Carleton Watkins is one of the most important practitioners in the history of photography, yet with relatively little public acclaim.
Perhaps best known for his sequence of images of Yosemite – which would lead to the foundation of the first national park in the United States – Watkins inspired later photographers such as Ansel Adams in his pursuit of making thought-provoking, dramatic, and awe-inspiring images of the natural environment.
In the avant-garde of 19th century landscape photographers, Watkins’ aesthetic, coupled with his remarkable skills as an innovator, changed the course of photographic history. His story of early success is tinged by the way so much of his original work and archive were ultimately lost and his contribution overlooked. The Society is fortunate to have a sequence of Watkins’ original ‘mammoth plate’ prints which tell the story of this remarkable photographer and his passion for landscape photography.
Born in Milfordville, later renamed Oneonta, New York State, in 1829, Watkins was the son of a hotel owner and local businessman. He would fulfil his father’s dream of many years: to go West.
Watkins’ decision was in part informed by his friendship with Collis Potter Huntington, whose wider experience as a seasoned traveller, coupled with his entrepreneurial flair and head for figures (he had made money initially by marketing salted butter from the region, shipped in firkins to New York City, some 175 miles down the Hudson River), led the 19-year-old Watkins to join the Californian gold rush in 1849.
Huntington and Watkins would become key figures in the development of the new American West linked by the power of the photographic image.
Led by Huntington, they travelled down the Hudson River to New York in March 1849, sailing for Panama, from where connections would be made to reach San Francisco by ship due to the physical difficulty, cost and time of crossing the continental landmass from East to West before the introduction of rail travel.
Arriving on board a Dutch steamer, the Alexander von Humboldt, in San Francisco the new arrivals encountered a city which was still in its infancy in August 1849. The expansion of the city, led by the boom of westward migration for those seeking to make a fortune from gold panning and mining in the Sierra Nevada, was remarkable.
A year before Watkins’ arrival, San Francisco's population stood at c. 1,000 residents. In 1850, the population had risen to over 20,000 and by 1852, to over 35,000. The cramped conditions and narrow streets of the city resulted from this expansionary period and this rare survey map (below) from the Society’s Collections, shows the 1849 survey and extent of the city during this period of rapid change. Many individuals arrived in the city seeking to make their fortunes directly and quickly by staking a claim, but equally, California provided opportunities for reinvention as Watkins would experience.
Although taken 19 years later by Watkins the established photographer, we can still see in this early image of the city (below), the masts of ships in the natural harbour afforded by San Francisco Bay in the distance, and the exponential growth of construction outward from the port area.
Whilst the fortunes of the Californian Gold Rush ‘49ers’ were often mixed, with many losing their investment, or their lives, the city of San Francisco grew wealthy through the influx of fortune hunters to its streets.
Below we see a view of the growing city from Telegraph Hill, captured by Watkins, which shows the stages of development as wealth grew in the city as a result of the gold rush. Following his arrival, Watkins moved first to Sacramento where in the 1850s he worked for Huntington before taking a position at Ford’s San José photographic studio. There he learnt his craft both as a photographer, concentrating on portraits, but also as a developer and chemical processor of glass plate negatives.
Watkins was also familiar with the new form of entertainment system, the stereoscope, which enabled those able to afford the hand-held viewer to see images in 3D for the first time. The style of viewers shown below from the Society’s Collections were first invented in 1861 by the Boston-based polymath Oliver Wendell Holmes and was a popular item to purchase in a photographic studio.
A great percentage of Watkins’ studio output included card mounted stereo-views which could be purchased in pre-selected boxes by theme or subject.
By 1858 Watkins had the confidence to begin his own business working largely on a commission basis out of San Francisco, which remained one of the remotest cities in America, and California itself, having only recently achieved statehood at the beginning of that decade.
Carleton Watkins entered Yosemite Valley for the first time in 1861. The valley was at that time known only by a small number of incomers but for the pre-colonial Native Americans of California who populated the region, its landscape and resources, seasonal changes, and natural features were well understood. The original inhabitants of the Yosemite Valley called themselves Ahwahnechee, meaning ‘dwellers’ in their language. The name Yosemite means ‘they are killers’ and was given to the Ahwahnechee by their close relatives the Miwok who visited the valley to trade, maybe an indication that trade did not always proceed as smoothly as it might!
