Across the West and Toward the North

Description

"In "Across the West and Toward the North," editors Shannon Egan and Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad explore connections between nineteenth-century Norwegian and American photography. Many of the most accomplished American photographers of the nineteenth century, including Timothy O'Sullivan, William Henry Jackson, and Andrew J. Russell, are taken up here alongside their Norwegian contemporaries Knud Knudsen and Anders Beer Wilse. According to the editors, these photographers captured not only the spectacular beauty and grandeur of the American West and Norway, but were part of, as Egan writes, "a transnational aesthetic" that engaged "technological change, exploitation of the environment, and . . . the consequences . . . of rapid industrial development." Far from working in isolation, American and Norwegian photographers concurrently touched on "transatlantic issues related to nation-building, immigration, tourism, and artistic production."--