![[Mechanics' Institute Exhibition, San Francisco, California]](https://media.getty.edu/iiif/image/8c38094e-2123-4f34-97d5-5072d311c73d/full/808,/0/default.jpg)
Getty Museum
[Mechanics' Institute Exhibition, San Francisco, California]
Creator
Carleton WatkinsAmerican Photographer · 1829–1916
All works by this person →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,
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1876
- Medium
- Albumen silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Despite the catastrophic financial collapse and unemployment that occurred in the mid-1870s, the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute held an Industrial Exhibition that optimistically displayed an array of agricultural and manufactured products for public consumption, from flavoring extracts to firearms. Although the fountain in the center of the image provides a focal point, it is the surrounding goods neatly displayed along the aisles that demand the viewer's attention. As an artisan himself, Carleton Watkins was a frequent exhibitor in the Mechanics' Institute's fairs.
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