The area was not served by roads, only tracks and paths, many originally created by the indigenous peoples of the region following the contours of the landscape. This was a natural fortress and source of shelter, food, and other resources.
Watkins, inspired by figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and his philosophical essay Nature, decided that he would create a career for himself as an ‘outdoor’ landscape photographer, and specially commissioned a large-scale box camera to his own design.
Following a three-day journey from San Francisco, which also included a journey by boat along the San Joachim River to Stockton, Watkins, his men, and assemblage would have followed the mountain ridges until they finally reached Inspiration Point, which presented the first view of the extraordinary Yosemite Valley.
The image below does not date from that first expedition but is one of at least eight known views captured by Watkins from this vantage point and a visual ‘introduction’ to the Yosemite Valley. The size of the camera enabled Watkins to use a wider angled lens to capture the beauty of the landscapes that he would encounter.
The glass plates used by Watkins measured 18 x 22 inches (46 x 56 cm).
To prepare them for each photograph, the glass plate which weighed 4lbs, had to be coated with light sensitive chemicals and exposed to light whilst the solution was still wet.
Watkins travelled with his equipment: camera, glass plates, chemicals, a dark tent, and light-free box all weighing over a ton. He used a pack of mules to traverse the mountainous region working with two assistants – one, Charley Staples, was his packer and another is referred to in surviving records only as ‘Dick’.
Watkins would go to extreme lengths to select his vantage points. The height of ‘Half-Dome’ from the valley floor is 4,737 feet (1,443 metres). The renowned expert on Watkins, Peter Palmquist, posits the theory that Watkins would always choose to use early morning light to capture his images.
In view of the potential damage to the surface of his coated plates, Watkins almost certainly chose to take photographs in calm, windless conditions.
As a subject, ‘Half-Dome’ is one of the most dramatic photographs to inspire Anselm Adams in his later, 1947 capture of the same subject.
Watkins would often camp close to his chosen location the night before he took his pictures. The conditions had to be perfect, with stillness, to avoid dust damage to his glass plates during preparation. The coolness of the early morning would also have improved Watkins’ ability to get the best results from his equipment.
The exposure time for each of the Yosemite images is thought to have been approximately one hour.
The unique size of Watkins’ camera – which was the embodiment of his ambition and aspiration to achieve the most significant results – would have a great impact on how viewers engaged with what he had composed in the field, in galleries and drawing rooms far from Yosemite.
The remarkable nature of what Watkins saw and his paradisical interpretation of the valley landscapes, captured against the terrible backdrop of the outbreak of the American Civil War in that same year in 1861, would become a compelling story back East.
One of the highlights of Watkins’ work in Yosemite was his documentation of the Mariposa Grove and the exceptional giant sequoias which appeared at an almost prehistoric scale.
Located in the southern portion of Yosemite, the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias is the largest sequoia grove in Yosemite and is home to over 500 mature giant sequoias with an average height of 50-85 metres (164-279 feet).
‘The Grizzly Giant’ is thought to be over 2,700 years old.
Within that series of extraordinary images, Watkins captured a striking portrait of Galen Clark, later a commissioner appointed by the State to determine with others, including John Whitney of the California Geological Survey, what the nature of the newly formed ‘Park’ as it was described in the later bill to protect the valley, should be.
Clark became the ‘guardian’ of the Mariposa Grove following the first visit of European Americans to the site in the summer of 1855 and he is seen in the image below standing beside one of the giant sequoia trees. The sequoia genus was named for Sequoyah, of the Cherokee Nation, also known in English as George Gist, or Guess, who was born in about 1770 and who became known for the invention of the Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible for the first time.
“In their sublime presence, a person is apt to be filled with a sense of awe and veneration as if treading on hallowed ground.” Clark from his account The Big Trees of California: their History and Characteristics which was published in 1907 when he 93 years old. The book was a culmination of his 50-year tenure in the Mariposa Grove.
