With a great love for adventure, America’s earliest field photographers crossed great divides, scaled steep ridges and endured severe weather conditions to document the topographical features of the frontier landscape for early government survey expeditions. The work of several of these photographers – William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter – is currently featured in the Currier Museum of Art’s exhibition, “American Sublime: Early Photographs of the Western Frontier” through October 3.

Among the 25 recently acquired images in this exhibition are prints that document westward expansion with images like Watkins’ 1868 print, “The Secret Town Trestle” or O’Sullivan’s 1874 print “Wheeler Survey Shoshone Falls, Snake River Idaho.” In addition, the exhibition features prints by Adams and Porter that celebrate the majesty of the wilderness, including two photographs offering contrasting views of Yosemite’s Merced River, a mammoth plate print by Watkins, circa 1870, and a rare Parmelian print by Adams, 1928.

“Despite the harsh conditions, these photographers set up makeshift darkrooms in wagons, and carried heavy cameras, chemicals and large glass plates by mule train over extremely rough terrain to remote sites,” said Kurt Sundstrom, associate curator at the Currier Museum of Art. “As a result, we have an extraordinary collection of photography that captures the spectacular wilderness that shaped many Americans’ views of the potential of the west.”

Carleton Watkins, “Merced River,” 1870.

The Currier Museum of Art acquired these photographs fromJonathan Stein, a New Hampshire resident who built this collectionover a period of 25 years. Stein acquired these works in the 1970s,at a time when collectors were just be-ginning to appreciate thehistoric significance and artistic beauty of Nineteenth and earlyTwentieth Century photographs. These photographs are in anexceptional state of preservation and they provide a wonderfulcounterpoint to the Currier’s collection of Nineteenth andTwentieth Century landscape paintings, most of which are of theeastern states.

“The sweeping skies and sublime landscapes poetically captured in these photographs offers an important insight into a world untouched by modernization,” said Sundstrom. “These dramatic images truly celebrate the glory of nature and evidence the extraordinary artistic achievements of the greatest early American landscape photographers.”

The Currier Museum of Art is at 201 Myrtle Way. For information, 603-669-6144 or www.currier.org.