Amazingly enough, Yosemite Valley was never visited by white men until after the invention of photography, with the result that from the very beginning there existed an almost continuous photographic record of our changing relationship with this gentle wilderness. No trip to Yosemite in the nineteenth century was complete without some photographic memories of its "Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity", and the successive images - each recording the same space at a different point in time– can be viewed sequentially, almost like a time-lapse motion picture, to reveal the changing character of the Valley. You watch as forests progressively overrun meadows; roads widen or move or disappear; and people come, bearing rifles or frisbees, wagons or motorcycles. And, in a more intimate way, these pictures form a perspective of things lost, of moments forgotten, of changes that - like the growth of a forest pass too slowly for us to see.
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