Clark also inspired the early work of John Muir, the naturalist and conservationist who met him on his first visit to the valley.
In Washington, Californian Senator John Conness showed his private set of the Watkins photographic prints to President Abraham Lincoln.
The President was so inspired by the images that he decreed Yosemite should be preserved as a natural wilderness, creating the first national park in the United States; the bill was passed in 1864 before the end of the American Civil War. Lincoln understood the potential healing nature of the natural landscape and Watkins’ images were a visual catalyst for the Union. Watkins, as a landscape artist in photographic form, also represented the future aspirations of Californian writers, artists, and others to document and record and respond to what they saw in the western landscape.
In 1867, Watkins also received a new commission from the Oregon Steamship Navigation Company (OSNC). This was the first foray by train made by Watkins and illustrates the commercial photographer at work and the underlying tension for his part in the exploitation of the people and landscape of the West.
The owner of the OSNC wished to promote the potential routes and riches of Portland, Oregon, and the Columbia River with the privately owned access that the company provided. The commission enabled Watkins and one assistant during a photographic expedition to indicate the key points at which to stop the train to achieve the most dramatic and informative shots for potential investors.
Here we see Mount Hood, Oregon’s highest point, in the far distance.
Watkins also captured this striking image (below) of ‘Castle Rock’ on the Columbia River from that same rail expedition. The settlement and formation of the town on the site was formally registered by the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company in 1883.
One of the oldest towns in Washington State, it became a port for steamboat trade, largely for the transportation of livestock and crops from the fertile valleys in the vicinity.
In 1869, J. D. Whitney, the State Geologist of California, published the Yosemite Guide-Book: A description of the Yosemite Valley and the Ancient Region of the Sierra Nevada, and of the Big Trees of California. Detailed geographical and geological surveys were carried out in the preparation for the publication of the volume.
Whitney’s survey work and his interest in early conservation of the natural landscape at times placed him at odds with the legislators who thought his only purpose was to locate and identify the potential for mineral and precious metal extraction in the state. Watkins, at the height of his powers, was commissioned to take photographs to illustrate the book. Within the text of the guidebook, there is a first published attempt to transcribe and capture the original given names of the landscape of Yosemite from the aural tradition of the indigenous people encountered.
The naming is important, both in recording a first translation but also in the use of the environment to name a place – ‘El Capitan’, named as a result of earlier colonial Spanish encounter, was originally named as Tutocanula, described by the Miwok as the sound made by cranes flying into the valley in winter, for shelter.
The book was published in two editions, a budget edition which featured woodcuts based on Watkins’ photographs along with survey maps, and a second, more expensive quarto edition which replaces the woodcuts with Watkins' photographs. The Society holds a copy of the second edition in its Collections.
His reputation firmly established, in 1868-69, Watkins also visited the sea stacks and islands some thirty miles west of San Francisco. Here he encountered what has been described as an ‘Oceanic Eden’. Rich in bird life, the dangerous rock outcrops were also named ‘The Devil’s Teeth’ by mariners, and inhabited by seals, sea birds and surrounded by a plethora of marine life.
Watkins showed his remarkable ability to capture the natural maritime landscape.
The islands were a regular haunt for fishermen and commercial 'eggers', given that the islands are the site of the largest U.S. seabird colony.
In 1863, demand for sea bird eggs resulting from the population explosion in the San Francisco area led to ‘The Egg War’ between rival companies. Where Watkins had captured the immensity of Yosemite, he would also document the seascape of the west coast at a time of remarkable change in 1869. The Cliff House, built for San Franciscans to view and enjoy the scenery of the stacks (which today remain closed to the public), illustrates the expansion of leisure time in San Francisco, which was by now established as a wealthy and sophisticated city.
In 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act had chartered the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad companies to undertake one of the most important and costly infrastructure projects in the nineteenth century – to connect the U.S. from East to West. This would have a dramatic impact culturally, economically, and socially, changing the landscape of what would become the post-Civil War world of the Reconstruction era.
