More than with other industries, photography followed mineral strikes—the very materials upon which the medium depended. Photographers were among those seeking their fortunes in the gold or silver-fields, or else would-be Argonauts found greater success in service, and a ready market for portraits among miners eager to send proof of their new experiences to distant relations. Robert H. Vance was one such photographer, who, after leaving his home state of Maine and operating a studio in Boston, circumnavigated the Horn to Chile, where he opened two successful studios serving mine administrators. After approximately three years, he followed the silver miners to San Francisco (via Bolivia, Peru, Panama, and Mexico), becoming the most renowned photographer of the 1848-50 Gold Rush, marketing his skills to the cosmopolitan society that gathered in Northern California. His fame stretched as far away as Hong Kong, where he opened another studio. His career relied upon mineral extraction twice over; as a material component of his medium, and in directing his response and marketing to population booms that transformed settlement throughout the Americas in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
The “miner’s inch” refers to a means of measuring the flow of water, as through a flume or sluice—technologies used by miners to separate precious ores from gravel and tailing waste. The phrase is apt in considering Vance’s career through the lenses of the so-called oceanic turn and supply chains: is it possible to measure his rate of flow, separating his photographs from dross? Vance’s correspondence from South America amply demonstrates that his business was deeply dependent on photographic supplies he could acquire only from Boston, impacting his trajectory. Although none of Vance’s Chilean plates have survived, there are many examples of his work in California, suggesting material differences in photographic preservation among nations. My essay focuses on the transpacific flow of ideas, laborers, materials, and practices among Pacific Rim nations in the mid-nineteenth century through his example, drawing on evidence from Vance’s Californian photographs and newspaper announcements from throughout the Americas. This research is drawn from my larger project “Silver Pacific: A Material History of Photography and its Minerals, 1849-1890,” which seeks to transform the geographies typically associated with American photographic history. Vance did not traverse the US interior; as such, his perception of “America” was largely a coastal one, informed by ocean voyage.
Keywords: photography, supply chains, transpacific, minerals, mining, materiality
Monica Bravo, assistant professor of the history of photography, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, https://artandarchaeology.princeton.edu/people/monica-bravo
After leaving home and operating a studio in Boston, Robert H. Vance circumnavigated the Horn to coastal Chile, where he opened two successful studios serving mine administrators. After three years, he followed the miners to San Francisco, becoming the most renowned photographer of the 1848-50 Gold Rush. Vance’s correspondence from South America demonstrates that his business was dependent on photographic supplies he could acquire only from Boston. My essay focuses on the flow of ideas, laborers, materials, and practices across the Pacific Rim in the mid-nineteenth century, considering Vance’s career through the lenses of the oceanic turn and supply chains.