Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Cañon of Kanab Wash, Colorado River, Looking South
William Bell (born Liverpool, England 1830-died Philadelphia, PA 1910)
1872
- Medium
- albumen silver print
- Classification
- Photographs
- Dimensions
- sheet and image: 10 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (27.6 x 20.0 cm.)
- Culture
- Colorado River
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Graphic Arts
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
From an awkward position under a massive overhang, William Bell maneuvered his large unwieldy camera to capture the dramatic play of light and shadow on the limestone wall of the opposite cliff. Bell made this photograph while working on Lieutenant George Wheeler’s Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian. His photographs can often be distinguished from those of other survey photographers by the contrast between a strong dark element in the foreground and lighter tones that recede into the distance.
