Carelton Watkins, American, 1829-1916
Sometime between 1849 and 1851, Watkins left his home in New York state for the California gold fields. In 1854 he worked as an operator for Robert H. Vance's daguerrean gallery in San Francisco where he first learned the daguerreotype process. After learning the collodion process in 1858, Watkins opened his own gallery called
the Watkin's Yosemite Art Gallery. He made several trips to Yosemite Valley and to the Northwest and Southwest, and by 1867 he was considered to be one of the best of the California landscape photographers.
Watkins won many medals over the years and he was especially known for his mammoth-plate landscape views of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove. His large 16"x20" photographs capture the sublime beauty of the west with remarkable detail. Over his 50 year career he also took many photographs of
western cities, mining camps, orchards and ranches. He left us with an
amazing and large body of photographs that are not only remarkable for stunning compositions, but also for a sense of history that is only possible through a photograph. In 1906 his gallery and most of his work was
destroyed by the great San Francisco earthquake. Fortunately he sold his
photographs to tourists and collectors during his life time and his work is well represented in smaller formats such as stereo cards and cabinet cards. His larger mammoth plates are harder to find. No more than 20 prints of any one mammoth plate negative are known to exist. His photographs can be found in most major museums.
Bibliography:
James Alinder, David Featherstone, Russ Anderson, Carleton E. Watkins: Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon, San Francisco, CA: The Friends of Photography, 1979.
Thomas Weston Fels, Carleton Watkins: Photographer, Williamstown, MA: Williams college/Clark Art Institute, 1983.
J. W. Johnson, The Early Pacific Coast Photographs of Carleton E. Watkins, Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1960.
Douglas R. Nickel, Maria Morris Hambourg, Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999.
Peter E. Palmquist, Martha A. Sandweiss, Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
Peter E. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer, 1861-1874, Troy, MI: Bedford Arts, 1989.
Amy Rule, Carleton Watkins: Selected Texts and Bibliography, Oxford, England: Clio Press Ltd., 1993.
Richard Steven Street, A Kern County Diary: The Forgotten Photographs of Carleton E. Watkins, 1881-1888, Bakersfield, CA: Kern County Museum, 1983.
Peter E. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West, Forth Worth, TX: The Amon Carter Museum, 1983.
