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Cape Horn, near Celilo, Columbia River.

Creator

American Photographer · 1829–1916

AmbrotypistPublisherArtist

At twenty, Carleton Watkins headed out to California to make his fortune. After working as a daguerreotype operator in San Jose, he established his own practice and soon made his first visit to the Yosemite Valley. There he made thirty mammoth plate and one hundred stereograph views that were among the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East. Partly on the strength of Watkins's photographs,

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Date: about 1867
Medium: Albumen silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

Carleton E. Watkins placed his camera low to the ground to capture these railroad tracks emerging in the foreground only to recede into the middle distance and then disappear out of the line of vision. Such compositions were popular in railroad photography. They seemed to encapsulate the spirit of travel by rail, heading off into an unknown, distant landscape. Watkins returned to this central Oregon area numerous times over the years, evidently fascinated with the landscape of the Columbia River basin.

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