LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  PHOTOGRAPHS PART I  / 

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CARLETON WATKINS (American, 1829-1916) MIRROR VIEW OF THE NORTH DOME

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:20,000.00 - 25,000.00 USD
CARLETON WATKINS (American, 1829-1916) MIRROR VIEW OF THE NORTH DOME
CARLETON WATKINS (American, 1829-1916) MIRROR VIEW OF THE NORTH DOME, YOSEMITE VALLEY vintage mammoth plate albumen print mounted on board 15 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (39.4 x 52.1 cm) mount: 20 9/16 x 25 in. (52.2 x 63.5 cm) circa 1865-1866 PROVENANCE Private Collection

LITERATURE Peter Palmquist, CARLETON WATKINS: PHOTOGRAPHS, 1861-1874, San Francisco, 1989, pl. 19 (illustrated) This lot derives from Watkins' second visit to Yosemite Valley. After the success of the "mammoth views" he made on his first trip in 1861, he returned with a large camera that could accommodate 18 x 22 inch glass-plate negatives. These negatives were laborious to make. A clean plate was coated, sensitized, and loaded into a plate holder in a dark tent. After they were exposed in the camera, they had to be developed in the dark tent before they dried. In a hot arid climate, a photographer had to work very quickly. Watkins devised a system of placing the plates in water baths so he could extend the time to complete the whole procedure. His results were highly praised at the time and are still considered among the finest examples of wet-collodion photography ever made.
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