ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

"Just as the Hudson River School painters commonly used the lightning-blasted tree stump as a symbol of nature's destructive power in the midst of pastoral beauty, so the Florida photographers commonly used this image of the oak or palm tree leaning over a river." -Jay Mechling

PANORAMIC PHOTOGRAPHS AS ART

Some of the commercial photographers who found Florida such a profitable place to set up business early in the twentieth century aimed to create photographs that could be appreciated as art as much as souvenirs of a Florida visit.

Florida's photographers were familiar with the nineteenth-century traditions of American landscape and riverscape painting, especially the romantic visions of the Hudson River School of painters. As Ruth K. Beesch notes in her essay introducing the catalog for a 1989 exhibition of Florida landscape painting between 1870 and 1930, the painters of Florida developed their own set of visual conventions and symbols, expressions reminiscent of the established nineteenth century landscape styles yet also particular to the special landscapes that Florida offered. The painters of Florida landscapes, explains Beesch, were portraying nothing less than a mythical Eden, a tropical arcadia of exotic animals, such as the alligator, and a lush jungle floor and canopy. Tourists need not visit Africa or South America. This jungle Eden was nearby.

THE BEACH

The beaches of Florida offered their own possibilities for awe, wonder, and the experience of sublime beauty. It is at the beach that the panoramic photographers in Florida found a subject worthy of the format. While Florida boosters in the early twentieth century marketed orange groves, tropical riverscapes, and the "last frontier" of the Everglades to draw tourists and customers for land sales, the main attraction of Florida for winter visitors was the mild weather and Atlantic Ocean bathing beaches. The paradox of comfortable wintertime bathing in the ocean, a common visual theme in Florida commercial photography even today, began in this period.

Three of the most prolific Daytona panoramic photographers: W.L. Coursen, R.H. LeSesne, and Grenell, documented the famous cars and drivers such as Sir Malcom Campbell and his speed records in the "Bluebird" and Ralph DePalma in his Packard Racer. A series of panoramic postcards by Coursen recorded the ocean crash of Frank Lockhart's Stutz, named "Black Hawk", including Lockhart's rescue from the water. The panoramic format suited well these long, sleek cars seeking land speed records, but Coursen's attention to the crash reminds us that panoramic photographers also recorded disasters - from natural disasters to fires and dramatic car wrecks.

Jay Mechling is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He received his B.A. (1967) in American Studies from Stetson University and his graduate degrees in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania (M.A. 1969, Ph.D. 1971). He writes regularly about Florida tourism and about vernacular photography as historical evidence.  He and Elizabeth Walker Mechling (also Stetson Class of 1967 and with graduate degrees from Temple University) guest curated and wrote the catalog for the Southeast Museum of Photography's  exhibition, "Embellishing Eden: Hand-painted Photographs of Florida," which opened in October of 2001. They live in Alameda, California.

"Florida's landscapes, riverscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, and human activity were well-suited to the panoramic medium, and one cannot imagine a better medium for capturing so dramatic a scene as the beach at Daytona, the aftermath of a hurricane, or a beach crowded with bathers." -Jay Mechling

All images are vintage panoramic photographs.

  After the Storm, Miami Bayshore Drive, Anonymous                                          Beach, Bathers, Cars, Horse, Anonymous

  Beach, Cars, Flying biplane on right, Anonymous                                                King of Speed 245 MPH!, Campbell Bluebird II, W.L. Coursen