The Father of the Forest 450 ft C. Grove 1876 - 1880

Editor: Here we have Carleton Watkins' photograph "The Father of the Forest," taken sometime between 1876 and 1880. It's a gelatin-silver print, capturing the stump of a giant sequoia. I find it almost melancholic, seeing such a massive tree reduced to this. What strikes you most about this piece? Curator: Oh, melancholy is just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it? This photograph sings of lost grandeur. Think about what Watkins was doing—traipsing through the wilderness with a camera that weighed more than he probably did! He wasn’t just documenting; he was creating an elegy for a vanishing Eden. And that circular frame! Doesn't it feel like peering through a looking glass into another world, a world already slipping away? Editor: It does give that sense of looking back... almost like a portal. Curator: Exactly! Watkins wasn’t just showing us a tree stump; he was forcing us to confront our own mortality, the fleeting nature of everything we hold dear. And the 'Father'… what a title! It’s as if he's saying, "Look at what we’ve lost, look at the wisdom that has fallen." It's a lament, a visual poem, wouldn't you say? Does it conjure up any other visual stories for you? Editor: It really makes me think about the tension between preservation and exploitation that was present even back then. Like, Watkins is capturing this beauty, but the act of logging is what made the stump possible in the first place. Curator: Precisely! It's a tangled web, a dance of destruction and documentation. Maybe Watkins felt it, too. It's there in the quiet sadness of the image. Editor: I never thought a photograph of a tree stump could be so… complex. Curator: Art has a way of doing that, doesn’t it? Of revealing layers we never knew existed. Editor: Definitely given me a lot to think about! Thanks.