[The Dalles, Extremes of High & Low Water, 92 ft.] / [Head of the Dalles, Columbia River, Oregon]

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[The Dalles, Extremes of High & Low Water, 92 ft.] / [Head of the Dalles, Columbia River, Oregon]

Creator

Carleton Watkins

American Photographer · 1829–1916

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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 1883
Medium
Albumen silver print
Culture
American
Department
Photographs
Institution
Getty Museum

Carleton Watkins skillfully composed this picture around a line that begins near the middle of the rocks and continues along the water's surface to the right edge of the photograph. Varying tones left by shifting water levels create an echoing sequence of horizontal planes on the rock formation to the left. In the foreground, a gentleman and his rowboat provide a sense of scale. Watkins may have made this photograph for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company as a means of documenting the Columbia River's fluctuating water levels.

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