The Nolan Center hosted a grand opening presentation for its most recent exhibit last Tuesday, July 16: "Muybridge in Alaska: 1868." The exhibit has been traveling around the state this year, first being shown in the Alaska Native Heritage Museum in Anchorage, then in the Sheldon Museum, in Haines. The Nolan Center will house this exhibit until the end of August.
"Muybridge in Alaska" is, among other items, a collection of photographs taken by Eadweard Muybridge of Southeast Alaska in the late 1800s. These are some of the first photographs of the region ever taken, according to curator Marc Shaffer, and show what life in Wrangell and other places in Southeast used to be like.
"When I first talked to Marc he told me that he had been working on a photo exhibit of old Wrangell, and it was the year of 1868, and I was really little in 1868 so I don't really remember," Virginia Oliver joked, introducing Shaffer. "He expressed his passion for the work of Eadweard Muybridge, a proclaimed Englishman who, I would say, was one of the fathers of cinema."
Shaffer's presentation went in-depth on the life and times of Muybridge. He said that not very much was known about Muybridge's time in Alaska, which was why he wanted to put together this exhibit, as well as a documentary about the man. Muybridge had garnered some acclaim before his excursion to Southeast Alaska in 1868, and is also remembered today for his photographs capturing people and animals in motion and taking early steps into creating motion pictures. With this year being the 151st anniversary of the Alaskan photographs being taken, Shaffer felt it was time they received more recognition.
"I began planning this exhibition, as Virginia mentioned, because I'm working on a documentary about Eadweard Muybridge, the man you'll hear about this evening," he said. "I've been working on this for some time, and in 2017 I began digging into his Alaska work. There's lots of books written about Eadweard Muybridge, there's lots of articles written about Eadweard Muybridge, and his work is picked over by scholars and others. There's very little about his time in here in Alaska, a couple pages here and there."
Muybridge was born in England in 1830. Shaffer said that from a young age he was determined to make a name for himself, and in the 19th century there was only one destination for those with ambition and wanting to make a new place for themselves: The United States. He originally sold books and art in New York, and then moved west to San Francisco. Then, in 1860, he was involved in a stage coach accident that left him comatose for several days. After he woke up, Shaffer said, people who knew him said that he was never the same. Muybridge then showed a fascination with photography, and that would become his passion for the remainder of his life.
"He reemerges in San Francisco in 1867 as a photographer," Shaffer said. "Nobody knows quite how he became one. As you'll see, back in the day, photography was a very cumbersome, a very clumsy, and a very high-skilled craft."
The trip to Alaska occurred in the summer of 1868. Muybridge was brought along on an expedition led by Major General Henry Halleck. He was commissioned to photograph forts and harbors around Southeast Alaska for the military but as was common amongst photographers back then, Shaffer said, he also took his own pictures to sell when he went back south. Alaska was very recently purchased by the United States, and Halleck was leading an expedition to explore parts of this new territory.
The expedition stopped at Tongass Island, Wrangell, and Sitka. Among photographs of forts and harbors for the military, Muybridge took many photographs of the people, homes, and geography of the region. These are some of the first known photographs of Southeast Alaska ever taken. Shaffer said that Muybridge was not supposed to take photographs of the native peoples of these islands, but he did anyway. He added that it can be hard to really see the tensions between the natives and white settlers in these photos, since everyone had to hold very still and look stoic for the old fashioned photographs, but he said that tension was undoubtedly there.
Besides the subject matter, something else that makes these photographs unique is the fact that they are "stereographs." Shaffer explained that stereographs were taken with a special camera with two lenses. Each lens takes essentially the same photo, and they are put together side-by-side. When these two photos are looked at through a special viewer, however, they create a single 3D image.
Shaffer also added that these photographs are unique because they were only really possible because of how quickly times were changing when Muybridge was alive. The steamship, the camera, trains, and the telegraph were all invented and developed in Muybridge's lifetime, and each of these inventions was related to travel or communication. The world was shrinking, and previously distant parts of the world were much easier to get to.
"That's relevant to Alaska, you know," Shaffer said. "How did he get to Alaska? On a steamship, right? What was he here to do? Take pictures of Alaska, right? It was a new piece of technology. Why did the United States want Alaska? Well, partly because they didn't want the British to have it, but it was accessible. If these technologies didn't exist maybe, well I mean, the technologies didn't exist and we never ventured up this way, stuck our flag in the ground and said this is ours."
Muybridge would go on to have a long and fascinating life after Alaska, taking pictures from California to Central America.
As for the Alaskan photos, several members of Wrangell's native community spoke at the end of the presentation to say how much they appreciated seeing these pictures. They brought back memories of their family history, some said, and the pictures helped solidify their connection to their past.
"This photo, I believe, is Lu Knapp and Sue Stevens' great-great-grandfather's house, Chief Kadashaan, of the Kiks.adi," Oliver said, pointing at a particular photo in the presentation's slideshow. "I'm still standing here and I still feel a little tingly from that. From being able to look at that and to bring the connection of our house and this 1868 clan house in old Wrangell."
More about Muybridge's Alaskan expedition, as well as his life in general, can be found atwww.muybridgethemovie.com. Shaffer said that his documentary on Muybridge is still in production.
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