September 19 – October 18, 1981
The Rephotographic Survey Project 1977-1979
The word “rephotographic” doesn’t exist in the English dictionary, but was the word chosen to represent the spirit of the project Ellen Manchester and JoAnn Verburg and I created in 1977. The Rephotographic Survey Project (RSP) started as an idea, to track down the uncertain locations of historic nineteenth century survey photographs of the American West, and then make new photographs at those sites that were meant to duplicate the original images.
Previous to our project, “repeat photographs” were made by scientists to compare changes over time to the subjects of preexisting photographs. The methods geologists used to accurately locate the vantage points used to make landscape images formed the basis for our work, but we attempted to extend those methods both technically and conceptually. To the RSP, “rephotography” meant accurately repeating the original image’s camera position, the visual composition, framing, time of year and time of day of the original photograph, while also acknowledging the participation of the photographer in making choices about the many other details that influence the ways photographs may be interpreted.
The project was based on shared curiosity about how lands have changed in over a hundred years of human intervention, in trying to learn more about how historic photographers worked and made their images, and an interest in conceptual art – in making two images look as similar as possible, even though time has changed both the subjects and the processes used to record them. Urban growth, mining sites and water impounds formed the largest changes to the land we rephotographed. Yet, in remote locations we often found that physical changes were often less than expected. We learned that historic photographers had specific points of view and we could often predict where they would set up their cameras to record a given scene.
The project had three field seasons. The first rephotographed William Henry Jackson’s work for the 1973 Hayden Survey in Colorado. The second and third seasons expanded to rephotograph the work of Timothy O’Sullivan, John K Hillers, Andrew Russell and others who worked for the King and Wheeler surveys between 1867 and 1873. The project’s methodology was devised in the first year as the original team often worked together visiting sites, discussing the process I the field. By the second and third years, team members usually worked separately in the field, attempting to cover as much ground as possible. Project photographers kept detailed records at each site, noting camera and map data that would be useful for future attempts at rephotography.
Photographers Gordon Bushaw and Rick Dingus contributed to the project during the second and third seasons. Altogether 122 sites were rephotographed in the states of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico. The project’s book, Second View, The Rephotographic Survey Project, was published in 1984. When the book came out I thought it would be my last project in rephotography, but I was wrong.