MEGAN K. FRIEDELAND TERRY TOEDTEMEIER Picturing Progress Carleton Watkins's 1867 Stereoviews ofthe Columbia RiverGorge DURING THE SUMMER AND EARLYfallof 1867, San Francisco-based photographer Carleton E.Watkins traveled toOregon to photograph settle ments along theupper Willamette River and,more significantly, theColum bia River Gorge. Itwas amomentous trip.Never before had a photographer attempted to so comprehensively navigate and document theGorge's steep shores and treacherous rapids. Between Julyand November, Watkins made forty-twomammoth-plate photographs of theColumbia River at locations between Portland and Celilo. Today, those prints are renowned asmaster pieces of early landscape photography. The mammoth prints would not have been possible, however, without the photographer's lesser known but equally noteworthy body of work ? 139 three-dimensional stereoscopic photographs, or stereoviews, that Watkins also made along the river.1The smaller, facile stereo format allowed Watkins to experiment inways that the heavy and cumbersome mammoth-plate format could not. Using a stereo scopic camera, he systematically mapped the river's landscape, searching for the perfect viewpoint, where he then assembled hismammoth-plate camera for the quintessential shot. Thus, for everyWatkins mammoth print, there aremultiple stereoview images that consider optional angles and alternate subjects. These stereoviews, furthermore, literallyunderwrote Watkins's pen chant for grand photographs at a grand scale.Whereas hismammoth prints were sold and exhibited to a select few, the photographer's stereoviews were easily mass-produced and became popular in parlors all across a country obsessed with the camera's ability to create "true" pictorial representations of theAmerican West. OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 ? 2008 Oregon Historical Society All imagesfromOregon Historical SocietyResearch Library Org. Lot 93 Carleton E.Watkins, Residence of Jo. Bailey, Esq., O.R.R. Cascades (Stereoview no. 1295), 1867 For all that,Carleton Watkins's stereoscopic photographs are not simply theworkhorses of his collection. In their very studiousness and efficiency, theColumbia River Gorge stereoviews necessarily tell a richer story than the mammoth prints. At a timewhen theColumbia was used almost exclusively for commercial travel, rather than forpleasure cruises, the stereoviews pro vide an exceptional chart of one man's sensory journey along the river and offer the possibility that a landscape itself could be the reward of rigorous travel.They also offer the first visual chronicle of the rapidly changing history of Euro-American settlement in that formidable landscape, capturing the river as it lay in the balance between the pioneer era and more modern ways of life.Lastly, these photographs form a unique historical record of theways the human relationships that Watkins formed during his travels inOregon facilitated and informed his vision of theColumbia River Gorge. The path that led Watkins to theColumbia River Gorge was one paved by equal doses of happenstance and hard work. Born in 1829, Watkins was raised inOneonta, New York.2 In 1851,he lefthis pastoral birthplace to join the fast-growing tide of immigrants heading west to seek their fortune in California's post-Gold Rush economy. Watkins headed west in the footsteps of his childhood friendCollis Huntington (1821-1900), who had established a hardware business in Sacramento, and took a job inHuntington s shop, delivering mining supplies. Late the following year, a fire destroyed the hardware store,which was only a temporary setback forHuntington but putWatkins out of work. He moved to San Francisco and took a job as a Friedetand Toedtemeier, Carleton Watkins's 1867Stereoviews 389 clerkwith another Oneonta friend, George Murray, who had established a book and stationary store in the fast-growing city. By chance, Murray's storewas adjacent to the studio of premier pioneer daguerreotypist Robert H. Vance (1825-1876). When Murray's bookstore went out of business, Watkins went towork forVance. He proved to be a good study of the process of making daguerreotype photographs, and Vance soon hired him tomanage one of his two studios. Vance was one of the few California daguerreotypists who, in addition to the portrait trade, consistently took photographs outdoors; he made and exhibited hundreds of daguerreotypes of California scenery, forwhich therewas considerable interest in theEast.3 This relatively specialized field also appealed to Watkins, and he decided tomake it themainstay of his own photography business, which he opened in San Francisco in 1858. Watkins soon...
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Sep 1, 2013
Haydee M Cuevas + 6
Open Access