Carleton Watkins' Photography of the West

Carleton E, Watkins was a true pioneer. He was one of the leaders in photographing hard-to-reach parts of the American West and his pictures played a major role in the development of the federal parks system. Despite the rigors of travel Watkins also made advances in photographic processes and camera design. Most significantly Watkins was a leader in elevating landscape photography to an art and his influence was felt for generations. Like many pioneers Watkins was engaged in sending back reports that encouraged others to follow. In his case the popular photographs helped shape the prevailing view of the West as a place "to find freedom and to escape the constraint and congestion of urban living." In one respect, however, Watkins was not a pioneer. Sadly, after decades of hard work and international acclaim, Watkins, like too many artists before him, died blind, broken, and alone in a California state hospital. A study of Watkins' career will place his work in the context of his attempts to professionalize photography while simultaneously raising it to the status of a fine art.

Watkins was born in Oneonta, New York in 1829 and in 1851 he "left home for excitement and opportunity on the Golden Shore." Watkins came to photography accidentally when in San Jose, California he took over for a gallery photographer who had suddenly left his job. He liked the work and was kept on. This was in 1854 and by 1861 Watkins had his own studio. He had decided against offerin

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trips to photograph sites for large business interests. But far more often he was freelancing and working for the return of his previous level of success. The difficulty of these expeditions had diminished only slightly with the passing years. The first trip to Yosemite had set the standard, however. Not only was it an enormous task just getting to the valley, Watkins also had to carry everything he needed on mules -- "massive camera and plates, dark-tent, chemicals, and a myriad of related items." On his initial trip he took 2,000 pounds of baggage and one hundred large negatives. Once he had begun to work Watkins had set up his camera and dark-tent at each spot and the wet-plate process "demanded the utmost skill in manipulating the chemicals." Watkins also used the "relatively portable" stereoscopic camera to make his views of smaller subjects that were "more accessible with a small format camera." Watkins' great innovation was the mammoth-plate camera that he had specially constructed for his first Yosemite trip. Naef reports that no other American photographer had used such a camera at the time and that it was not commercially available until after the Civil War. The camera is generally considered to be his in

Category: Arts - C