John Fielder strides toward the summit of Mount Lincoln near Leadville. Fielder hiked 250 miles and drove over 20,000 miles in eight months last year to photograph Colorado from the same spots that pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson stood on more than a century earlier. -- Photo by Linda McConnell

Double Exposure Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 William Henry Jackson's story Fielder/Jackson photos Colorado Then and Now Each Sunday during 1999, the Denver Rocky Mountain News will publish companion photographs by William Henry Jackson and John Fielder. The photos, taken more than a century apart, are included in Fielder's upcoming book, Colorado 1870-2000, to be published in August.

He doesn't seem to notice that the sky around him is turning a malevolent blue-black. Nor is he distracted by the fortissimo of distant thunder. Even when lightning sizzles to the northwest, all he cares about is, "I've got the same clouds he had! I've even got the same snow patterns on the mountains!"

A cloud drifts across the sun.

"Damn!" he hisses.

The cloud moves on, and he takes his photos.

"The light isn't quite even," he says, "but it's close enough."

Then John Fielder turns and, from the summit of Mount Lincoln, looks back at the magnificent panorama of lakes, shadows and mountains of the Ten Mile Range, and smiles.

He's one step -- and one photograph -- further in his pursuit of a legend.

This is a story about two men who looked through cameras at the opposite ends of a century of vast change in Colorado.

The first is William Henry Jackson, a pioneer photographer whose 70-year career produced some of the most enduring -- and defining -- images of the American West.

The other is Fielder, Colorado's most celebrated contemporary nature photographer, a man whose 17-year career has spawned 25 books and more than 100 calendars of the state's scenic glory, many now standard fare for coffee tables and walls.

But Fielder's 26th book will be more than another dazzling paean to what he has called the "sensuality of nature."

Instead of heeding his own instincts, Fielder used Jackson's vision as his compass, following in Jackson's footsteps -- literally. Where Jackson stood in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s in Colorado, Fielder stood last year, capturing the views the master recorded with his camera more than a century ago.

When Colorado 1870-2000 is published in August, it will juxtapose 115 Jackson photographs with 115 Fielder images shot from the same spots. Some of Fielder's photographs are strikingly similar to Jackson's, showing little effect from a century of intense human activity throughout the state. Others reflect an astonishing evolution.

"I want to show the changes that have occurred as a function of geology and biology," says Fielder, 48. "How rocks have moved, how trees have fallen or grown up, how some sandstone formations have eroded dramatically."

Another crucial goal is to lay bare "the sheer change in the landscape due to human use and settlement," he says. "I want to show some of the consequences of that human use of the land.

"Look, I don't want to pass judgment on all the industries that helped make this state great," he continues. "And I don't want to preach to people about what they should be doing. I want the photos to speak for themselves.

"The perspective of then and now has great potential to make manifest how we've used the land in the past 130 years, how we used the land then, how we use it now.

"And after people have seen the book, maybe they will extrapolate and project how the land will look in another 130 years.

"And if they feel a little bit queasy about where they think those next 130 years may take the land, maybe they'll do something about it, suggest new courses of action to better protect the land."

He pauses and, with almost a straight face, adds, "Not that I have an agenda or anything."

Fielder started work on the project last January with Eric Paddock, curator of photography and film for the Colorado Historical Society. The society, which runs the Colorado History Museum at 1300 Broadway, is helping to produce the book in partnership with Fielder's Westcliffe Publishing.

Fielder and Paddock culled 10,000 of Jackson's Colorado photographs to find the best candidates for then-and-now comparisons, weighing subject matter and quality of image. Some were obvious choices -- for example, Jackson's historic photo of the Mount of the Holy Cross, near modern-day Vail. Others -- an 1890s shot of downtown Trinidad -- were less obvious but compelling in their own right.

By the end of February, Fielder and Paddock had pared the list to 300. In March, Fielder hit the road. Between his first photos, taken in March (the area around Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder), and his last photos, taken in December (from Boreas Pass overlooking Breckenridge), Fielder found himself in dicey circumstances and breathtaking locales: squirming through the ductwork of a building in Colorado Springs, straddling boulders 400 feet above the serpentine Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

In more than a few cases, he had to return to the same place because of either bad weather, the wrong light or his obsessive need to nail a shot just right. Ultimately, he hiked 250 miles and drove 20,000 miles, crossing and re-crossing the state, stenciling his footsteps over Jackson's, attempting to accomplish in a year what the master had done in 30.

And, as a typically arduous three-day shoot last August demonstrated, it wasn't easy.

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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