Rain Sculpture, Salt Creek Canon, Utah

1872·Albumen print, from the album "Geographical & Geological Explorations & Surveys West of the 100th Meridian," vol. 1·Image/paper: 27.6 × 20.4 cm (10 7/8 × 8 1/16 in.); Album page: 50.4 × 40.6 cm (19 7/8 × 16 in.)

<p>In addition to operating his own photographic studio, William H. Bell served as staff photographer for the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., where he documented wounds received by soldiers during the Civil War. In 1872, he joined a surveying expedition led by Lt. George M. Wheeler, part of a larger governmental effort to assess and ultimately exploit the lands and resources of the West. The photographs that Bell took on the expedition were not only used as references for geologists and geographers, but were also sold as stereographs or, like this print, published in albums distributed to members of Congress by the War Department. Wheeler praised photography’s ability to quickly and easily record the details of “convoluted” rock formations like this one, “so suggestive of the folds of heavy drapery.”</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1872
Medium: Albumen print, from the album "Geographical & Geological Explorations & Surveys West of the 100th Meridian," vol. 1
Dimensions: Image/paper: 27.6 × 20.4 cm (10 7/8 × 8 1/16 in.); Album page: 50.4 × 40.6 cm (19 7/8 × 16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: William H. Bell

Artist

William H. Bell

Printmaking

William H. Bell was an American photographer active in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, known for large-format landscape and architectural documentation across the western United States. Working primarily with albumen and gelatin dry plate processes, he produced systematic surveys of terrain, geological formations, and constructed environments. His work forms part of the archival record of American western expansion and industrial development during the period 1860, 1900.

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Canon of Kanab Wash, Looking South, Colorado River

1872 · Albumen print from glass plate negative

WW-1872-157485

Grand Cañon, Colorado River, Mouth of Kanab Wash, Looking West

1872 · albumen print from tannin dry plate negative

WW-1872-157487

Marble Cañon, one of the gorges of the Colorado here, 1.200 feet deep. The steep cliff is gray limestone and the slope below a brilliant red sandstone, No. 13 from the series "Geographical Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian"

1872 · Albumen print, stereo

WW-1872-093177