Nevada Fall, 700 Feet High, Near View, No. 1636 from the series "Yosemite Valley"
1860/69
Medium
Albumen print, stereo
Dimensions
Each image: 8 × 7.7 cm (3 3/16 × 3 1/16 in.); Card: 8.7 × 17.6 cm (3 7/16 × 6 15/16 in.)
Classification
stereograph (albumen)
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
143971
Art Historical Context
Thomas Houseworth’s “Nevada Fall, 700 Feet High, Near View” is a striking stereograph from his “Yosemite Valley” series, produced between 1860 and 1869. The albumen print presents two nearly identical photographs mounted side by side on a card, designed to be viewed through a stereoscope that merges the images into a single, three-dimensional scene. This technique allowed mid-nineteenth-century audiences to experience the dramatic scale of Nevada Fall—captured here in crisp detail—as if standing before its cascading waters. As one of the earliest photographic records of Yosemite’s iconic land...