Photography & Ephemera

FISKE, George (American, 1835–1918). El Capitan, Yosemite Valley. Circa 1890. Albumen silver print (7 ¼ x 4 ½”) signed and numbered in the negative, mounted on heavy stock (probably taken from one of the Yosemite commercial photo albums that Fiske produced). A striking view of the world’s largest exposed granite monolith taken from the banks of Ribbon Creek on the north side of Yosemite Valley in what is now Yosemite National Park. This formation was named after a loose Spanish translation (“El Capitan”) of the local Native American name for the cliff (“To–to–kon oo–lah”) by the Mariposa Battalion when they explored the valley in 1851. In 1879, Fiske moved to Yosemite after both apprenticing and working with two early Yosemite photographers, Charles L. Weed and Carleton E. Watkins, becoming the Valleys first year–round resident photographer after a long hiatus in his career. Upon Fiske’s death in 1918, the celebrated American landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, suggested that Fiske’s remaining negatives acquired by the Yosemite Park Company be stored in the Yosemite Museum’s fireproof basement, but his request was ignored and the negatives laid neglected in a sawmill attic which burned in 1943. "If that hadn't happened", said Adams, "Fiske could have been revealed today, I firmly believe, as a top photographer, a top interpretive photographer. I really can’t get excited at [Carleton] Watkins and [Eadweard] Muybridge—I do get excited at Fiske. I think he had the better eye." (Hickman & Pitts, 1980). Adams was unquestionably influenced by the early American photographer’s landscape views; using many of Fiske’s inspirations in his own work when visiting the park for the first time in 1916 (See Ansel Adams’ “El Capitan”, printed 1952).