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View on the Columbia, Cascades

1867
Not on view
Beginning in the 1850s, photographers found a way to achieve the clarity of daguerreotypes without giving up the reproducibility inherent in William Henry Fox Talbot's negative/positive photographic process: they replaced the paper negative with glass, which they coated with a thin layer of wet photosensitive collodion (guncotton dissolved in ether). For large-format landscape work such as Watkins produced along the Columbia River in Oregon, the physical demands of this process were great. Since there was as yet no practical means of enlarging, Watkins's glass negatives had to be as large as he wished the prints to be, and his camera large enough to accommodate them. Furthermore, the glass negatives had to be coated, exposed, and developed while the collodion remained tacky, requiring the photographer to transport a traveling darkroom as he explored the virgin terrain of the American West. The crystalline clarity and classic probity of Watkins's remarkable "mammoth" prints attest to his virtuosic mastery of the process and his consummate artistry.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: View on the Columbia, Cascades
  • Artist: Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829–1916)
  • Date: 1867
  • Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative
  • Dimensions: 40.0 x 52.4 cm (15 3/4 x 20 5/8 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Warner Communications Inc. Purchase Fund and Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1979
  • Object Number: 1979.622
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

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Nevada Fall, Yosemite
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1865–66, printed ca. 1875
The Golden Gate, Carleton E. Watkins American, Albumen silver print from glass negative
The Golden Gate
Carleton E. Watkins
1868–69, printed ca. 1876
Islands in the Upper Cascades, Oregon, Carleton E. Watkins American, Albumen silver print from glass negative
Islands in the Upper Cascades, Oregon
Carleton E. Watkins
1867, printed ca. 1876
Sutro Tunnel Shaft No. 3, Carleton E. Watkins American, Albumen silver print from glass negative
Sutro Tunnel Shaft No. 3
Carleton E. Watkins
1875, printed ca. 1876
Sutro Tunnel's Road to Virginia City, Carleton E. Watkins American, Albumen silver print from glass negative
Sutro Tunnel's Road to Virginia City
Carleton E. Watkins
1875, printed ca. 1876

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