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The Big Picture:
Panoramic Views of California
July 26, 2006 through April 27,
2007
Unknown photographer,
Catalina Island, gelatin silver print, c.
1900.
Collection of The Society of California
Pioneers, gift of Mrs. A. Bielke.
Photography is a medium that
had been in existence for less than ten
years when gold was discovered at Sutter’s
Mill in 1848. Indeed, California and photography
can be effectively said to have grown up
together. Early California photographers
honed their craft by experimenting with
and expanding on the quality and range of
the images they photographed. One result
of this experimentation was the panoramic
image, providing the viewer with “the
big picture” of the region’s
cities and landscapes. Every ”big
picture” is composed of a series of
individual photographs lined up horizontally
to create a wide-angle view. Made at first
using several photographic plates and later
with landscape cameras, the panoramic view
enjoyed recurring waves of popularity throughout
the 19th century.
Panoramic photographs serve
as important records of California’s
past, giving in a literal sense the broadest
view of how the state developed from the
early 1850s on. A few panoramas were made
in the form of daguerreotypes, but most
were done using albumen prints or gelatin
silver prints. Many of the spectacular images
in the exhibition are the work of California’s
finest photographers, including Eadweard
Muybridge, Carlton Watkins, William Shew,
and Willard Worden. From the rapidly altering
skyline of San Francisco and the stark beauty
of California’s gold fields to the
terrors of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire
and the pre-Tinseltown torpor of Los Angeles
pueblo, these big pictures are treasures
for the professional historian and casual
viewer alike.
This exhibition was curated
by Marcia Eymann, co-editor of Silver
& Gold: Cased Images of the California
Gold Rush and a frequent curatorial
consultant in the Bay Area. All the exhibited
works come from the permanent collection
of The Society of California Pioneers.
Eadweard Muybridge,
Panorama of San Francisco, from California
Street Hill, 1877
Albumen silver print from wet – collodion
glass plate negative.
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