San Xavier, the canyon, and a pool

The mission south of Tucson

The San Xavier print is a photochrom dated 1902, Library of Congress item 2008679603, in the Photochrom Print Collection. The call number is LOT 13923, no. 394. Detroit Publishing Co. number 53878. The reproduction number is LC-DIG-ppmsca-18202. The rights line on the piece is the Library's: no known restrictions on publication. The copyright notice printed with the view is 1902, Detroit Photographic Co.

The catalog record on the piece describes the church of Mission San Xavier del Bac in the desert south of Tucson, on the Tohono O'odham Nation: a domed west bell tower, a carved front, and an unfinished east tower. It says Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino first came to the O'odham village of Wa:k, also called Bac, in 1692, and that the present church was built under Franciscan direction from 1783 to 1797. The money ran out before the east tower got its dome. In this 1902 view that tower is still bare brick. The same record says it was first plastered in 1906, that people call the mission the White Dove of the Desert, and that it was named a National Historic Landmark.

The color is the Detroit photochrom method, which the piece states plainly: a black-and-white negative printed through a separate lithographic stone for each color. The sky and the white walls are ink decisions laid over a photograph. That is the picture to hang, not a later postcard of the plastered tower.

Capistrano, with a credit left open

The Capistrano print is titled as Mission San Juan Capistrano, William Henry Jackson / Detroit Publishing, about 1899. The institution on the piece is the Library of Congress. The credit is more careful than the title. It says the Commons tag is public domain, that the print sits with the Detroit Publishing Co. collection, and that a personal credit to Jackson is unconfirmed. The story on the piece says Jackson, whose Yellowstone pictures helped create the national park, later ran the Detroit Publishing Company and photographed the Southwest missions. It also says the ruined Great Stone Church had collapsed in an 1812 earthquake.

Those two sentences should stay distinct when the print is on a wall. The earthquake and the ruin are what the picture shows. The name Jackson is the shop's title, and the credit says the personal attribution is not confirmed. Detroit Publishing is the firmer line. No known restrictions on publication.

The same canyon, thirty-one years apart

Timothy O'Sullivan's Head of Canyon de Chelly is dated 1873. The piece credits a Bibliothèque nationale de France Gallica print of a USGS Wheeler Survey photograph, public domain. The story says O'Sullivan, a Civil War photographer, joined the Wheeler survey and hauled a darkroom wagon into Diné (Navajo) country, and that Canyon de Chelly is still Diné land, home to families who farm the canyon floor.

Edward S. Curtis photographed the canyon again in 1904. The piece is in the Library of Congress Curtis Collection, no known restrictions, and the Commons file is the source linked on the product. The catalog description says seven Diné riders cross beneath the walls, and that the land dwarfs the people. Hung beside O'Sullivan, the pair is two public records of one canyon, not two styles of decoration. The dates on the pieces are 1873 and 1904.

Sapphire Pool, a different kind of West

Sapphire Pool is another Detroit photochrom, about 1902, Library of Congress item 2008678255, reproduction LC-DIG-ppmsca-18055. The record says copyright 1902 by Detroit Photographic Co., Detroit Publishing Co. number 53333, Photochrom Print Collection, lot 13923, no. 247. The subjects listed are springs, pools, and national parks, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. No known restrictions on publication.

It does not belong in the canyon geographically. It belongs with the others because it is the same kind of object: a colored print made so a person far from the place could own a view of it. Five records, three institutions, one wall. The Library of Congress does not endorse the shop. The prints do not need that.