Henry Bosse

Henry Bosse was a cartographer and draughtsman for the Army Corps of Engineers when he began photographing the Mississippi River in 1883 to map its course and to record feats of engineering. This cyanotype depicts jetties constructed to steer the current to the center, thus carving out deeper shipping lanes. Faster, cheaper, and easier than other photographic processes, cyanotypes were mainly used to copy technical drawings. It was an apt process for the industrial subject, but Bosse was equally mindful of how it could be used to create visually compelling imagery. He framed the river with trees to one side and shot from a vantage point that leads viewers into the picture. The oval vignetting-a device primarily used in portrait photography-further transforms the scene into a self-contained aesthetic object.