Big River, from the Rancherie, Mendocino, California
Carleton Watkins
1863
Like
the
vast
and
untapped
landscape
of
the
American
West,
Carleton
Watkins’s
photographic
images
are
grand
in
spirit
and
in
size.
Using
a
giant
wet-plate
camera
whose
thick
glass
negatives—coated
with
a
sensitized
emulsion
called
collodion
and
exposed
while
still
wet—were
often
as
large
as
the
average
easel
painting
of
the
time,
Watkins
here
fused
a
sense
of
the
picturesque
with
a
Romantic
expression
of
nature’s
timelessness,
immensity,
and
silence.
The
trees
are
sharply
defined,
still,
and
majestic.
Depicted
with
equal
clarity
is
the
river,
which
winds
into
the
receding
hills.
This
technical
and
aesthetic
perfection
was
all
the
more
remarkable
considering
the
difficulty
of
the
wet-plate
process
for
a
frontier
photographer.
In
the
field,
Watkins
had
to
transport
(with
the
aid
of
several
pack
mules)
mammoth
cameras,
dark
tents,
chemicals,
and
as
many
as
four
hundred
glass
plates.
He
also
had
to
contend
with
constant
packing
and
unpacking,
the
lack
of
pure
water,
and
the
tendency
of
dust
to
adhere
to
the
sticky
collodion.
Photographs
such
as
Big
River
and
Watkins’s
famous
views
of
Yosemite
(which
helped
persuade
the
US
Congress
to
pass
legislation
protecting
the
valley’s
wilderness)
provided
the
world
with
some
of
the
first
glimpses
of
the
American
West.
| Title | Big River, from the Rancherie, Mendocino, California |
|---|---|
| Artist | Carleton Watkins |
| Date | 1863 |
| Medium | Albumen print |
| Style | 19th century |
| Dimensions | 40 × 52.5 cm (15 3/4 × 20 11/16 in.); Mount: 55 × 68.4 cm (21 11/16 × 26 15/16 in.); Image/paper: 40.1 × 52.6 cm (15 3/4 × 20 11/16 in.) |