The Sentinels, 315 feet high, diam. 20 feet - Calaveras County 1870

Curator: Before us, we have an albumen print titled "The Sentinels, 315 feet high, diam. 20 feet - Calaveras County" created by John P. Soule in 1870. Editor: My immediate feeling is one of awe. These trees command such presence. Their size relative to that small figure gives the work a slightly unsettling feel. It’s this powerful monumentality of nature, dwarfing human presence. Curator: The "Big Trees" themselves hold loaded symbolism, reflecting the visual rhetoric that served as a tool for settler colonialism, manifest destiny, and ecological exploitation of indigenous resources. They are reduced to commodities. How can we acknowledge these trees’ majesty, while grappling with the intertwined narrative of environmental destruction that unfolded in its wake? Editor: Indeed. Trees are such potent symbols: longevity, endurance, strength, the interconnectedness of all life... here, rendered in monochrome, they gain another layer. This particular type of tree, its bark, the overall impression they give suggests something primal and unchanging. They project an image of American strength and resilience and yet its association with displacement offers contradiction. Curator: This photo also arrived in a specific political climate, one still dominated by Reconstruction and debates around federal power and authority. The exaggerated scale can then be read as a visual endorsement of dominant socio-political views. Editor: Absolutely, this manipulation of scale works as visual propaganda. Look, too, at the figures near the base of one of the trees, it looks like a surveyor and wagon. What could Soule be inferring when staging them within his compositions? I read something distinctly purposeful in that calculated detail, maybe suggesting that new methods and innovation will enable us to dominate the environment in unprecedented ways. Curator: Exactly. By showing these massive trees he’s not just documenting them; he is actively constructing a narrative that has implications extending far beyond the merely botanical. This is not only landscape photography; this is power. Editor: A very good point. As we look at this majestic photograph of these California redwoods, it's essential to recognize both the sheer natural beauty captured but also the embedded layers of a complex, interwoven narrative. Curator: It pushes us to really engage with difficult, uncomfortable aspects of our shared history and its lingering impacts.