In 1871, Watkins, now famous in the city of San Francisco, reconnected with his old friend Huntington, now a railroad baron, and in return for use of Watkins’ survey photography, Huntington’s company made a proposition to Watkins asking him to carry out railroad expeditions to document the landscape, once more for commercial gain.
This is an example of the technical photography that Watkins was well known for, and which would be used in the promotion of industrial development, in prospectus reports and investment presentations. Huntington gave the photographer unlimited travel, with a specially adapted coach for his equipment and mules/horses and one for his living quarters. Many of his photographs feature the railroad, which by this time was responsible for the expansion West.
The picture below dates from 1876 and was taken during Watkins’ journey over the Sierra Nevada by way of the Central Pacific Railroad as the train hurtles through the Yosemite Valley. It was almost certainly intended for reproduction in the CPRR guidebook The Pacific Tourist, published to promote the ease and comfort of the ‘modern’ journey west.
The undertaking, led by the ‘Big Four’ barons of the day, Leland Stanford, Collis Potter Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker involved the labour of over 21,000 workers, many of them drawn from the large community of migrant workers attracted to San Francisco from China as a result of the gold rush in 1849. Working in conditions of great hardship and physical labour, including the risk of death from explosions, rock fall and other hazards, their contribution remains largely anonymous and undocumented.
The costs were enormous – in today’s terms over 1.2 billion USD.
‘Hell on Wheels Towns’ – shacks and tent cities sprung up along the construction sites. The railroad system, owing to the speed of travel across the States, led to the economic explosion in the sale of goods, effectively creating the U.S. as the most powerful world economy by the 1890s.
John Muir, in an 1872 article, pointed to the way in which the railway "annihilated time and space" and indeed the speed of travel changed perceptions of distance, leading in the 1880s to the adoption of standard time zones to help to manage time differences across the States.
The rail expansion destroyed environments – the wood alone required to help in the construction of railroad sleepers, tunnel supports and bridges, destroyed vast swathes of western forests.
In 1875, Watkins, based on his growing reputation, had decided to take out a large loan and opened a new gallery, the Yosemite Art Gallery located at 26 Montgomery Street, an imposing location amongst the luxury businesses that had begun to flourish in San Francisco.
But, because of the worldwide ‘Long Depression’ of 1873- 1896 U.S. construction and railroad stocks were badly hit. As a result of the financial crash, the significant loan that Watkins had taken out was called in, and unable to repay it, he was forced by his creditors to give up his studio, gallery and perhaps most importantly all his negatives.
The contents of his studio were sold to his competitor Isaiah W. Taber who promoted Watkins’ prints under his own brand. Undeterred by this potentially life-changing disaster, Watkins set about the recreation of his body of work by painstakingly re-photographing his most popular and commercially successful images. He was able to afford to open a new, smaller studio space. Unbroken, at the age of 46, Watkins had begun once more to document Yosemite.
In 1906, the impact of the San Francisco earthquake would cast Watkins a devastating blow.
Following the initial earthquake early on the 18 April, fires broke out and with the water system broken, spread quickly with dramatic results and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed.
The image below is one of a sequence of contemporary images of the ruined city following the destruction of the earthquake, taken by E. B. Gibbes for newspaper circulation.
Watkins’ new studio containing his prints, negatives and archives were also destroyed. Days before, the University of Stanford had visited Watkins to offer to purchase his extensive collection for the nation. This was not to be. Tragically, Watkins’ life ended in poverty and obscurity, buried in an unmarked grave.
Through research and academic enquiry, Watkins’ work, held largely in U.S. collections has been saved, identified, protected, and reassessed. Recent publications have done much to bring this extraordinarily talented photographer to wider attention.
The Society is fortunate to have a collection of original mammoth prints from the estimated 1,400 mammoth prints and over 5,000 stereographs his studios produced, and which have survived in small numbers to tell his story and that of the evolution of the American West as seen through the lens of Carleton Watkins.
A selection of the images featured in this online exhibition can be purchased from the RGS Print Store.
For more information on how to access and use the Society's Collections please visit our website.
The Society is grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund and Rolex for their support for the Society’s Collections.
All images © Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)