Carleton Watkins, The Vernal Fall, from the Yosemite Book, 1868 Carleton Watkins. Yosemite Falls and the Merced River. Yosemite National Park. View from the Sentinel Dome, Yosemite, by Carleton Watkins As Ian Jeffrey observed (1), 19th century American landscape photography recorded "virgin" nature in two complementary "modes": in the first, contemplating the novelty, and the magnitude of its subject, the photographer documents vast vistas from the distance, not simply physical distance per se but a properly visual distance appropriated to handle the unique, novel forms of the subject. In the second, photographic vision "tames" nature and organizes the natural panorama by way of an aesthetic code akin to that of the contemporary landscape painters. Survey photography by Weed, Watkins or by Muybridge, O' Sullivan, and others, can be seen as a kind of "second" conquest o...
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