This famous painting, American Progress by John Gast (1872) came to symbolize the concept of Manifest Destiny in the late nineteenth century.

“American Progress is an allegorical representation of Manifest Destiny. Here Columbia, intended as a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she travels; she holds a school book. The different economic activities of the pioneers are highlighted and, especially, the changing forms of transportation. The Native Americans and wild animals flee.”  (Wikipedia, “Manifest Destiny.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny )

My idea was to update this symbol to reflect something of the 140 years that have passed since it was created.  My vision is somewhat on the negative side; however I included some positive elements as well.  I place my additions all to the right of Columbia – indicating a linear form of development from the past to the present.  I tried to continue with Gast’s emphasis on transportation, including freeways, a Maglev Train, F-22 jet fighters and the space shuttle launching.

This project metamorphosed as I worked on it – some originally planned elements didn’t work (sometimes after spending some time working on them).  However I am pleased with my overall result.  The cityscape (an aerial view of Tokyo) fit perfectly behind Columbia.  I like the industrial smokestacks and space shuttle in the background, however they are a little hard to see – I couldn’t find anyplace else to put them and had to keep them small to maintain some sort of realistic perspective.  One particular effect I am quite pleased with was duplicating the dark sky in the upper left of the painting, flipping it horizontally and copying it to the upper right side.  This transformed the original bright outlook (bright sky behind Columbia) to a vision of an even darker future.  I made the new dark future even darker than the darkness Columbia is displacing.

I could do this project again and come up with a completely different result – the possibilities are endless.  I could do a strictly historical interpretation or a more positive one – this is just what I ended up with.

One thing I learned is that things can get complicated with a large number of layers, and so it’s a good idea to label them clearly!

I think this idea works pretty well.  There are some elements I would consider changing, if I could find better images.  Over all, I am satisfied with this result.

(Project for class at the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois – Photo-montage dealing with symbols or metaphors.  Cropped to 12×18 inches to conform with assignment)

You may view a larger size on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tom-henneman/4433204995/sizes/o/

American Progress - John Gast

American Progress, John Gast, 1872 (original)