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Cite As
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Biographical/Historical note
Scope and Contents note
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: Alfred A. Hart photographs
creator:
Hart, Alfred A., 1816-1908
Identifier/Call Number: PC0002
Physical Description:
5.5 Linear Feet
(1 album: 375 unbound photoprints: albumen; 375 photonegatives;
154 photoprints: stereograph, mounted)
Date (inclusive): 1862-1869
Information about Access
Open for research.
Ownership & Copyright
The material is in the public domain. There are no restrictions on use.
Cite As
Alfred A. Hart Photographs (PC0002). Department of Special Collections, Stanford University
Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Alternative Formats
Other Finding Aids
Biographical/Historical note
Alfred A. Hart, born in Norwich, Connecticut on March 16, 1816, was the principal
photographer for the Central Pacific Railroad during the construction of the Overland Route.
He photographed the construction from 1865 to 1869 when the last spike was driven by Leland
Stanford at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869.
Although he worked as a photographer as early as 1857, Hart was trained as a portrait and
landscape artist; after his work for the Central Pacific, he continued to paint and was
awarded the gold medal for his paintings at an exhibition at the California State Fair in
1872. Nonetheless, Hart is remembered for his work in visually documenting the construction
of the western half of the first transcontinental railroad.
It is not clear just how Hart managed to be hired as principal photographer for the CPRR.
Ironically, Carleton E. Watkins was a life-long friend of Collis P. Huntington (CPRR's
business manager), and Watkins performed as a photographer for the railway after Hart's
commission was completed. It is possible that Watkins was so well known during the time of
the railroad construction that the Central Pacific may have thought his professional fees
would have been more demanding than Alfred Hart's. Yet, according to Charles B. Turrill,
photographer and biographer of Carleton Watkins, the friendship between Huntington and
Watkins was so dear that bills and payments were of secondary consideration, and that
Watkins did not require any payment for his services with the Central Pacific. Because we
are lacking information about Hart and Watkins it is difficult to draw clear conclusions as
to why Hart was given this opportunity instead of Watkins.
Hart quite clearly and consciously used his artistic talents while giving an honest
representation of the railroad construction. Andrew Russell, photographer for the Union
Pacific Railroad, undoubtedly attempted to bring art into the documentation of his portion
of the railroad line, but he was at a circumstantial disadvantage because his route was more
desolate. The terrain in Hart's territory was much more aesthetically pleasing, and offered
a wider variety of back-drops to his construction scenes. While Russell focused much more on
trains, construction and frontier towns along the way, Hart was able to turn his camera to
mountain lakes and quiet river banks, giving his images a more universal appeal competitive
with landscape photography of his day. Hart's highly artistic railroad views were much more
than mere documentation; they were such fine examples of photographic imagery that they were
able to help set a trend of producing stereo cards in special series independent of the
railway commission and separate from large publishers. Selling his stereo views thus became
a successful commercial endeavor.
Hart was working in a period when the wet collodion plate was the most modern process
available. This cumbersome process was a vast improvement over the earlier daguerreotype in
that it produced a more desirable image with a more realistic reproduction, even though the
process itself was complicated. Collodion had to be applied evenly on a clean glass plate,
which was sensitized in a bath of silver nitrate. Next, the photographer had to wait a few
minutes to allow the bromides and iodides of the prepared collodion to react with the silver
nitrate; then a minutes-long exposure was made while the plate was still wet. Removing the
still-wet plate from the camera while in a darkened area, the photographer quickly poured
developing solution evenly over the glass. From this point the glass had to be rinsed
thoroughly with clean water, a commodity not always readily available to field
photographers. The image was then fixed by immersing the plate in a solvent of silver iodide
until the salts were freed. Again the glass had to be rinsed to rid it of all chemicals, and
then it was dried by passing it over the heat of a lamp flame. Finally, the plate was
varnished (while still warm from the lamp) in order to protect the emulsion.
In addition to all this hazardous chemical processing Alfred Hart had to endure, as a field
photographer his equipment consisted of a view camera (probably about 18 by 22 inches from
front to back), complete with tripod, plate holder and slides, all made from solid wood.
Other items on his list of weighty, but essential, equipment were ground glass, lenses,
shutters, glass plates, and a dark tent, all of which had to be transported above and beyond
points reached by railroad workers.
After 1869 Hart continued to work as a photographer and moved around the country selling
his photographs. Carleton Watkins acquired some of Hart's negatives in 1869 where they were
kept in his San Francisco studio. Prints from the negatives were sold to the public.
Unfortunately, Hart's negatives were destroyed the 1906 earthquake along with the rest of
Watkins' studio, but not before enough prints had been produced and sold to allow for the
survival of most of the Central Pacific Railroad collection.
From 1872 to 1878 Hart worked in San Francisco as a portrait and landscape painter. He died
on March 5, 1908 at the Alameda County Infirmary.
[Taken from Mary Blessing's essay,"Alfred A. Hart: Frontier Photographer," 1979]
For more information about Hart and his photographic techniques, see Glenn Willumson's
master's thesis
Alfred A. Hart: Photographer of the
Transcontinental Railroad
. (UC Davis, 1984)
Scope and Contents note
The Alfred A. Hart Collection includes one photograph album of 365 images, and 106
stereographs. The majority of the stereographs are duplicate images from the album. However,
there are also ten stereographs of the home of Leland and Jane Stanford in Sacramento
(images that do not appear in the album).
