Brief Bio
Carleton Watkins moved from New York to California in 1851 at the age of 22. Initially, he worked in a store a friend owned in Sacramento. He became a photographer almost by happenstance - a store customer was impressed enough by Watkins' friendly demeanor that he asked him to temporarily look after his photography studio in San Francisco when its supervisor suddenly left. Watkins, fascinated by the equipment, stayed on and by 1858 was working for himself as a landscape photographer. As this Kern County Library article explains, his work initially tended to revolve around land dispute cases.
He also, however, sold photographs to the public. Indeed, Watkins became quite well known for his photographs of the very remote Yosemite region of California. He had a giant camera custom built in order to capture intricate detail on "mammoth plates." Traveling to the valley and surrounding mountains many times with this heavy equipment, he photographed areas largely unknown to the American public. His stereocards and prints circulated widely and inspired many to make the trek to Yosemite. A small collection of these early photographs of Yosemite can be seen here. In 1864, Watkins was asked to continue his work in a more official capacity, creating photographs of Yosemite for the California State Geological Survey.
As his popularity increased, so too did his financial security, and Watkins was able to devote more time to his artistic pursuits. He photographed further and further from his studio and home in San Francisco, traveling to areas that included Mendocino, the Columbia Gorge, and up and down the Pacific coast. A railroad tycoon friend (the very same who owned the store he first worked at in fact) lent him the services of a flatcar on which to haul his equipment.
Financial success for Watkins, unfortunately, ended with the banking crisis of 1875. He lost not only his studio, but his negatives as well. The new owner of the studio - I.W. Taber - began making and circulating prints from them. Watkins started over, creating a "New Series" of photographs. All these images are numbered 3000 or higher. Pre-1876 photographs of Watkins are thus known as "Old Series" prints. He traveled again, and - as the railroad had now extended much further into the remote areas of the West - was able to travel to Southern California, Arizona, Montana, and Oregon. Within this period he photographed Yellowstone as well.
Sadly, Watkins never regained the financial security he once had. Failing eyesight and health effectively ruined him by 1892. The generosity of his wide circle of prestigious friends basically sustained him from this point forward. The earthquake of 1906 utterly destroyed his studio, which contained the vast majority of his negatives and many unsold prints. While his productivity had basically ceased by this time, this destruction truly marked the end of his career. He passed away in 1916.
A longer, more complete biography of Watkins is available on the National Gallery of Art website. A history of his life is also recounted in a 1953 article in Yosemite Nature Notes, in a 1977 article in Stereo World, in a 1999 article in the Village Voice, and in a 2000 article in Art in America (which also includes a detailed discussion of the art world's evolving views of Watkins' work).
Many museums have Watkins' photographs in their collection, and have made digitized images available on-line. These include The Getty, The Met (which also has an essay on Watkins available), SFMOMA, the Phoebe A. Heart Museum of Anthropology, and the New York Public Library. Other organizations with Watkins images on-line include the Library of Congress, the Royal Geographic Society, the USGS Photographic Library, the website carletonwatkins.org (featuring an impressive variety of stereoview cards and a biography), and the University of California (the largest collection by far; over 800 examples of prints and stereoview cards are available). The USGS has also taken some of the stereoview cards from the Library of Congress collection and converted them into digitized 3-d renderings (you'll need a pair of the old red and blue 3-d glasses to see these properly).
Books
Carleton Watkins never created books; many have been created featuring his photographs, however.
List of 11 books with Carleton Watkins photographs:
The Yosemite Book by Josiah D. Whitney (1869)
The early Pacific Coast photographs of Carleton E. Watkins by J.W. Johnson (1960)
Photographs of the Columbia River and Oregon from the Weston Gallery (1979)
Carleton Watkins: Photographer of the American West by Peter E. Palmquist (1983)
Carleton Watkins - Photographs, 1861 - 1874 by Peter E. Palmquist (1989)
Carleton Watkins: Western Landscape and the Classical Vision published by the Getty Museum (1990)
Carleton E. Watkins by Jeffrey Fraenkel (1991)
Carleton Watkins: Selected Texts and Bibliography by Amy Rule (1993)
Pioneers of Landscape Photography: Gustave LeGray and Carleton E. Watkins Photographs from the Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (1994)
In Focus: Carleton Watkins: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (1997)
Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception by Douglas Nickel (1999)
You can sometimes find used copies of these books
here.
