Three pictures from a very quiet hike this past Friday to the top of West Mountain. The traprock ridge forming this mountain is a Simsbury Land Trust preserve, paralleling the main Metacomet Ridge to the east. We could see Mt. Tom in MA from here.
While photographing this spot, I thought of the many understated 19th century landscapes which exist. In the US, many of these were stereoviews from the 1860’s; affordable albumen prints intended for 3d viewers from places like the White Mountains, Niagara Falls and Watkins Glen. At the same time that these were being made, the Civil War was in progress and Brady, Gardiner and others were shooting their scenes of the battlefield dead.
JOHN TODARO 
A beautiful trilogy that does justice to an underrepresented landscape that is probably healthier in many respects than it would have been at the time of the Civil War. It evokes many hikes in the woods of many Eastern states.
Good points. There’s no shortage of areas, especially in the rural east, that are underrepresented in the photography canon
Fascinating! Your photos, especially the first one, really have a quality of straightforward respect for the landscape that the photos you refer to had. But of course, the Civil War photos were a whole other thing, revolutionary, I would think, and such an historical record. Not that the others weren’t important too – what an interesting fact to point out, that both genres were in motion at the same time. I once had one of those old stereoscopes and I’m sorry it disappeared during one of many moves.
That’s great that you had a stereoscope; you never mentioned that. I’d like to hear more about that.
Your comment about the revolutionary nature of the civil war photographs is well-said, although British photographer Roger Fenton technically covered the topic first with his images of Crimean War soldiers and nurses (but no images of casualties, that I’m aware of). Any analysis of Brady and Gardiner’s achievement should reflect the profit motive which seemed pretty undeniable, as well as the reality that Gardiner and O’Sullivan moved corpses into “better” positions and did the same with weapons. But that shouldn’t take away from the fact that the photographs are haunting records like none that came before. Or that the pictures are incredible timeless images.