Cave of the Winds, Niagara Falls

Although born in Canada, George Barker moved to Niagara Falls, New York, in the early 1860s and eventually earned fame for mammoth-plate photographs that viscerally conveyed the scale and sublime nature of the falls. Adding a bit of his own artistry to nature’s handiwork, Barker frequently printed dramatic clouds from a second negative, as in this particularly strong and well-preserved print. Visitors to the Cave of the Winds, we are told in a guidebook of the period, passed the huge “Rock of Ages” (seen here in the foreground) and descended along “rough wooden bridges, through clouds of spray . . . [and] little pools among the rocks, where miniature Niagaras form plunge baths unequaled anywhere.”