Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Falls

After first visiting Yellowstone in 1881 and obtaining a photographic concession inside the new National Park at Mammoth Hot Springs in 1884, F. Jay Haynes established himself as the park’s all-but-official photographer, returning every year until his death. With cameras of varying formats, Haynes photographed the major attractions of the park—mountains and canyons, falls and geysers—but his most impressive were those made with a mammoth camera and 20 x 24 inch glass-plate negatives. With their imposing dimensions and the extraordinary clarity that came from contact printing, Haynes’s photographs vividly convey the expansive scale of the rugged landscape.