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A.J. Russell
Trestle Work, Promontory Point, Salt Lake Valley
1868-1869 (ca)
Albumen silver print
6 x 8 ins
George Eastman Museum
LL/33163
From Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery, 1870. Andrew J. Russell painted panoramas before documenting the Civil War and the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad during 1868-1870. Russell replicated the panorama's narrative, linear approach in his railroad pictures, accounting for one section of track after the next, hardly getting out of sight of the rails. The photographers accompanying the government surveys, traveling along invisible meridian and parallel lines, labeled their prints with their precise locations. Russell not only documented the joining of the rails but also the engineering accomplishments of a multinational work crew made up largely of Chinese immigrants. The appendages of the steam locomotive, tracks, trestles, and water towers added new elements into the natural landscape and became popular subjects in literature and painting.
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