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[City Front from Rincon Hill in 1860]

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: 1860–1862
Medium: Albumen silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

Although the foreground is a velvety black, the buildings receding behind the New York Grocery & Liquor Store become progressively lighter towards the horizon. The setting sun bathes the facades in light, showing that Carleton Watkins made this exposure late in the afternoon. He took the picture near the present-day anchor of the Bay Bridge, on the east side of the San Francisco peninsula. Before he ever began photographing in the wilderness, Watkins made his earliest outside-the-studio images of the buildings and cities around him--first San Jose, California, and then San Francisco.

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