Photographs by Stan Jorstad

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The Legacy | The Parks |
The Photographer | The Technique

Organized and circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service

Made Possible through the generous support of Gaylan’s

Designed, edited, and produced by the Office of Exhibits Central, Smithsonian Institution

Printing, framing, and selected photographs provided by PhotoMark, St. Charles, Illinois

Special thanks to Time Inc. and PhotoMark for the loan of photographs from its collection

The Legacy

I think I truly felt the power of nature when I saw Yosemite for the first time as a 10-year-old boy. I remember passing through a dense forest that I thought must have been made by giants, and then entering a magical mile-long tunnel carved through a mountain. We emerged into the light, and there it was—a view surely reserved for the gods. It was overpowering. I knew right then and there that I wanted to be part of this—I wanted to be in it somehow.

Photo by John Kelly

What I didn’t realize at that moment was that it was already in me, and I was not alone. My feelings had been shared by millions in centuries before, and that part of the great design behind Yosemite and the other national parks was to ensure that the same feelings could be shared by millions in centuries beyond. Our national parks embody a power and permanence that defy description, a beauty and wildness beyond compare. There is inspiration in every glance, every step, every smell, every touch.

Whether one can visit the national parks in person or only know of them through books or photographs, we are better for having them. As the writer Wallace Stegner said, “Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed . . .We need wilderness preserved—as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds—because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed.”

America’s national parks are among the last remaining wild places on earth, placed in trust by our nation’s leaders for all of us to protect and respect, celebrate and cherish.

Robert Redford
Sundance, Utah

The Parks

Establishing a national park system was a pioneering move for a country that had only recently closed its frontier. Signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, the Organic Act created the National Park Service to “promote and regulate” the twelve national parks, nineteen national monuments, and two reservations then under the control of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Striking a balance between preservation and public use, the mission of the new government agency was “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such a manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Today the National Park Service oversees more than 400 separate properties located in 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the American territories. Whether national park, battlefield, seashore, or historic site, each property both protects and provides access to a unique feature of the country’s natural or historical heritage.

As the park system has grown, so, too, have its number of visitors. In the early years, few people visited the properties because of their remote locations, poor roads, and minimal accommodations. In 1999, annual visitation at the fifty-five national parks alone exceeded 275 million travelers. While this tourism makes a vital economic contribution to nearby communities, it also places intense pressures on the natural landscape. Park Service personnel and public officials are actively seeking new ways to preserve these precious resources while continuing to make them available to an eager public.

The Photographer

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Our nation’s parks may not provide us with food for our bellies or raw materials for our industries, but they inspire the soul and nurture the whole human being. I know, because they have nurtured and inspired me.

Stan Jorstad, St. Charles, Illinois

Stan Jorstad lost his heart to the wilderness as a young man, and has since spent more than forty years photographing these beloved American landscapes. He was uniquely prepared to do so.

Born on Long Island, New York, in 1922, Jorstad received his first camera from his father at the age of ten. As a young man, he pursued interest in nature photography and music, supporting himself by working the midnight shift in a factory and playing his trumpet in a dance band. But in the early 1940s, the death of his father and World War II changed his life forever.

In summer of 1943, Jorstad traveled to Camp Hale, Colorado, to join the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division ski troops. While taking part in the 10th’s rigorous training in remote areas of the Rocky Mountains, Jorstad felt a deepening attraction to the wilderness and a growing concern for its preservation. He later served in three battle campaigns in Italy, earning a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. At war’s end, he moved to Chicago to study design and photography at the Ray School of Design and went on to refine his “shooting” talents with Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Torkel Korling.

Stan Jorstad’s long and successful career in commercial photography and filmmaking includes cinematography for the television series Wild Kingdom during the early 1960s. His work has been exhibited internationally and has earned him more than fifty national awards for excellence in photography. In 1979, Jorstad founded a commercial and fine art photography corporation that serves as home base for his continuing photographic sojourns to parks from the interior of Alaska to the shores of American Samoa.

The Technique

During his photographic career, Jorstad has experimented with single-lens reflex and view cameras as well as with new and antique panoramic formats. His antique 10-inch Cirkut camera, which was made around 1900, is rotated by a series of gears to provide up to a full 360-degree field of view. Although Jorstad occasionally uses antique cameras today, he favors modern 2-1/4 x 7-inch panoramic format cameras, which are lighter and more portable than their predecessors. All of the images included here (except for the Cirkut print of Capitol Reef National Park) were made with contemporary cameras.

Computer manipulation of images has become a common technique in many photographic fields. Nature photographers actively debate whether and how the viewer should be told that an image has been altered in this manner. Concerned that such artifice threatens the credibility of nature photography, Jorstad does not employ any form of computer manipulation either in the field or in his darkroom. His goal is to let light and landscape reveal nature in its purist form. It is his hope that these most-genuine images will foster an appreciated and concern for our irreplaceable natural environment.

This exhibition contains selections from Jorstad’s 1997 book, These Rare Lands, a photographic record of America’s national parks.

To purchase the book visit Grand Canyon Association’s online bookstore at www.grandcanyon.org.

These Rare Lands: Images of America’s National Parks
Photography by Stan Jorstad
Text by Mark Strand
Foreword by Robert Redford
In the pages of this splendid volume, Stan Jorstad reveals the parks in their breathtaking splendor. 158 pages, hardcover with dust jacket, 11-1/4 x 9-1/2 inches; $40.00 plus shipping and handling.