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Re: [OM] "The beauty of Yosemite long before Ansel Adams"

Subject: Re: [OM] "The beauty of Yosemite long before Ansel Adams"
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:57:59 -0700
On 6/15/2016 5:41 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
The subject line is from the June 2016 issue of Smithsonian magazine which has a short article about photographer Carleton Watkins. Maybe the greatest photographer you've probably never heard of. Watkins first photographed Yosemite in the summer of 1861 using 18x22" glass plates. His photographs were supposedly instrumental in Lincoln signing a bill in 1864 that protected the Yosemite Valley as "inviolable", well before the formation of the National Park System.

You can find an extensive article about him on Wiki here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carleton_Watkins>

I was aware of Watkins, and have seen the occasional print. To my eye, they are spectacular in the context of the photography of their day, but far less accomplished than Adam's later work. Perhaps in part because they were relatively straight contact prints?

I wonder at how they were viewed by those were also seeing the somewhat fanciful paintings of Bierstadt and others of many of the same subjects. Looks like the two approaches largely overlapped in time.

Visually Curious Moose

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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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