Meet Carleton Watkins

Read About the Photographer Carleton Watkins

In May 1849, at 19 years old, Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) sailed from his native New York to Panama. In early 1850, at the age of 20, Watkins arrived in California. After he established his own photography business, he made his first visit to Yosemite, in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. There, he made 30 mammoth plates and 100 stereograph views that were among the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the eastern United States. Partly on the strength of Watkins’s photographs, President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1864 bill that declared the Yosemite Valley inviolable (secure from harm), thus paving the way for the National Park system.

In 1865, Watkins became official photographer for the California State Geological Survey. He opened his own Yosemite Art Gallery in San Francisco, California two years later. The walls were lined with 18 x 22-inch prints in black walnut frames with gilt-edged mats. Such elegant presentation did not come cheaply, and Watkins was accused of charging unreasonably high prices. A poor businessman, he declared bankruptcy in 1874, and his negatives and gallery were sold to the photographer Isaiah Taber, who began to publish Watkins’s images under his own name.

However, Watkins continued to photograph and, seven years later, became manager of the Yosemite Art Gallery, then under different ownership. The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed the contents of his studio, which he had intended to preserve at Stanford University.

Questions

Write or discuss your responses.

• How did Watkins’s photography have a direct impact on American history and conservation? What does this tell us about the power of images to influence political decisions?
• Why do you think Watkins chose to present his photographs in such an “elegant” way with expensive frames and gilt-edged mats? What was he trying to communicate about photography as an art form?