In this American landscape photograph, Asia exists first in the bodies of the few laborers we see. At Malakoff Diggins in Nevada in 1869, we can assume that the laborers were of Chinese descent, thus, the presence of Asia throbs in the muscles of these workers. In the image, however, that narrow conception of Asia would translate to only a few small figures in a photograph with grander subject matter.
But, in fact, Asia imprints on the American landscape through the labor of those bodies. Tunnels, railroads, and, in this image, the now smooth, embattled cliff are products of an Asian-descended workforce. Thus, Asia moves with bodies across continents to change continents.
A desert meets a cliff which meets a tree-line which meet the sky. At first, the image appears to be a typical American West landscape photograph, common in the pioneering spirit of the mid-19th century. A waterfall divides the center of the image. But it is there that several narrative times converge and reveal why this is not actually a pristine landscape.
In geologic time, cliffs wear slowly, but hydraulic mining and capitalist human demands accelerate this process dramatically. Streams of rushing water hit the cliff as small figures walk through the rubble—presumably shattered from earlier mining—looking for gold. With this exposure time, the water blurs but the figures are still clear.
The depth of field goes from a deep forest in the distance to a tree limb just before the photographer, consuming land and bodies in this surveying gaze. Besides the recognizable trees that line the cliff and the felled tree limb at the front, many parts of this scene become abstract shapes. There is a strong visual resonance between the curving pipe leading up the cliff and the log at the front, or the abstracted curves of water and the uneven slope of the earth beneath the trees.
Amidst all these shapes, though the laborers are not blurred, they are almost lost in the image. This is not a portrait of workers, but the photograph at least reveals their existence, speaking truth to the pioneering, colonizing process that labored to shape the United States of America, coast to coast. They exist as part of the larger process of destructive chaos: the cliffs get destroyed for marginal amounts of gold and profit.
The anonymity of the laborers has a parallel in the erasure of distinctive landscape features. The silt around the laborers reveals that the distinctive, hard rock in the distance has been (and for a few years until it became outlawed, would continue to be) destroyed into fine particles.
The photograph does what the water does to the cliffs, namely erase distinction, albeit through distance, not environmental violence. We cannot see the individual features of any of the laborers so we assume they are part of a mass of Chinese laborers that were present in California around 1869.
Barthes writes that one of the unnerving aspects of photography, and particularly portrait photography, is that each (undoctored) image reveals traces of real scenes with real objects and people. Which means that over time, these figures will die. In this image, we see a document that preserves the image of laborers and the landscape as it exists in that human and geological moment.
This document, however, speaks to many deaths.
Since it is an old photograph, we assume the people in it are dead, but we rarely have that feeling too about the landscape in an antique image. Trees may change, but over the course of 150 years, cliffs would stay the same—except if humans become involved.
Death-in-progress is here too as humans become anonymous (“Chinese laborers”) and landscapes become indistinctive. Hoses and the camera itself both bring a type of character death to their subjects.
However, we can also see birth, if we try to. Images like this can erase histories if we forget who labored. The small figures, if they become raceless, become lost. Their anonymity is a past death, but we can prevent future deaths and further erasures.
Classes like “Asian American Art” at Stanford resurrect the importance of a few small figures in obscure Western landscape photographs. Viewing this image and looking for Asia, reminds us that Asia had a role in literally shaping the course of American history through carving its continent and connecting two coasts. Only then can we begin to remember (or re-imagine) the life of each Asian (and Asian-American) person who was here.