Mark Klett, Ellen Manchester, JoAnn Verburg, Gordon Bushaw, Rick Digus, Second View: The Rephotographic Survey Project, 1984

The Rephotographic Survey Project is one of those rare events in photo history, like the Farm Security Administration photographs of the 1930s, that provides us with a document of remarkable range and information. Conceived and directed in 1977 by Ellen Manchester, Mark Klett, and JoAnn Verburg, the project burgeoned into a three-year effort to locate and rephotograph the sites of the government survey of photographs of the late nineteenth-century. The staff of the project expanded to include photographers Gordon Burshaw and Rick Dingus, and they rephotographed the pictures primarily of Timothy O’Sullivan and William Henry Jackson, but also of J.K. Hillers, A.J. Russell, and Alexander Gardner.