"Alaska’s Golden Beaches: Photography of Nome’s Gold Rush from 1900-1905"

On the heels of the Sierra Nevada and Yukon Gold Rushes, the beaches of Nome, Alaska attracted treasure hunters in late1899. Prospectors sailed north on steamers from San Francisco and Seattle and combed the beaches for gold, resulting in Nome’s nickname, “the poor man’s paradise” due to its perceived mining ease. In this analysis of selected photographs from Dr. William Hopper’s personal archive, Alice Wilson considers the physician’s visual expression of the Nome Gold Rush as documentarian and interpreter.

While the images reflect the adventure of Alaska, they also record hardship and change. Wilson suggests that the archive complicates a romantic notion of riches, suggesting that the use of natural resources changed the environment and its inhabitants, and positioning the photographer as more ethnographer than doctor.