Third Views, Second Sights:
A Rephotographic Survey of the American West
by Mark Klett

This is the first book of a trio of rephotography books by Mark Klett. I've already recommended the first two books: Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers and After the Ruins, 1906 and 2006: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. Klett's original rephotography project was done in the late 1970s. He, and a team of others, took photographs done by the western survey photographers, William Henry Jackson, T. H. O’Sullivan, and William Bell, in the 1880s and located the precise location, time of year, and time of day and retook the photographs. This resulted in a book titled Second Views that has been out of print for some time. The book showed both sets of photographs. Twenty years later Klett did it again resulting in three views. This time he included other media and those, and all the photographs, are also available on a website.

Third 3 View

Third View revisits the sites of historic western American landscape photographs. The project makes new photographs, keeps a field diary of its travels, and collects materials useful in interpreting the scenes, change and the passage of time. The Third View project began in 1997 and completed fieldwork in the year 2000. Over the course of four years the project revisited 109 historic landscape sites, all subjects of nineteenth-century American western survey photographs. The project’s "rephotographs" were made from the originals’ vantage points with as much precision as possible. Every attempt was also made to duplicate the original photographs' lighting conditions, both in time of day and year. Most sites are represented in a series of three views taken at different times. The original photographs were taken by photographers such as Timothy O’Sullivan, William Henry Jackson, John K. Hillers, and William Bell. The photographs were made for the western geological and geographical surveys of the 1860’s and ‘70’s. These surveys were lead by Ferdinand V. Hayden, Clarence King, Lt. George Wheeler, and Major John Wesley Powell. The survey photographs were typically the earliest to be made in the American West, and form the baseline of an important visual record. The pictures are benchmarks for monitoring physical changes in the land as well as providing access into the earliest ways land and culture were represented by photography.

Location
Pyramid Isle, Pyramid Lake, Nev.

The book, unfortunately, is not available from my local library system but I got it on an interlibrary loan. The book comes with a DVD of what is on the website. There are also instructions on how to locate exact locations from the original photograph. When I get the 5x7 together, I want to do documentary pictures around the south end of Whidbey Island. Some of that will have to include some rephotographs. This is just too cool.