Tag: zig zag fence

Multiple images

In taking the first images of Minnehaha Falls, Alexander Hesler and Joel E. Whitney made 25 or 30 daguerrotypes in a single session on August 15, 1852.  It was an unusual beginning to the photographic record. Mostly, professional photographers took one-off tourist pictures or scenic shots of the Falls. And some of these were, in fact, reprinted endlessly. But it actually was quite rare, in those early years, for a photographer to go down to Minnehaha and take several pictures in a sequence.

Here’s an exception to that.

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French & Sawyer

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French & Sawyer, photographers from Keene, New Hampshire, published this image of the falls taken probably in the late 1860s.

It was a relatively simple matter for John Carbutt to come to Minnehaha in the 1864-1866 period.  He was in Chicago, and by 1865 there were trains between the Twin Cities and Chicago.

It took five days to travel to Minnesota from New York in the early 1870s.  Probably it took another day to get from New Hampshire to New York.  And perhaps French & Sawyer came out from Keene NH to the Great Northwest to photograph places like Minnehaha Falls.  This photo is from the late 1860s (at a guess).  Minnehaha was world-famous then, and fame was an inducement for photographers to visit here.