Carleton Watkins : making the West American / Tyler Green.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Green, Tyler, 1974- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Watkins, Carleton E., 1829-1916.

Watkins, Carleton E.

Landscape photographers--West (U.S.)--19th century.

Landscape photographers.

West United States.

Physical Description:

xvii, 574 pages : illustrations, map, portraits ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2018]

Summary:

"Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) is widely considered the greatest American photographer of the nineteenth century and arguably the most influential artist of his era. He is best known for his pictures of Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning. His photographs of Yosemite were exhibited in New York for the first time in 1862, as news of the Union's disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg was landing in newspapers and while the Matthew Brady Studio's horrific photographs of Antietam were on view. Watkins's work tied the West to Northern cultural traditions and played a key role in pledging the once-wavering West to Union. Motivated by Watkins's pictures, Congress would pass legislation, later signed by Abraham Lincoln, that preserved Yosemite as the prototypical "national park," the first such act of landscape preservation in the world. Carleton Watkins: Making the West American includes the first history of the birth of the national park concept since pioneering environmental historian Hans Huth's landmark 1948 "Yosemite: The Story of an Idea." Watkins's photographs helped shape America's idea of the West, and helped make the West a full participant in the nation. His pictures of California, Oregon, and Nevada, as well as modern-day Washington, Utah, and Arizona, not only introduced entire landscapes to America but were important to the development of American business, finance, agriculture, government policy, and science. Watkins's clients, customers, and friends were a veritable "who's who" of America's Gilded Age, and his connections with notable figures such as Collis P. Huntington, John and Jessie Benton Frémont, Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Billings, John Muir, Albert Bierstadt, and Asa Gray reveal how the Gilded Age helped make today's America." -- Publisher's description

Contents:

Sunrise in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains

Arriving in California

Creating western culture at Black Point

Secession or union?

To Yosemite in wartime

Sharing Yosemite

Exhibiting Yosemite in wartime

Expanding the western landscape

The birth of the nature park idea

Assisting American science

To Oregon (for industry)

Volcanic landscapes

Basking in achievement, building a business

Celebrating Gilded Age wealth

Taking Shasta, discovering glaciers

The boom years

San Francisco's borasca

The comeback

Creating semi-tropical California

Showing California its history

Enter William H. Lawrence

Re-building a business

Mapping from the mountaintops

Becoming agricultural

Traveling the west (again)

The new industrial agriculture near Bakersfield, California

The last great picture

The long, slow end.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 469-538) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Green, Tyler, 1974- Carleton Watkins.

ISBN:

9780520287983

0520287983

OCLC:

1019843481