The album measures 33 cm x 27 cm x 6 cm (13" x 10.5" x 2.5") and has been disbound (The
binding has not survived.). There are 49 gilt-edged boards, constituting 94 pages of
photographs. There are 4 photographs per page. The photographs have been arranged in
geographic order, from California to Utah. Some of the pages have fewer than four
photographs. These are:
Page 6: 2 photographs only Page 65: 1 photograph only Page 70: 3 photographs only Page 71:
1 photograph only Page 94: 3 photographs only
There are four blank pages in the album that were not numbered:
--Between pages 59 and 60 --Between pages 70 and 71 --Between pages 71 and 72 --Between
pages 74 and 75
The numbered stereographs are arranged numerically in four boxes. The fifth stereograph box
contains the ten photographs of the Stanford family house in Sacramento (interior and
exterior views). There are two stereographic images that do not appear in the album. These
are #489 ("Snow Scene in the Mountains") and #494 ("Snow Shoes"). For better access to the
images, the photographs in the album have been indexed in an online catalogue with the
following seven fields:
1) Image number 2) Title of image 3) Subjects 4) Geographic sequence number 5) Geographic
area 6) Existence of a stereograph for the album images 7) Page number of the album
The records for these fields have been sorted, and these reports constitute the core of the
guide to the Hart collection.
The image numbers, titles, and geographic areas were assigned by Hart. The geographic
sequence number, subjects, indication as to whether a stereograph exists for an image, and
the page numbers of the album, were assigned by the indexer.
Image number
Each photograph has a unique number assigned by Hart. The following numbers were not used
by Hart in the album at Stanford University: 208, 219, 238, 253, 306, 307, 308, 309. There
are also two photographs numbered"275." For indexing purposes, these have been assigned the
numbers"275a" and"275b." These photographs are both entitled "Eagle Gap. Truckee River" but
each is a unique view.
Title of image
Each photograph has a title assigned by Hart. Often the altitude and distance from
Sacramento is included.
Subjects
The Hart photographs richly illustrate people, places, and things: the construction of a
nineteenth-century railroad in all its phases (excavations of the road, grading, track
laying, trestle construction, tunnel digging, etc.); locomotives; train cars (boxcars,
flatcars, cabooses, etc.); laborers (Caucasian and Chinese); Native Americans; topographic
features (mountains, valleys, deserts, rivers, lakes); and frontier town scenes. To help
make these images accessible to researchers of wide-ranging interests, subjects have been
used to index them. The number of subjects varies according to what was captured in the
photograph. For example, image #26 is a simple photograph of a ravine, and"Auburn Ravine" is
the only subject given to this photograph. On the other hand, #211 "West Portal Tunnel No.
1, Grizzly Hill" (which includes a train), has been assigned many subjects: "Tunnel No. 1,"
"Grizzly Hill," "Locomotive," "Boxcar," and "Combine car."
In addition to named mountains, rivers, lakes, towns, and people, the following subject
words are used:
Boxcar Boy Brewery Bridge Caboose Camera and photographer Camp Canyon Chinese Combine car
Culvert Depot Embankment Excursion party Flatcar Girl Handcar Indian Laborers Lake
Locomotive Lumberyard Palisades Passengers Quarry Ravine River Sawmill Snowbank Snowplow
Snowshed Stagecoach Teamsters Telegraph pole Train Trestle Tunnel Turntable Valley Wagon
road Wagon train Wagons Water tank Water train Waterfall
Geographic sequence number
Hart did not take the photographs in precise chronological or geographic order, but for
presentation of the images in the album, he arranged them geographically from the start of
construction in Sacramento to the completion in Promontory, Utah. Thus, image #1, a
photograph of the locomotive
Governor Stanford,
happens to appear as the twenty-second photograph on album page seven. Another example,
image #234, a view of the wharves in Sacramento, is the first image on page one of the
album.
To assist the user who is interested in the geographic element of the photographs, and/or
the geographic progression of the images, a geographic sequence number was given each
photograph. In this way, other subjects of the photograph can be linked to the geographic
area and sequencing of each photograph, such as mountains, deserts, valleys, rivers.
There are four photographs per page, and the geographic sequence numbering begins on the
top left, to the top right, to the bottom left, to the bottom right, in this manner: G-1,
G-2, G-3, G-4 on page one; G-5, G-6, G-7, G-8 on page two, etc. For example, G-1 (#234) is
"Railroad Wharves at Sacramento City." G-168 (#99) is "Cisco, Placer County." G-289 (#284)
is "Freight Depots at Reno," and the last photograph in the album is G-365 (#364), "Railroad
at Ogden, Wahsatch Range in Distance."
Geographic area
Each photograph is included in one of seven broad geographic areas, assigned by Hart. These
are:
1)"Valley of the Sacramento" 2)"Sierra Nevada Mountains, Western Summit" 3)"Sierra Nevada
Mountains, Donner Lake" 4)"Sierra Nevada Mountains, Truckee River, Eastern Summit" 5)"Washoe
Range, Truckee River" 6)"Humboldt River, The Desert" 7)"Wahsatch Range, Great Salt Lake"
Stereograph
Hart had stereographs made for several of the images that appear in the album. To indicate
whether a stereograph exists for any particular image, a simple"yes" or"no" was used.
Page number of album
Each album page was numbered, and each photograph has its page number associated with it in
the index.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Central Pacific Railroad
Railroads
California -- Description and travel -- Views.
Photographs.
Central Pacific Railroad--Construction
Hart, Alfred A., 1816-1908
Hart, Alfred A., 1816-1908
Kamena, Ruth M.