The Camera and the Canal: Imagining Ecologies of Empire from the Isthmus to California

For Californians, the construction of the Panama Canal was directly linked to the reconstruction of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire which would culminate in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Once the city rebuilt and the canal completed, San Francisco became the geo-strategic location par excellence for an American nation in the midst of imperialist expansion. Photography played a central role in this new geo-political imagination of U.S. empire as it was closely tied to the environmental imagination of the American West—as were the two (re-)construction projects of the city and the canal. This paper traces how the intimate links between Californian photography, massive environmental transformation, and imperial desire coalesced in the run-up to canal completion in Panama and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.