Almon Harris Thompson (1839-1906) or Grove Karl Gilbert (1843-1918)
1875
John K. Hillers (1843-1925) inspecting a photographic plate in Utah while surrounded by his equipment,

Albumen silver print
18.5 x 23.5 cm (7 5/16 x 9 1/4 ins) (image/sheet)
 
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Gift of Larry J. West, Object number: NPG.2007.77
 
The photographic equipment that John K. Hillers used during John Wesley Powell's western surveys included cameras, a portable darkroom, and glass-plate negatives that together weighed more than a thousand pounds. This photograph shows Hillers inspecting a photographic plate in Utah while surrounded by such equipment. A German immigrant who was a Union sergeant during the Civil War, Hillers joined Powell's survey in 1871 when Powell needed a boatman for his expedition down the Colorado River. Hillers was hired at first as a laborer, but when he expressed an interest in photography, the survey's official photographer taught him the wet-plate process. Hillers continued to work for Powell when he became head of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 and devoted six years to documenting Native American communities in the Southwest. Like other photographers associated with western expeditions, Hillers made important contributions to the scientific understanding of the lands and Native peoples of the West.
 
LL/95911