oneida New York. Dated January 4, 1888 and signed by James C. Pilling, Chief Clerk of the United States Geological Survey. On the front blank is an signed inscription to Mr. Bash from Charles Doolittle Walcott, also dated January 1888. This leaf is also signed by Helena Breese Stevens Sanford who would become Helena Breese Stevens Walcott later in 1888. Walcott served as the third director of the US Geological Survey, from 1894-1907 and then as the fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institut