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Carleton WATKINS (1829-1916)

[Galen CLARK]

Photographie de Galen Clark posant devant le séquoia Grizzly Giant à Yosemite Park Californie

s.d. (1865), cliché : 30x19,3cm / planche : 48x37cm, une photographie sous marie-louise.

n.d (1865), photo: 30x19,3 cm / mount: 48x37 cm, a photograph mounted.

Original photograph printed on albumen paper, with a very sharp rendering thanks to the photographer's mastery of the difficult wet collodion technique.

Rare and impressive photograph made by the very first photographer of Yosemite and featuring one of the pioneers of ecology.

The American photographer Carleton Watkins first came to Yosemite in 1861 with his “mammoth” camera, where he took an impressive series of views of the valley. It was partly because of his splendid photographs that President Lincoln signed the Yosemite Valley Grant Act on June 30, 1864, declaring the site protected and thus initiating the National Park Service. Watkins continued to take photographs of Yosemite Valley and became acquainted with Galen Clark, pictured here at the foot of the 300-year-old “Grizzly Giant” redwood. Born in Quebec and carried away like many of his compatriots by the California Gold Rush, Galen Clark – whose doctor gave him no more than six months to live – was the first Westerner to discover the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees. He never left the grove, becoming its first guardian in 1864 and remaining there for twenty-four years.
Although Yosemite Valley attracted artists and wealthy travelers as early as the 1850s, Watkins' images did much to promote the site, especially after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

Watkins presented his photographs (displayed in redwood frames...) at the Paris World's Fair in 1867. They are now preserved in major American institutions such as the MoMa, the Getty Museum and the MET.
 

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