Carleton E. Watkins was a noted 19th century California photographer.

Carleton Emmons Watkins was born in Oneonta

Oneonta, New York

Oneonta is a city in southern Otsego County, New York, USA. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, had a population of 13,901. Its nickname is "City of the Hills." While the word "oneonta" is of undetermined origin, it is popularly believed to mean "place of open rocks" in the Iroquois language...

, upstate New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. He went to San Francisco during the gold rush

Gold rush

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...

, arriving in 1851. He traveled to California with Oneontan Collis Huntington, who later became one of the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad

Central Pacific Railroad

The Central Pacific Railroad is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, USA that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a transcontinental...

, which helped Watkins later in his career.

His interest in photography started as an aide in a San Francisco portrait studio, and started taking photographs of his own in 1861. He became interested in landscape photography and soon started making photographs of California mining scenes and of Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of California, carved out by the Merced River. The valley is about long and up to a mile deep, surrounded by high granite summits such as Half Dome and El Capitan, and densely forested with pines...

. He experimented with several new photographic techniques, and eventually favored his "Mammoth Camera," which used large glass plate negatives, and a stereographic camera. He became famous for his series of photograph

Photograph

A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

s and historic stereoviews

Stereoscopy

Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...

 of Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of California, carved out by the Merced River. The valley is about long and up to a mile deep, surrounded by high granite summits such as Half Dome and El Capitan, and densely forested with pines...

 in the 1860s that helped influence Congress' decision to establish the valley as a National Park in 1864. Watkins also took a variety of images of California and Oregon in the 1870s and later. Watkins accompanied painter William Keith

William Keith (artist)

William Keith was a Scottish-American painter famous for his California landscapes.-Early life:Keith was born in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States in 1850. He lived in New York City, and became an apprentice wood engraver in 1856...

 on at least one western expedition.

Watkins purchased the 1860s Central Pacific Railroad

Central Pacific Railroad

The Central Pacific Railroad is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, USA that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a transcontinental...

 construction stereoview negatives from CPRR official photographer Alfred A. Hart

Alfred A. Hart

Alfred A. Hart was a 19th-century American photographer for the Central Pacific Railroad. Hart was the official photographer of the western half of the first transcontinental railroad, for which he took 364 historic stereoviews of the railroad construction in the 1860s...

 and continued their publication through the 1870s.

However Watkins was not a good businessman. He spent lavishly on his San Francisco studio and went deeply into debt. His photographs were auctioned, following a business setback, resulting in his photographs being published without credit by I. W. Taber

I. W. Taber

Isaiah West Taber was an American daguerreotypist, ambrotypist, and photographer who took many pictures of noted Californians, which he donated to the California State Library "that the state may preserve the names and faces, and keep alive the memory of those who made it what it is." He was also...

, the new owner. Watkins also had problems of his photographs being reprinted without permission by Eastern companies and with other photographers rephotographing the exact scenes Watkins photographed.

In 1879, Watkins married his 22-year-old assistant, Frances Sneade, with whom he had two children.

Watkins began anew with his "New Series," which included a variety of subjects and formats, mostly related to California. However, he remained poor and his family lived for a time in an abandoned railroad boxcar. His eyesight began to fail. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake

1906 San Francisco earthquake

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...

 and fire destroyed Watkins's studio and negatives. In 1910 Watkins was committed to the Napa State Hospital for the Insane, where he died six years later.

External links

• Carleton Watkins Exhibition & Photographs
• Carleton Watkins - 19th Century California Photographer
• The Stereoviews of Carleton Watkins
• Carleton Watkins Photographs at the Getty Museum
• Early Watkins Yosemite Photographs
• Watkins photographs in Josiah Whitney
  Josiah Whitney
  Josiah Dwight Whitney was an American geologist, professor of geology at Harvard University , and chief of the California Geological Survey...
  
  , The Yosemite Book (1869)
• Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception National Gallery of Art. Includes a timeline.
• Mammoth Plate Photographs of Yosemite Valley, 1861-1881 and Stereo Views of the West, ca. 1865-ca. 1880, The Bancroft Library (several other Watkins photo collections also available through the Online Archive of California)
• Carleton E. Watkins Photographs in online exhibit at Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
• Mammoth Plate Photographs of the North American West by Watkins from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
• Carleton Watkins Interior Views of Anaconda Mines (Butte, MT) from the University of Idaho Library Digital Collections