Month: April 2025

SNAPSHOT CULTURE

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The next to the last chapter in Pastoral and Monumental: Dams, Postcards, and the American Landscape delves into the decline of the postcard in American life. Donald Jackson concluded that it was a form of communication that competed with new technologies:

Postcard culture did not end in cataclysmic collapse. It slowly shrank as a distinctive feature of modern life, ceding ground to mass media as well as to amateur   photography, slide projectors, and super 8 home movie footage. With the ascent of personal video cameras and recorders in the late 1970s, the creation and consumption of images became ever more integrated into American’s social fabric. Digital technology of the twenty-first century with every cell phone and PDA serving as a camera has only further entrenched images into the social media that connects people through a flourishing Internet. A century ago, there was no Internet. Instead, a burgeoning mail system provided a mechanism for the sharing of visual imagery on a scale that someone at the beginning of the nineteenth century—before the invention of photography—would have found astonishing, if not beyond belief. Picture postcards of the early twentieth century represented an amazing cultural construct, one involving a tremendous range of participants and devotees.

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Dr. Jackson observed that in addition to commercially produced imagery of dams, the public created their own pictures when inexpensive cameras became available:

Dams are well represented in this snapshot culture. As captured in a multitude of personal photographs, people visited, posed in front of, and relaxed at dams and reservoirs throughout the United States. From the 1920s on, the settings for such snapshots came to be dominated by monumental structures.

Mixed in with amateur-produced postcards in the book are a few snapshots.

Amateurs often copy the look of professional artists, at least to the limits of their ability and equipment. In the case of snapshots that practice has been reversed. A number of art photographers shoot snapshot style, incorporating the off-handed mannerisms of amateurs. These professionals are often collectors of images by the public. From the baskets full of anonymous family snapshots found in flea markets, they’ve pulled expressive, amusing, and the unintentionally arty image for inspiration. Like Walker Evans, some contemporary pros acquire all genres of vintage photographs.

Visitation of dams is very popular and hundreds or thousands of family snapshots memorializing these outings. Many do not identify the dam in the picture.(click on image to enlarge)

Boots and Danny did ink the back of their snaps, identifying Hanson’s big sculpture as a “winged statue—Boulder Dam, 10-9-54.” (click on image to enlarge)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photography arrived without a stylistic tradition. Its esthetics evolved with more vernacular input than painting, which evolved over centuries of academic study. Camera imagery was often not considered art or suitable for museum display. Its documentary value was recognized from its earliest days.

 

 

 

 

 

PICTURE A DAM ON A MAILABLE CARD

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This text is from Leland’s amazon.com review:

Pastoral and Monumental: Dam, Postcards, and the American Landscape by Donald C. Jackson is an original take on water resource development. Books on dams are usually politicized, often technical, and unnecessarily rhetorical. Rarely are discourses on river blockages as nuanced as Donald C. Jackson’s study. The postcard illustrations and highly readable text document the history of dam building in the United States. The book clearly shows the evolution from small dams that drove water wheels used for grinding grain or sawing lumber to mammoth multipurpose projects, which have debatable justification. Between the nostalgic era of “the old mill stream” and pork barrel government impoundments stand the heroic dams of the Depression. The public’s perception of these developments is extraordinarily told in popular imagery.

The title page of Pastoral and Monumental is handsome. The text is lucid, and more palatable to the average reader than most treatments of water resource development. (click on any image to enlarge)

 

The book is also a phenomenal telling of the rise and fall of the picture postcard. I don’t recall any book on technology that quotes Susan Sontag and Errol Morris. In addition to Jackson’s reputation as an expert on engineering projects, it must also be acknowledged that he has a profound grasp on photography and mass media. Jackson has used postcards and photographs as source material, not merely illustrations of ideas. They contribute to the reader’s understanding of our perception of dams. This is a de facto history of the postcard – as good as any specialized history. People interested in postcards and photography (he includes snapshots and stereo cards as well) would enjoy this book, as well as anyone for or against dams. It’s impressive the way he blends the evolution of postcard culture with dam technology.

 

It’s a very handsome, substantial book, with color throughout (although many cards are monochromatic) and razor-sharp illustrations and an excellent value. I’ve got three shelves of books on dams and this one is perhaps the most fun to look through. Books on important environmental matters need not be boring or pedantic.

Our dam collection contains postcards, but this book has made us realize how significant these objects are to understanding the issues of controlling water for human purposes. Jackson, a professor of history at Lafayette College, has authored several well-regarded books on dams and their builders. He is skilled at documenting a social, economic and cultural environment in which these massive and costly alterations of river flows are conceived and built.

 

 

 

 

 

DAMMED PLATES

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A souvenir, something that evokes a place or vacation experience, is purchased to remind the traveler of their trip or to be gifted to a friend or family. Such stuff is sold in shops near attractions. Now with the internet you can also order some items online. Souvenirs verify you trekked to Niagara, the Great Natural Bridge, or Vegas. That’s their intent at least.

On the back of some plates are descriptions of the dam. The reverse of the artist rendering in green of an African dam reads, “This Spode plate was made to commemorate the completion of the dam at Kariba Gorge on the Zambesi River, in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. 1960” It is imprinted “Spode England”. On the reverse of the 5 ½” plate of the powerhouse of Garrison Dam, N. D. is printed, “Hand painted ENCO N.Y.C. Made in Japan.” Collectors begin picking up plates with state, city, monuments, natural wonders, and church (and dam) iconography and guides were published. American kilns produced million of these souvenirs beginning in the 1920s. The fad has pretty well died out. (click on image to enlarge)

Ceramic plates with images of attractions or destinations became popular “I’ve been there” artifacts in the late nineteenth century and have persisted in one form or another since. Clay is cheap and can be shaped into many items. Advances in ceramic technology allowed complex patterns to be applied to the surface of a plate. By the 1870s decorations no longer had to be applied by an artisan with a brush but could be stenciled. This improved and lowered the cost of producing decorated wares. Numerous firms in England, Germany, Japan, and America competed to produce souvenir china and pottery.

Around the central view of Mt. LeConte, Great Smoky Mountain National Park are two historic buildings and two dams. One dam is a major government structure; the second is a small power source for an antique grist mill. Great or small dams are landmarks often visited and souvenired. (click on image to enlarge)

Glancing through these two collectors’ guides to souvenir plates we find imagery of natural wonders and built landmarks. Courthouses, tall steepled churches, or post offices were perhaps not tourist draws but prosaic souvenirs were probably the product of a special order by a local civic group. Souvenir plates were not dinnerware. They were for display. A fixture of middle-class households was the china cabinet where a ceramic record of the owner’s travels could be seen. By the 1920s, wire plate hangers became available allowing plates to be hung on the wall like pictures.

In state or regional montages, dams pop up among bridges and historic monuments. Plates solely dedicated to major water resource projects are not unknown. Some may have been manufactured to mark a dam’s dedication or a ceremonial anniversary.

Serious examinations of any given water resource project would be enhanced by the inclusion of a picture of it on a plate. Its esthetic style and the fact that it was once considered worthy of being a decorative object would impart a certain realism to the discussion of its hydrologic and environmental impact.

GALLERY: Dams, canals, locks and reservoirs (lakes) are notable landscape-shaping features. These manmade landmarks seem to be coequal with natural wonders like Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon in the judgement of plate manufacturers.  Indeed, the builders of great dams push the idea that their river control projects are as grand as the most spectacular wonders of nature. (click on any image to enlarge)