Grand Canyon and Great Falls c. 1880s

Curator: I see a landscape that feels like a memory, a sepia-toned dream. Editor: This is a vintage albumen print by F. Jay Haynes, capturing the Grand Canyon and Great Falls of Yellowstone National Park. Haynes, born in 1853, documented the American West extensively. Curator: The light seems so deliberate, like it's trying to convey the sublime. The waterfall looks almost like a ghostly tear in the landscape. Editor: Water, of course, holds immense symbolic weight. It can signify purification, the unconscious, the source of life itself. This photograph places those ideas within the context of the vast American wilderness. Curator: Yes, and there's a tension here, between the vulnerability of the water and the stoicism of the canyon. I feel the myth of untamed nature so common in art of the time. Editor: Absolutely. Haynes was selling an experience, an idea of nature, along with a photograph. Curator: It makes me think about how our vision of nature is always mediated. Editor: Indeed. A timely reminder.