[Yosemite National Park, California] 1876 - 1880

This is Carleton Watkins' photograph "Yosemite National Park, California," a circular albumen print. It dates to the 19th century, when photography was a relatively new and painstaking process. Watkins would have coated a glass plate with a light-sensitive emulsion of egg white, then exposed it in a large-format camera. The resulting negative was then contact-printed onto paper, creating this sepia-toned image. Think about the labor involved: the careful mixing of chemicals, the heavy equipment, and the need for a portable darkroom. Watkins’s photographs played a crucial role in the history of conservation. Captured with scientific precision, his views of Yosemite were presented to the US Congress and were influential in the creation of the National Park system. This gorgeous landscape became available for mass consumption. Photographs like this remind us that the line between art, craft, and documentary is never clear-cut, and that the meaning of an image is always shaped by the context in which it is made and used.